Gamification: what is it and why do you need to know?

Jul 7, 2010 by Stephanie

Image by anshu_si via Flickr

Mention Farmville as a potential marketing tactic to most marketers or brand stewards and you’ll get greeted by an “ugh, really?” I have yet to work with someone, colleague or client, who plays social games online, so very few of them are convinced that gaming is the way to reach consumers. But increasingly, gaming is an important and growing channel with regular new points of entry for engagement.

In fact, there’s an entire new industry cropping up to help brand connect to consumers via gaming; it’s called “Gamification” and it’s exemplified by a startup, Bunchball, which helps companies including Hasbro, Comcast and NBC “gamify” their interactions with their target audiences. The concept of gamification is simple:

Make it fun and exciting to be part of a community
Reward audiences for participation
Encourage pass-along and recommendations
Build loyalty and sales through repeat visits and purchases

Gamification can happen online or off; companies like 7-Eleven are gamifying the in-store experience, Bobber is making financial education fun for kids and teens, and programmers’ community Stack Overflow awards badges for community interaction and engagement.

And consider Foursquare, Gowalla and other location-based services. Most of them are based on the premise of gaining something – either becoming a mayor, or finding an artifact, or getting another badge. These services wouldn’t be nearly as compelling if the competitive aspects weren’t there, whether it’s competing against yourself or against friends.

What does this mean for brands? You should be looking for ways to either gamify your own marketing efforts to take advantage of existing games to engage with your target audiences. The average online gamer is a 43 year old woman and 38% of women say they play games several times a day. So though it seems that my colleagues are all outside of that percentage, there are still 78 million users playing Farmville and millions and millions more playing other games. Brands are placing products within games and other creative integrations are cropping up daily (no pun intended).

What say you? Are you loving the gamification of everything, or hating it? Do you shut off Farmville and Mafia Wars in your Facebook news feed or are you an addict yourself? And now that Farmville is on the iPhone, are you less bored waiting at the bank? Please leave us your thoughts in the comments.