Ketaki Desai

Brand and Creative Communication specialist who lives by the philosophy 'Learn. Make. Grow.'

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6 reasons why Digital Marketers should NOT ignore Gamification

For the uninitiated, gamification is most commonly defined as “…an informal umbrella term for the use of video game elements in non-gaming systems to improve user experience (UX) and user engagement…”. (1)

Brian Burke, Research Vice President at Gartner, in a podcast defines gamification further as “The use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals…it’s the use of game mechanics… and uses things like points and badges and leader boards… It is used in a digital engagement model” (2)

Let’s take a look at the 6 reasons why marketers must consider gamification in their digital strategy. (It's a long read but I promise it will be fun!)

Reason 1: Let’s accept it – gamification is not ‘just a fad’

The last decade has seen interest in gamification rise substantially. Growth in digital technologies has further propelled this interest across sectors like Healthcare, Real-estate, Education, and other sectors. Today, mobile technology is using game mechanics combined with UX design to enhance user engagement, aid employee learning, help students with problem-solving, and even help sales personnel reach their targets.

Reason 2: Gamification is everywhere, literally!

The earliest, less refined, version of gamification in marketing was recorded in 1896 (3) when retailers rewarded loyal customers with stamps received from marketers. By 2020, one can comfortably say that gamification in marketing has come a long way.

“It (Gamification) can be applied on many products, services, or any stage of the customer journey and it’s easily adjusted to any budget” (4)

Today, Gamification is seamlessly incorporated in our favorite digital platforms like Google Pay, Fitbit, and even Linkedin. It is common to see a mobile app use badges, points, or virtual currency to drive user engagement. While there are popular applications that have gamification at their core like Duolingo and Nike Run Club, there are apps like Zomato which have incorporated gamification into their product to keep app users coming back for more.

In 2019, Zomato launched Zomato Premier League during the IPL season. Users could predict a winner of the IPL cricket match of the day and gain 30% cashback if they predicted the winner correctly. Zomato released a scorecard of the activity that showed 224 cities and 14 Million predictions achieved during the IPL season. (5)

(On a separate note, Google decided to ruin the game and sent a notice to Zomato citing Play store policy violation – Zomato had to take off this feature in September 2020) (6)

Reason 3: Your digital audience wants to have fun

“Many brands don’t need brand awareness anymore, they already have it. So they’re looking at what’s next, they want to engage the audience, the influencers.” (7)

Digital marketers need not limit themselves to using gamification only in an app – digital engagement can be successfully created wherever the audience is including social media! Micro-gamification moments have been popular on social media platforms for some time now. One example of the micro-gamification moment is Stories Ordering by Burger King.

Burger King Spain used Instagram stories and had some fun with gamification. With “Stories Ordering” followers could pick ingredients and customize their Whoppers by simply clicking on the Instagram Poll Feature. This generated a unique coupon that participants could use to redeem their Whopper for free. A simple creative idea with zero media investment led to 270000 brand interactions.

Similarly, Star Movies launched Play @ 7 (8) to gamify the TV watching experience. Viewers were required to watch the movies played on the channel daily and play 7 games by tweeting the correct answers to the games. Star Movies created a leader-board on Twitter in real-time where participants could track their progress daily and weekly.

Reason 4: Personalise to Gamify and Gamify to personalize

“While the job of gamification is easing the daily tasks in different fields, the users’ interests and likes must be considered to create intrinsic incentives and a moral environment for them.” (9)

For a truly effective retention strategy, a brand must enhance the product experience for the user. For this ethically collecting relevant data along the user journey to personalize content and keep users engaged becomes important. Duolingo emails a weekly report to its users reminding them of their progress in comparison to the previous week. Similarly, Starbucks sends rewards points as a birthday treat to its users.

As the collected data gets richer in quality, marketers can then create loyalty programs, feedback mechanisms, gamified content, and much more, to personalize the user’s experience further.

Reason 5: Gamified marketing survived COVID-19

Locked up at home due to COVID-19, people were increasingly active online, consuming a variety of content, and playing games when not working. Between March 2020 and April 2020, comScore noted a 62% increase in the time spent on playing games online in India. Another report states that the US and UK saw a ‘40% surge in the time spent on online games’.

During this time, Burberry launched its summer collection through a gamified campaign. The luxury brand created a multiplayer game “that lets players dress up their characters in the brand's outfits before grabbing a surfboard and challenging friends to a race around a track”. The game rewards participants with daily prizes and AR-based digital rewards. (10)

ABC Entertainment decided to have fun promoting its classic TV game show “Supermarket Sweep”. To announce the return of the show, the broadcaster launched a Twitter game “Supermoji Sweep”. The audience on Twitter was required to “reply to its @SuperSweepABC account with combinations of nine emoji for grocery items including cheese, bread, steak, turkey and cherries”. Every emoji had a secret dollar value attached to it and the audience was required to guess the combination of items that would cost exactly $20. And the reward for the correct guess? A Special video message from comedian Leslie Jones, who is also the host of the show.

Reason 6: Gamification is about to get better

The overall Gamification market globally is expected to be worth $76298.9 Mn by 2030 (11) and for marketers, the opportunities are endless. Game mechanics are combined with AR/VR in education, tourism, healthcare, and entertainment industries.

In 2019, Ally Bank used AR and Gamification to create an online learning experience for consumers. “The augmented reality game brings Monopoly to life in six USA cities… Ally aims to improve consumers’ financial literacy through gamification while giving them the chance to increase their savings and win prizes."

PetSmart used Snapchat’s AR feature to create a “gamified quiz based around educational reptile facts”. Using this feature users could use the filter to turn themselves into a reptile, answer questions related to reptiles, and win a 40% discount coupon that can be redeemed at a PetSmart store. As a result, PetSmart “has seen a 50% increase in reptile sales, as well as a boost in general pet sales as owners stocked up on food and supplies in preparation for lockdown..”

Digital marketers can leverage these technologies to present immersive and gamified experiences to consumers and expand the scope of digital marketing. Similarly, brands can work towards gathering relevant user data and utilize it to create a better user experience and consumer engagement through personalized in-app gamified experiences.

Parting Thoughts

From engagement to retention, gamification can support most of the marketing objectives. This is a great approach ONLY if the marketer is clear about what objective the brand is trying to achieve when adopting the approach. To elevate a user’s experience through gamification, marketers must weave storytelling or personalization.

But remember, creating a gamified experience is not easy. Experts have researched why gamification fails and these reasons range from lack of understanding of the target audience to not being able to create a compelling story. Brian Burke mentions that gamification fails when it is used to manipulate the user’s experience to meet the organization’s goal, instead of the goal of the customer (2). As a result, marketers must create an experience that helps the consumer achieve their objectives. And this means going beyond mere reward points.

I will leave you with two popular frameworks Elemental Game Tetrad Model by Schell and Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou. Both these should help you start off with planning and designing an outstanding gamification experience for your audiences/customers/users!

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FIN!

Thank you for reading this article. I would love to hear your views on gamification and how digital marketers can leverage game mechanics to improve user engagement.

If you found this article interesting or if you have any feedback for me, do share the same in the comments below!

All references and cited articles can be viewed here.

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Dynamic Feminism and the role of culture in Femvertising

Researchers have studied the effects of sexual appeal and found that it tends to enhance consumers’ attention and emotional arousal and can enhance advertising attitudes and brand interest (1a,b,c,d). The responses tend to be higher in the case of hedonic products such as perfumes, cosmetics, etc.

While there is a school of thought that opposes sexual objectification of women in advertising, there are recent studies in the US that are surprising to some, say just the opposite. One explanation for this is that contemporary feminists more likely view female sexuality and sexual expression as a natural part of femininity and sexual independence (2). This coincides with the dominant cultural background of the US as western individualism. Researchers have found that consumers’ evaluative responses to sexual advertising were more positive as attitudes toward sexual liberalism increased (3).

With differences in culture in the East and the West, perspectives of female consumers could vary in other cultures, and hence the extension of the studies from the US to other countries is not automatic. The research was carried out in Korea, a country that is influenced by the Confucianism way of life, where sexual disclosure is traditionally discouraged. Albeit at the same time Korean women were under the influence of the third wave of feminism and thus represented a contrast between culture and feminism.

The waves of liberation

Of the three historical waves of Feminist movements in the western world (4a,b), the third wave which began in the 1990s, embraces women’s sexuality as natural femininity (2) and women are more likely to evaluate sexual images of women in advertising positively. However, the second wave, which the western world experienced in the mid 20th century revolved around social issues such as work equality, patriarchy. Women of the second wave viewed the sexual objectification of women as ‘sexist pop culture’.

Which is the right Scale?

Previous researchers (5) generally operationalized consumers’ feminist attitudes as a single dimension. However, the Feminist Perspectives Scale (6) uniquely defines 6 types of feminism – conservatism feminism, liberal feminism, radical feminism, socialist feminism, culture feminism, and women-of-color feminism.

The study: An advertising designer edited two original Tom Ford advertisements featuring nudity to create four additional sexual advertising stimuli to represent three levels of female nudity (demure, partially clad, and nude). After exposure to each advertising stimulus, respondents were asked to rate their ethical judgment and advertising attitudes toward the stimulus. Then, they rated the perceived sexual explicitness of the advertising stimulus and brand familiarity.

The respondents’ perspectives of conservatism, liberal feminism, and radical feminism were assessed with the Feminist Perspectives Scale. The results of the study statistically confirmed that consumers with a liberal feminist perspective will influence positively their ethical judgment, attitude toward the advertisement, and brand interest toward advertisements featuring women’s sexual imagery. It also confirmed that consumers with a radical feminist perspective will influence negatively their ethical judgment toward advertisements featuring women’s sexual imagery.

So what does this mean? This research also confirms that if an advertiser’s target audience belongs to a liberal feminist group influenced by third-wave feminism, the positive influence can be generalized beyond borders and across regions. Such approaches offer international advertisers the opportunity to consider a standardized messaging approach, rather than more expensive localized approaches.

So what for us Desis?

As a corollary to Indian consumers, it can be interpreted that advertisers can use sexual appeals despite the inherent conservative cultural background for products that are increasingly purchased by liberal feminists influenced by the third-wave of feminism.

Regarding the recent trend of “femvertising,” which emphasizes female empowerment, advertising practitioners are encouraged to consider how depictions can challenge the stereotype of sexual objectification. This can be acceptable as long as the approach is conditioned on the need to depict women as sexually independent and not submissive, as well as on targeting contemporary feminists with sexually liberal perspectives (5;7).

When does #Femvertising really work?

Extending the learnings from the research by Choi, Yoo, Reichert, and Northup, one can say that Femvertising helps brands connect the dots between Feminism, Culture, and Consumerism. However, for a brand to effectively create an impact with the third-wave feminists, it is necessary that it finds a way to:

1) When deciding to Adapt, Adopt or Create an ad campaign in a new market, especially for hedonic products, understand the cultural values within the society – cultural dimensions like individualism vs collectivism, masculinity vs feminity, etc (Hofstede's dimensions of cultural personality) should be studied.

2) In another research (8) it was found that when “women were seen in occupational roles that were stereotyped as masculine … the effects were overwhelmingly positive.” Therefore, brands speaking the language of feminism should offer enough social proof through tie-ups with the right celebrities or influencers who are breaking stereotypes, daily.

3) The aforementioned report also noted that “when brands do something beyond what is expected, positive results emerge because of consumers' perceptions of brand effort and brand-ability”. As a result, Brands should create a powerful story that helps the women within the culture identify with the brand enough to develop brand likeability

4) Be consistent with the stand taken – it is important for the brand to reflect the cultural values not just through their advertising campaigns but also to exercise the values within their organizations

5) Research on what Feminism truly stands for, before trying to appeal to women - “Femvertising” doesn’t make anyone a better feminist

What next in #femvertising?

"Feminism is dynamic: what is considered acceptable at one time may become questionable in the future."

There has been an arrival of the fourth wave of feminism with feminists harnessing the power of digital and social mediums, where they have a newfound ability to express themselves more openly and freely than in previous waves. Due to this changing view and with the arrival of intersectional feminism, research would need to be carried out on the evolving response of feminists as they transit from one wave to the other and to see that advertising is able to appropriately ride this change, else a badly researched advert could lose support with the fourth wave of feminists.

References: Click here to view the list of references for this article

Disclaimer: The above article has been authored by Sushil Thaker, Ketaki Desai, Manish Kankani, Vishwathama Iyer, and Vivek Bansal, fand is not based on any personal views. We have summarized the below-mentioned key research article along with observations and relevant examples from the Indian Advertising landscape.

Key Research Article: This article is inspired by the research article 'Feminism and advertising: Responses to sexual ads featuring women: How the differential influence of Feminist perspectives can inform targeting strategies' authored by Hojoon Choi, Kyunga Yoo, Tom Reichert, and Temple Northup and published by Journal of Advertising Research, Vol. 60, No. 2, 2020.

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Partnering with Gadgets Now

In January 2019, Servify partnered with Gadgets Now to launch the Gadgets Now Awards. When I received the email from the Gadgets Now team inviting us to be a part of this event it made perfect sense to tie up with the brand - after all, Servify was all about celebrating gadgets and personal devices. Servify had built an entire platform to help the ecosystem support and helping device owners to get the best value out of their devices by protecting them through the device lifecycle journey. And Gadgets Now wanted to award the most popular and technologically advanced personal devices in the Indian market. 

The awards show had some of the leaders of the tech industry as part of the prestigious list. Servify’s presence at the show was seen in the co-branded awards logo, special booth on ground. We managed the entire show through a live coverage of the event on Servify’s social media channels. 

This led to a very exciting partnership which helped us launch not just the Gadgets Now awards, but also the TechSavvytri series. ‘Techsavvytri’ was a show where the technologically savvy host of the show Samentha Fernandes. She reviewed upcoming gadgets that are creating a buzz in the industry. Part from the reviews, the show also had Mr. Sreevathsa Prabhakar, Founder of Servify, as the resident ‘tech-spert’ who would advise viewers on how to protect their favorite smartphones. He spoke about damage protection plans, warranty extension, trade-in services and a lot more. 

Take a look at one such episode below!

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Slice Swayaamvar Campaign

At iContract I was lucky enough to work with some of the biggest brands in India and was even luckier to be part of the team - right from when there were just two of us managing the digital account of Shoppers Stop India, till the team grew to more than 20! During my second year in iContract, I got the chance to work on the pitch for the digital mandate of Pepsico Slice. Of course, as part of the team that won the account for the agency, I was elated! We did work days (and many many many nights) to get this prestigious account.  Cut to the launch of Slice Swayaamvar, the immersive campaign. The digital innovation ad an interactive film where the user could follow, none other than the gorgeous Katrina Kaif across India  to explore the limited edition Mango-flavour drinks. The user could also experience the culture of the regions. The immersive video was housed on a website and visitors could interact with the bottles of the Mango drinks and even with Katrina through various gestures which were prompted by the website and the app.

This Award winning campaign is one of my most favorite campaigns I had the pleasure of working on!

Take a look at the following video to explore the campaign.

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Smartphone Ownership Survey

The Marketing Team at Servify wanted to showcase how smartphone owners handle their devices - i.e. where and how often smartphone damage can occur and how many users are actually wise enough to protect their devices against accidental damages.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Servify (@servify.in) on Dec 5, 2019 at 2:59am PST

For this, we decided to survey 1000 respondents across India to understand their habits. Read more about it here.

We also pushed the inforgraphic to the media community for coverage. Here’s one such coverage we received in the Times of India!

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/people-experiencing-phone-repairs-more-likely-to-invest-in-protection-plans-survey/articleshow/72473411.cms?frmapp=yes&from=mdr

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Talent Hiring Campaign

As every tech company at its peak, Servify was looking to hire developers and was conducting a ‘tech talent hiring drive’.  We had already created a Life at Servify series to showcase how talented employees get the platform to grow into bigger roles and build their careers at Servify.  Post this, the ex-CMO at Servify, Mr. Mahesh Patil, and I wanted to create an inspiring campaign which will encourage tech-stars to apply to the lucrative opportunities which were opening at Servify. However, we had one week to execute the campaign.  So we launched the #ServifyLeap organic campaign on social media. With Linkedin as our key platform, supported by Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, we pushed communication everyday, asking interested participants to send their CVs to the given email ID.  Take a look at the communication pieces below!

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eRecycle Program for iPhones

eRecycle Program for iPhones

The eRecycle Program for iPhones was a program created and powered by Servify. It was the first of its kind completely tech enabled program which aimed at collecting all EOL iPhones for safe recycling as per Apple norms. To encourage more people to eRecycle their iPhones, the program offered users special green rewards which they users could opt. During the launch, the Green Rewards included Airpods, iTunes Gift Voucer and other gift vouchers from brands like Myntra, Flipkart etc. These rewards were shuffled through the program to offer other attractive reasons, apart from helping create a green environment, to the users.

Through the program, interested users could visit the website (for those no longer using an iPhone) or the eRecycle iOS app where they could:

1) Create a Profile

2) Select the model of the iPhone they wished to recycle

3) Choose a Green Reward*

4) Select their location and date+time of preference

5) Submit their request

https://blog.servify.tech/posts/transforming-device-lovers-into-green-warriors/

We launched this program in 2017 using primarily PR, BTL and Digital Marketing. The campaign objective was to create a buzz and drive more iPhone owners to recycle their EOL iPhones.

We used a mix of organic and paid media to generate buzz. The media mix included:

1) Social Media content 2) Facebook ads 3) Influencer Marketing  4) Twitter contests 5) PR 6) BTL communication 

As the Marketing Communications Manager I was required to handle the planning, agency and vendor co-ordination, budget tracking and communication pieces. 

Through this program, approx 50,000 consumers were engaged and educated about safe eRecycling and ~3% users further registered for the program

Promotional Brochures for Apple Authorised Service Centers 

Social Media Posts

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Tech Values - Internal Communication

For a growing tech company, code discipline and management is very important, expecially if the company is growing at an extremely quick pace. 

When the tech leadership at Servify approached the marketing team with a faint idea of what they wished to communicate to their teams, I worked with them to create the following posters. Idea was to focus on the communication and keep the graphics minima. But this had to be done keeping in mind:

1) Maintain the Servify brand style

2) Maintain the communication style without being preachy

Take a look!

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Creating special employee stories of Life At Servify

It is a known fact that employees are the face of the organisation and are truly your brand ambassadors. Employees speaking of their journey with the organisation, growth opportunities, and work environment works to build not just the employer brand but also becomes a mirror to highlight that individual’s learning curve to himself/herself.

When the Life at Servify videos were created, I was managing Marketing Communications at Servify. I worked with the HR team to shortlist talent whose inspiring stories can be brought to light. Then, supported by a small team of 2 Video Graphers, 1 Director and 1 editor from FlashAndReel Productions, we shot 8 incredible stories of talented and promising employees at Servify.

Linking a few of these below. Do take a look! For more of my work on Internal Branding and Communication, visit here

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Back in 2017, the Marketing team wanted to showcase and remind internal audiences about Servify’s value of customer centricity. For this purpose, we created posters that can highlight Servify’s Promise to Partners. Our purpose here was to use nature to indicate that with qualities like teamwork, nurture or care, and focus on targets, we can together ACE as a company.

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Latest work done for Myntra Fashion Incubator 

These are Facebook posts made for MFI’s page. Inspired by Bajirao Mastani, these posts were designed keeping Myntra’s colourful design language.

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Illustrations for Myntra Fashion Incubator.

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When the project of creating the corporate website for VIP Industries was entrusted upon me, I was elated. VIP Industries is known for its luggage brands like Caprese, Carlton, and Skybags among others.  The project required me to work with the Marketing team at VIP Industries to plan not just the structure of the website, but also design it in a way that would make it look more new-age and at par with international competitors as compared to its previous avatar.  My experience of working on this brand changed the way I approached communication and design!

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ASIAN PAINTS ROYALE A content platform of inspirations, the Asian Paints Royale website is a blog-based website which showcases a variety of tips & product range information for users in the interior and decor category Users can browse through, save and share their favorite articles which then get added for future use in the 'Idea Kit' section on the website  Users can also view the range of products and their features available under the Royale category

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Logo designed for a social media campaign for Shoppers Stop on Christmas 2013.

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Created an info-graphic for a digital campaign for Slice Aamsutra. This was later modified by a colleague at iContract to include some more information.