Written by: Kanes Kulanthavelu
It is a no brainer that marketing is one of the most crucial elements of any organisation. Be it for profit or non-profit, marketing has been the driving force of many business success stories. Whether it’s for driving traffic to your site, lead generation, sales accumulation, increasing your market reach towards your intended target audience and even for brand building in general, marketing has been a centuries-old cornerstone for businesses to flourish.
We however exist in an era where change occurs in a blink of an eye; what is important today may be gone tonight. Of course, this implies that the general attention span of your specific target market may be directly proportional to the rate of change. So the question is, how do you ensure your marketing efforts bring forth a lasting impact and audience engagement that withstands the test of time while accomplishing your intended objective?
Enter Gamification. A revolutionary contributing factor that is a tried and tested tool to help boost your marketing efforts by distinguishing them from the crowd, to be the sole diamond among the stones.
In this article, we will look through a few gamified marketing campaigns that I feel has stood out and achieved its intended objective exceptionally.
But first, let us dive into what is Gamification in marketing.
What is Gamification in Marketing
Gamification in marketing is the application of game elements that add an addictive ingredient into your marketing efforts. This is to ensure that your marketing campaign is more interactive which boosts up the engagement rate of the intended target market. In a survey done by Demand Gen, it found that 93% of marketers agree that interactive content is effective in educating its buyers compared to 70% who believed that static content does the job.
Now that we’re familiar with what Gamification in Marketing is, let us look at a few marketing campaigns that was carried out in Malaysia, and outside of Malaysia, that I believe has stood out amongst the rest.
McDonald’s (MCD) Elections
Whether you are a fan of fast food or not, everyone knows McDonald’s. In recent times, McDonald’s Malaysia came up with its uniquely styled election campaign. In this campaign, diners get to vote for their choice of meals that are currently offered by McDonald's for its Malaysian customers. The ‘candidates’ were McChicken, Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Double Cheeseburger and the famous Ayam Goreng McD. Between 13-26 June 2019, for every purchase that the customer makes between the four ‘candidates’, a vote goes to the voting meter on the McDonald’s website. This was a great way to get consumers riled up over which of its four contenders deserve the title of Malaysia’s favourite McDonald’s meal. From a marketing perspective, the genius of this campaign was that it managed to exponentially boost up the sales of its set meals.
The average price of the McChicken set meal, the cheapest set meal out of all the four ‘candidates’ is around RM 7, and it was ‘voted’ by the diners by an astounding 400,000 times (approximately). I’ll let you do the math on how much total revenue was collected at the end of the election campaign.
Guerlain KissKiss Campaign
In a recent attempt to introduce the concept of luxury brands to the youth in China, the luxury skincare and cosmetics brand Guerlain partnered up with Sunrise Duty Free to create a game similar to Tetris which appeared on Sunrise’s WeChat account. The objective of the game was to create engagement and awareness amongst the Chinese Global Shopper. This highly addictive game had a few levels where players complete the game across multiple levels, eventually leveling up towards an end goal. Towards the end of the game, players were asked to submit their information such as their name and phone number to enter a lottery for a chance to win a KissKiss Matte Lipstick. This helped Guerlain build a huge database consisting of potential customers. I have no doubt as to why it would be a successful viral campaign, especially when you are able to win a luxury brand make-up kit by just playing a game. Within 10 days of its launch, the highly addictive Tetris game had attracted 18,582 page views and 10,000 players.
DTO-lah
Last, but certainly not least, Think Codex partnered with one of the leading property development companies, Sime Darby, to develop a project called DTO-lah earlier this year. DTO, which is the abbreviation for Design To Own, is a crowdsourcing platform where consumers have the intriguing ability to design their own house where they’d be moving into. This way, consumers have complete control and ownership over their choices, from the wallpapers, kitchen tile, bathroom sink and even the door design to suit their taste and liking. The most popular design will be implemented at the property itself! This is a one of its kind project that empowers first time homeowners to be involved in the process of constructing and dictating the creative element of their first property.
Find out more about DTO by visiting their website.
In conclusion, implementing gamification in marketing has proven to be an effective way of driving up engagement and interaction to your content. Its overall approach acts to enthusiastically engage and excite your target market, resulting in you hitting your marketing objectives more effectively.