Gamification as a

Marketing Strategy
By Andrew Giles

THE RECENTLY IDENTIFIED CONCEPT OF GAMIFICATION IS AN IMPORTANT NEW

and valuable tool that a business should consider when developing and
Andrew Giles graduates in implementing its marketing strategy. Gamification can be used to
2016 from Smith School of successfully attract a customer’s attention, to increase the degree of customer
Business at Queen’s loyalty and engagement, to enhance the customer’s overall value creation,
University with a and to personalize the customer’s experience. While a marketing strategy
specialization in based on gamification offers tremendous opportunities, it requires a good
marketing. Andrew has understanding of the company’s customer base and what motivates those
held marketing and customers to behave in the manner desired by the company.
operational roles with a Gamification is showing up in a growing number of marketing
number of organizations strategies. EngineYard, a cloud orchestration platform, predicts that by the
across a range of industry
end of 2016, 70 percent of the Fortune 2000 organizations will have at least
sectors, including financial
one gamified application. M2 Research predicts that business spending on
management, retail,
gamification will increase from approximately US$242 million in 2012 to
healthcare, and not-for-
US$2.8 billion in 2016.
profit. Andrew has a
strong interest in brand Examples of gamification used by marketers include the My
management and the Starbucks Reward program to boost Starbucks coffee sales, PNC Bank’s
application of gamification virtual wallet that encourages people to bank online with PNC Bank, and the
to marketing strategies. In Virtual Army Experience that is used as a recruiting tool by the United
his spare time, Andrew States Army. Although gamification as a marketing strategy is in its infancy,
enjoys playing video the number and diversity of gamified marketing strategies continues to
games. grow.
. There are a number of working definitions of gamification in the
academic literature. For purposes of this paper, gamification is defined as
the incorporation of game-like elements in a non-game environment in order
to create a “gameful” experience in connection with a product or service.
According to research conducted by Dan Hunter and Kevin Werbach for
their book, For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business,
the vast majority of gamification implementations start with the same three
game elements: points, badges, and leaderboards. If used effectively, these
game design elements can be employed by marketers to incentivize user
behaviour, encourage users to increase their engagement levels, and deepen
the bonds of loyalty to the brand.
Points are frequently used to motivate a person to act in a particular
way. But points serve other purposes as well. Hunter and Werbach identify
the following six uses for points in gamification: to effectively keep score; to
determine the win state of a gamified process (assuming that it has one); to
create a connection between progression in the game and extrinsic rewards;
ssb.ca/insight to provide feedback; to be an external display of progress; and to provide
Twitter @SmithInsight
 data for the game designer. Many loyalty programs, such as the Air Miles
reward program, are examples of gamification that use the collection of
points and the achievement of rewards to motivate customers to tailor their
purchasing activities in the manner designed and promoted by the
Many loyalty organization.
programs, such as Badges are a game design element that is similar to points, but can
provide for greater flexibility. The concept behind a badge is essentially a
Air Miles, are visual representation of an achievement within the gamified process. Badges
examples of have a number of motivational characteristics, but they can also signal what
gamification that a user cares about or operate as virtual status symbols or tribal markers. A
good example of the use of badges can be found on the Jillian Michaels
use the collection fitness website. These fitness programs include a number of fitness
of points and the challenges and each challenge uses its own set of gamification techniques,
achievement of such as badges, contests, and prizes.
A leaderboard allows a user to know where he or she stands relative
rewards to to his or her peers. Used in the right context, leaderboards reinforce positive
motivate behaviours and ensure consumers are immediately engaged. But they can
customers also be demotivating. If they convince users that they will never be able to
achieve the same level as the leaders, that person may decide to simply stop
trying. Depending upon the marketing strategy adopted by a business, the
leaderboard may be an effective method of tracking certain features that the
organization wants to emphasize. A leaderboard many are familiar with is
the one used by Cineplex that displays the names and scores of the top
audience members that participate in the contests held before movies are
shown.

Playing to Player Types

Any successful marketing strategy that is based on gamification must be

based on an understanding of the customer demographics and what
motivates customers to engage with, and invest in, the company’s products
or services. For this purpose, it is useful to look to research conducted by
Richard Bartle in 1996 to determine the motivations that drive people to play
multiplayer online games. While Bartle’s research was not conducted in a
marketing context, his findings are relevant to understanding the optimal
target audience or audiences for a game-based marketing strategy.
Based on what people most enjoy about the multiplayer online
gaming experience, Bartle identified four main player types: achievers,
explorers, socializers, and killers. (It is important to note that a person may
fall into one or more of these categories.)
Achievers are people who most enjoy the achievements that they
can experience within the game context. They are driven principally by a
desire to accumulate points and to achieve game-related goals and prestige.
The social component of the game is important to achievers, as “they require
an audience to appreciate their accomplishments.”
Explorers focus on learning about, and mapping out, their
environment. “An explorer is far more apt to prize random puzzles, side
ssb.ca/insight stories, and the environment of the game above opportunities to win points
Twitter @SmithInsight or badges,” Bartle pointed out.
 Socializers use a game’s communication features and play games in
order to connect with other players. They are less competitive and more
cooperative than the other types of players, and they often “derive greater
satisfaction from helping a better, more established player gain points,
Audiences for a status, or rewards than from seeking out prizes on their own.”
And killers like to win. They enjoy competition and prefer a social
game-based game environment to games where they play against a computer or
marketing strategy themselves.
include achievers, Gabe Zichermann, a marketing executive and video game innovator,
suggests that, in the context of game-based marketing, a fifth type of player
explorers, exists. Zichermann refers to this player type as the naïve player, someone
socializers, and who essentially plays the game by accident. He says, “These players may
type in a frequent flyer number every time they fly but never so much as
killers add up their points. They may have a rewards card from their bank, but they
don’t know anything about the game in play.”
With the advent and growth of social media, the concept of player
types has been transposed from the gaming environment to users of social
media. Amy Jo Kim of Shufflebrain identifies the four ways that users
participate in social media, which is strikingly similar to Bartle’s four player
types. She suggests that the four social media user types, and the verbs that
can be used to describe each such group of users, are as follows:

competition – win, beat, brag, taunt, challenge, pass, and fight

cooperation – join, share, help, gift, greet, exchange, and trade
exploration – view, read, search, collect, complete, and curate
expression – choose, customize, layout, design, and dress-up

Kim argues that these labels and verbs describe a specific group of
users that are targeted by a company’s social media campaign. In the context
of gamification as part of a social media campaign, Cameron Graham,
Editorial Coordinator at TechnologyAdvice, states that: “By integrating
these different types of social media participants into their campaign,
companies can tailor their games to each user type.”
Once a business understands the types and characteristics of game
players, whether it uses the classifications developed by Bartle or those
suggested by Kim, it is better positioned to analyze the members of its target
consumer market to determine the category or categories of players that they
are targeting primarily. This information allows the company to select the
game design elements and develop its gamification marketing initiatives in a
manner that is aligned with its primary consumer base.
The Nike+ marketing campaign is a good example of a gamification
marketing strategy that is primarily aimed at consumers who are achievers
and/or killers, based on Bartle’s categorizations, both of which are very
similar to the competition user type identified by Kim. The Nike+ Running
application uses GPS to track a person’s distance, pace, time, and calories
burnt. In order to appeal to the achiever/killer mindset, the application also
includes a competitive aspect, as it allows users to compare their run
statistics, such as distance and elevation, with those of their friends and
peers. Along with competition, the Nike application appeals to the audience
ssb.ca/insight
Twitter @SmithInsight
requirement of the achiever by including elements of athletic motivation,
including messages from Nike’s top athletes. In addition, the competition
user’s desire to brag is satisfied through the real-time cheers that a runner
 receives for every “like” or comment that he or she posts. The game
mechanics that cater to the competitive nature of the achiever/killer and that
allow users to post their runs to Facebook actually serve to market the
product to other potential customers.
A gamified
Domino’s Pizza The Business Case for Gamification
app is credited The successful use of gamification for marketing purposes by a company
with boosting sales should attract customer attention, increase the degree of customer loyalty
and engagement, enhance the customer’s overall value creation and/or
by 30 percent customize the customer’s experience. These customer engagement goals are
increasingly the focus of any company’s strategic plans.
Gamification is clearly an important tool for marketers, as customers
expect to be engaged and involved in the marketing process. Bryan Pearson,
president and CEO of LoyaltyOne, writes that, “Marketers are focusing
intently on the customer, but these remarkable environmental shifts require
company-wide, systemic change that reaches far beyond brand and
communications to include every touch point of the customer experience.”
It is difficult to quantify the cost of launching a gamified marketing
strategy, as the labour, technology, and other costs vary significantly
depending upon the scale of the strategies used by a business. Nevertheless,
there is anecdotal evidence showing that the use of gamification as a
marketing strategy has a positive impact on corporate profitability. For
example, the gamified Domino’s Pizza app, which includes a pizza slot
machine feature that selects a pizza for those customers who cannot decide
what to order, has been credited with boosting sales by 30 percent in the
United States. Consider too the partnership between a small potato chips
business, Popchips, and a smartphone app company. The app includes
virtual coupons that are redeemable for free bags of Popchips. Through this
gamified marketing strategy, Popchips’ sales increased by 40 percent in one
year, which, in turn, increased its market share in its highly competitive
market segment.
Yet another example of gamification that resulted in a significant
return on investment is the use by Moosejaw, an outdoor clothing retailer, of
a discounted gift card through Quikly, a business that gamifies e-commerce.
As reported by PRWeb, in less than 15 minutes, Quikly sold more than 500
$10 Moosejaw gift cards, which consumers then used to make average
purchases of $66, a 560 percent return on investment. Perhaps more
importantly, 76% of those customers that purchased the gift card shared
their achievement over social media, which resulted in the campaign
creating more than 245,000 social media impressions for Moosejaw.
These examples demonstrate that a game-based marketing strategy
can increase the overall profitability of a company by targeting, directly or
indirectly, one or more of the four components of profitability: premium
pricing, cost reduction, market share, and market size. In the case of
Popchips, its gamification marketing strategy resulted in the company
significantly increasing its market share of the potato chip market in a very
short period of time. For Moosejaw, the use of a cost-reduction offer as part
ssb.ca/insight of a gamified marketing campaign resulted in a substantial return on
Twitter @SmithInsight investment over the course of a single weekend.
 Even though the use of gamification by businesses is increasing,
each business needs to determine whether a gamified-marketing strategy is
appropriate. There are certain businesses where game-based marketing
strategies are not a viable option. A marketing initiative based on
A gamification gamification does not make sense in the context of business-to-business
marketing. Even for businesses that deal directly with the consumer, there
strategy requires are certain industries — the funeral home business is one example — where
an understanding gamification should not be used.
of your customers’ For most businesses that market directly to the end consumer,
however, gamification can play an important role. In this case, the marketers
motivations, clear first need to have a solid understanding of the organization’s customers and
objectives, and the the factors that motivate them. Many companies have plenty of customer
data to help with this process. The second step is to establish a clear
right game objective for the gamified marketing campaign. This entails identifying the
elements target customers or groups and defining the behaviour that the marketing
strategy desires to achieve from that group. Following these determinations,
the marketers then need to select the game elements that they believe will
appeal most to the identified target customer group, and will be most likely
to lead to the desired consumer behaviour. The information that the
marketers have already analyzed regarding the company’s customer types
and their perceived wants and needs will help to customize the gamified
marketing campaign to its target audience.
Existing anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that the use of game-
based marketing strategies increases the profitability of the organization. As
the use of gamification for marketing purposes becomes increasingly
common, the contribution of gamification to the profitability of
organizations will be more easily quantifiable. But companies should not
wait until the statistical evidence is more compelling to embrace
gamification. Marketers must adopt a more customer-based focus, and
gamification is an important tool that will help them to create a compelling
and valued experience for an organization’s customers.

Framing the Case for Gamification

Strategic Questions
• Is it appropriate to create a gameful experience for your customers
in connection with the product or service offered by your business?
• Are certain aspects of your business better suited to gamification
than others?
• What do you want to achieve through your gamification marketing
strategy? Is your primary goal to enhance customer loyalty within
your existing customer base, attract new customers, increase brand
awareness, or some combination of these objectives? Are there other
strategic goals?

Tactical Questions
ssb.ca/insight • What are the demographics of your target market? Are they
Twitter @SmithInsight achievers, explorers, socializers, or killers, or some combination? Do
 they value competition, cooperation, exploration, or expression?
What will motivate your target market to engage in gamification?
• What are your competitors doing in the gamification space?
How will
• How will the gamification piece of your marketing interact with
gamification your other marketing endeavours?
interact with your • What metrics can you build into your strategy that will allow you to
other marketing monitor the use of the gamification marketing campaign and to
track its effectiveness on the financial results of your business?
endeavours?
Technical Questions
• What game elements are most compatible with your target market
and the strategic goals you have identified?
• What is the budget for your gamification marketing strategy?
• Which form of media do you want to use to deploy your
gamification strategy? Will it be introduced to your customers
through your website, on Facebook, through Twitter, or some other
means?
• Which elements of your gameful marketing strategy do you need to
outsource? Do you have in-house game design expertise? What
internal resources can you leverage?

ssb.ca/insight
Twitter @SmithInsight