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‘Likes’ have become the barometer for a brand’s success on Facebook. But how many times have you ‘liked’ a brand on a whim, and how much does it really say about your relationship with the brand?
Research from digital services firm, ExactTarget, suggests fan growth is simply not enough for brands. Consumers are becoming frustrated by the poor quality, frequency and commercial nature of branded communications on Facebook.
Brands must re-evaluate their strategies to remain relevant or risk isolation and Facebook’s social features hold the key. Games and applications such as ‘CityVille’ and ‘60 Photos’ are some of the most consumed content on Facebook. In fact, 50% of Facebook logins are specifically to play games and access applications.
Market research group, Gartner, believes gamification will have as great an impact on consumer goods marketing as Facebook and Amazon. Furthermore, Gartner predicts over 70% of Global 2000 companies will have at least one gamified service by 2014.
The reason for all this fuss? Gamification is already proving to have the power to motivate consumers and alter their behaviour.
Motivators such as status, achievement, reward, competition and self-expression have been driving gamers to play for years. For brands and organisations, gamification uses these drivers to influence consumer behaviour, driving customer acquisition, engagement and loyalty to, ultimately, increase average customer spend.
With the growth of the internet, Facebook and smart phones, games have seen an explosion in popularity. Where in the past, games were associated with kids and a young, largely male audience, the shift in platforms and technologies means games now reach a much broader demographic.
Take a look at those playing FarmVille, CityVille, Angry Birds and the like and you’ll find a very different type of player than the traditional console game. Thanks to the huge uptake of these type of casual games, the average Australian game player is 30, up 6 years since 2005. It’s no coincidence that the average social game player on Facebook is the same age. More than half of Facebook’s 670 million global users play games and this equates to more than 6 million Aussies.
Zynga, the social gaming giant and creator of FarmVille, has recently invested in Grockit, an online service that applies social game mechanics to education.
Grockit assists teachers and tutors in preparing students for a variety of tests using collaborative exercises, social graphs, points and achievements.
The move has grabbed the attention of venture capitalists and educators alike, sparking discussion as to the future of education in this digital - and increasingly social - world.
In a promotion straight out of the gamification handbook, Nescafe has become one of the first Australian brands to reward users with virtual points that can be redeemed for real-world products and discounts.
Cup of Rewards is a new promotional site that encourages consumer engagement and product purchase by giving users the chance to collect the Nescafe virtual currency, coffee 'beans'. The beans can be earned by completing both online and real world activities.
Online, users earn beans for signing up, getting their friends to sign up and playing the simple games on the site. In the real world, Nescafe instant coffee jars feature a 'beans token' or code which the user enters on the site for points (the larger the jar, the more points).
This week we launched an Australian first with the RSPCA - a social game on Facebook that aims to raise funds for their vital work.
RSPCA Animal Rescue is a first for an Australian not-for-profit and takes the popularity of Facebook games like Farmville and Cityville to generate a new revenue stream for the RSPCA's vital work.
RSPCA Rescue Shelter (link) tasks the player with building and running their own animal shelter. Just like a real life shelter, sick, injured and abandoned animals arrive at the shelter and the player must house, feed and care for them.
After spending weeks painstakingly re-drafting and refining the creative for your online competition, locking in sponsors and prizes, haggling over media and building your press database so the world knows about your promotion, having to organise permits is the last thing you need on your plate.
State laws and processes vary considerably when it comes to permits for competitions. Chance competitions should always display permit numbers if they accept entries from ACT and NSW. VIC and SA permits kick in when the prize pool exceeds $5,000. Penalties for non-compliance range from immediate removal of your competition to heavy fines.
Save yourself the headache. Go with a game of skill and you’ll alleviate the need for permits.
So digital marketing's big event is over for another year! Thanks to everyone that visited us and turned up to hear us speak about all things social and mobile gaming.
We got plenty of feedback following our seminar on "Social Games for Brands", where we introduced the crowd to our new project for the RSPCA, "Rescue Shelter", which will be available to play on Facebook soon. We've poured our hearts and souls into creating "Rescue Shelter" over the last few months and it was great to be able to unveil it as it nears completion.
If you would like to see the seminar presentation, it's available on SlideShare.
A visual look at some of the mind-blowing numbers associated with the current social games phenomenon.
If there's one thing we've learned from developing our first games for the iPhone and Android platforms, it's that there's a lot to learn.
For the last 8 or so months we've been working with Adobe's AIR for Android and Packager for iPhone applications to redevelop some of our online Flash games for both mobile platforms. While the Adobe tools are still in development, we're pretty excited about their potential. We're already benefitting from the efficiencies on offer, taking games developed in Flash for the web and porting them to Apple's iOS platform for the iPhone/Pad/Touch and to Google's Android platform for smartphones.
The commercial team has also been in learning mode, starting to understand how best to market games in Apple's App Store, how pricing sensitivities effect sales and how marketing online can impact sales.
We're still learning, but here are the top 5 lessons so far:
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