Press Start: Using gamification to power-up your marketing

By Daniel Griffin and Albert van der Meer

Shortlisted for the 2020 Business Book Awards

Do you know someone obsessed with a mobile game like Candy Crush? Have you ever felt a rush when you completed a task… and perhaps another when you crossed it off your to-do list? Or maybe you have that one running-obsessed friend who has to log everything on their fitness app?

The fact is, these obsessions and 'highs' affect all of us, and they can be powerful drivers in terms of how we behave. In an increasingly commoditized world, marketers are always looking for new ways to influence or motivate us to be better engaged with their products, services, and brands. This is marketing gamification: the practice of taking the motivational elements of games (like challenges, achievements and teams) and applying them intelligently in real-life situations to improve engagement and performance.

With many success stories from the likes of LinkedIn, Delta Airlines, Starbucks, and Duolingo, marketing gamification is already a well-established practice, but many businesses are wary of jumping in without a guide - especially as there have been so many high-profile failures.

Written specifically for marketing professionals, Press Start explores the benefits and uses of gamification, and ties together motivational psychology and case studies with popular game mechanics and design principles. More importantly, the book will provide readers with a step-by-step guide for successfully designing their own marketing gamification solutions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Nov 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9781472970497

Daniel Griffin

Daniel Griffin is the head of marketing for Support Revolution (an Oracle/SAP support company). He is a professional marketer with over a decade of experience working for international businesses such as Amazon, Hult International Business School and global BPO research firm NelsonHall.

Book preview

‘Whether you are an experienced marketer or just starting out on your career, Press Start provides a useful overview of the fundamental principles of marketing – from Maslow’s Hierarchy and the core motivational levers, to the modern complexity of human behaviour and a new tier of human needs. With tried and tested case studies, Press Start will set your goals and metrics, build a business case and develop your own marketing gamification strategy.’

Sarah Sherwin, Managing Director, Broad Street Communications Ltd.

‘Marketing gamification is one of the best-kept business secrets of our times. Press Start is the insight-packed roadmap every marketer needs to unlock commercial rewards from gameplay in solving real-world customer problems.’

Tony Wood, Managing Director, X Factor Communications and Co-founder, Virgin Money

‘Press Start provides thoughtful insight into the psychology of customer engagement, with a focus on how lessons from the world of games can generate ongoing customer loyalty. The book is a well-written, entertaining blueprint for marketers who would like to understand the opportunities of gamification, but also need to understand the pitfalls of bad game design. It is of particular relevance for marketers seeking to build on-going, multi-round, long-term relationships with their customers.’

Professor Kai Peters, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Business & Law, Coventry University

‘Fascinating. A must-read for anyone interested in applying gamification to marketing. I have been waiting for a book like this for a long time, and it’s finally here.’

Jonah Berger, Associate Professor of Marketing, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Contagious: Why Things Catch On

‘Play has created strong communities since the dawn of mankind. This ground-breaking book elegantly builds upon philosopher Huizinga’s concept of purposeful play and seamlessly links it to neurobiological research, motivational theory and consumer behaviour. In this thoughtful and well-researched book, the authors have masterfully blended accessible theory with practical advice which will help the reader develop their own, detailed marketing gamification strategy.’

Dr Albert Zandvoort, Professor, HEC Paris Business School, Psychotherapist and Entrepreneur

‘For anyone wanting to understand, apply and implement gamification when it comes to marketing, read this book. Dan and Albert leave no stone unturned, analysing motivation and psychological theories, providing real-life case studies, stories and principles, whilst providing you with a toolkit to design your own gamification solution to allow you to better connect with your clients and potential customers.’

Simon Heyes, founder, Novel

‘For serious marketers only! If you are looking to integrate gamification into your marketing strategy, well, you’ve come to the right place. This is the bible. Finally a truly strategic approach to an often-times misunderstood practice.’

Joe Pulizzi, author of various books including Killing Marketing, Content Inc. and Epic Content Marketing

‘Press Start is a particularly insightful book and easy read for anyone interested in game mechanics. Van der Meer and Griffin turn industry jargon into a practical and useful framework that can be applied to a multitude of business challenges right away.’

Thomas Clever, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Clever Franke

‘It’s easy to underestimate the power of games. However, challenges and rewards are effective tools for driving consumer loyalty and engagement. Press Start not only provides fascinating insights into this process, it also functions as an accessible and engaging guide to success.’

Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable

‘Press Start upends conventional thinking in marketing and goes a step further – hacking directly into aspects of human motivation and psychology to provide a genuinely revolutionary path to customer connection. Gamification is a megatrend that will soon be a determining factor in the success of marketing firms, and this is the ur-text to kick-start your gamification strategy.’

David Mayer, Leadership Partner in Data and Analytics, Gartner

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Contents

Introduction

Why read this book?

Why listen to us?

Who is this book for?

Lastly, three quick caveats

SECTION ONE

THEORY

CHAPTER ONE

What is gamification?

Asking the experts: ‘What is gamification?’

Before we begin: What is a game?

Warning: When a game isn’t a game

What are game elements?

What is game design?

What are non-game contexts?

What isn’t gamification?

Finally, what is gamification then?

Summary: Chapter 1

CHAPTER TWO

The rise of games

The dawn of games

The changing landscape of games and gamers

Summary: Chapter 2

CHAPTER THREE

The power behind games

Control, structure and escapism

Knowledge as an immersive hook

Community and self-empowerment for your customers

Communities and communal narratives for your brand

Summary: Chapter 3

CHAPTER FOUR

The biology of motivation

Are you smarter than a rat?

Are you smarter than a dog?

Are you smarter than yesterday?

We’re all obsessive, in some form

You versus the wizard

Dopamine and gamification

Summary: Chapter 4

CHAPTER FIVE

The evolution of human needs

Understanding our basic motivators

Physiological needs

Safety and shelter

Intimacy

We are still animals at heart

Greater than their sum: Community motivators

Give and take: Socio-economic motivators

Expectancy theory

The endowment effect

The missing piece

Summary: Chapter 5

CHAPTER SIX

Motivation in a developed world

Motivation and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Making self-actualisation less ‘fluffy’

Connecting drives, habits and rewards

Linking to marketing-gamification

Summary: Chapter 6

SECTION TWO

TOOLS

CHAPTER SEVEN

Building your tower – The staircase of Purpose

What is purpose in gamification? How does it motivate?

One step at a time

When purpose succeeds

Purpose game mechanics

Where can purpose fail?

Summary: Chapter 7

CHAPTER EIGHT

Building your tower – The gateways of Mastery

What is mastery in relation to gamification?

Mastery game mechanics

Where can mastery fail?

Summary: Chapter 8

CHAPTER NINE

Building your tower – The passages of Autonomy

What is autonomy and how does it motivate?

Autonomy and gamification

Autonomy game mechanics

Where can autonomy fail?

Balancing the use of autonomy

Summary: Chapter 9

CHAPTER TEN

Building your tower – The mirrors and windows of Esteem

What is esteem in relation to gamification?

Calculating the value of esteem

Esteem game mechanics

Where can esteem fail?

Summary: Chapter 10

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Building your tower – The chambers of Belonging

What is belonging in relation to gamification?

Wanted: Someone just like me

Three phases to belonging: seeking, building, comparing

Belonging game mechanics

Where can belonging fail?

Summary: Chapter 11

CHAPTER TWELVE

Building your tower – The parapets of safety and physiological needs

Value versus risk: the double-edged sword of safety in gamification

Perceived value

Randomness and transparency

Abundance and scarcity of choice

Safety & needs game mechanics

Where can safety & needs fail?

Summary: Chapter 12

SECTION THREE

ACTIONS

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Who are you?

The company

Where do you fit?

How do others see you?

Summary: Chapter 13

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Who are your players?

The power of stereotypes

Crafting customer personas

Refining the personas further

Applying the gamer spectrum

What kind of players are your customers?

Summary: Chapter 14

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

What problems are you trying to solve?

Identify your stakeholders

What are the business goals?

What are your marketing goals?

Connecting to your customers’ goals

Summary: Chapter 15

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Building your ideal tower

The discovery floor

The onboarding floor

The scaffolding floor

The adept floor

At the apex of the tower

Summary: Chapter 16

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Pitfalls to avoid in building your tower

Dangers during planning

Dangers during execution

Summary: Chapter 17

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Measuring your gamification tower

The big hurdle to measuring gamification – attribution

Is your game good for your business?

Is your game good for players?

Summary: Chapter 18

Conclusion

Game over? Or continuing the experience

Expansion or termination

‘Final’ advice

Addendum

Endnotes – References

Bibliography – Further Reading and Resources

Index

Introduction

‘Gamification’.

Both of us have stood at the front of hundreds of workshops, meetings and various other audiences and uttered that one word. And we can usually guess the initial response.

Sometimes we’re lucky, and it’s one of genuine interest and enthusiasm. But often it’s a rolling of eyes, maybe even the cry of ‘fad’ or the occasional smirk. These are the tell-tale signs of people who have tried and failed to implement one of the most powerful motivational tools we have available to us, or worse, a sign that they never tried at all and just dismissed it because of too many negative opinions around it.

We get it, we’ve either seen it, been part of it or thought the same thing too. Both of us have been interested in gamification since it gained its first burst of mainstream popularity around 2012. We were both working at a business school at the time, and as avid gamers, we were both initially excited by the possibility of merging our favourite pastime with our professions.

We followed the same bandwagon and tried and failed at various implementations across marketing, HR and L&D over the years. We did what a lot of other people did at the time, we read a few guides and case studies online and blindly applied gamification to everything we could with no structure or strategy:

• ‘Of course adding badges and points to our website will improve engagement’…

• ‘If we just add a forum to this teaching portal, our students will start talking to each other’...

• ‘Maybe if we add a leaderboard this might work’...

It was a new, shiny toy that we all just wanted to play with. And like all new, shiny toys, we got bored and moved on.

And gamification died, or at best, limped along, dragged by an army of consultants and experts who didn’t want to lose their jobs or the industry niche they’d carved out for themselves.

Or at least that’s what the majority of people think. The reality is that gamification never died; it just went undercover. This is especially true for our area of expertise, marketing gamification.

Why read this book?

Points, badges, leaderboards – these are the words you normally hear when anyone starts talking about marketing gamification, and that’s usually when people stop listening. They’ve heard it before, didn’t work for them then, won’t work for them now.

But if we talk about eBay, Fitbit, LinkedIn, Duolingo or Booking.com and what tools and techniques these companies use to grow so successfully – then people start listening again.

The truth is, gamification is alive and well in marketing, but the success stories aren’t apparent enough or have been rebranded as User Experience (UX) or Customer Experience (CX), as marketers try distancing themselves from a set of tools and techniques that people see as gimmicky or manipulative.

These marketers are customer focused; they have done the work to understand what their customers need from them and then looked for the best tools to engage with these customer needs. They found (either by accident or design) ‘gamification’.

The difference is that rather than blindly applying tools with no strategy, they started with strategy first, and then tested a wide range of tools to see what worked and what didn’t. There were no gimmicks, no silly games, and no paint-by-numbers approaches. They worked out how to do this without a guide, just like us.

But now you have a guide; this book. We’ll show you real-life case studies and examples of how to apply gamification successfully to your own marketing through three sections:

• Section 1: Explains the theory behind what gamification is and why it is so important, then takes you through the various motivational and psychological theories relevant to marketing gamification.

• Section 2: Shows you which game mechanics (like points and badges) link to which motivational levers and provides real-life examples of how organisations have used them in their marketing.

• Section 3: Takes you through our practical framework to designing your own gamification solution, from segmenting your audience and setting goals, to building your own solution and reporting on it.

Why listen to us?

If you haven’t worked it out yet, there are two of us writing this book.

Albert van der Meer is a creative consultant based in the Netherlands. His expertise lies specifically within narrative and visual entertainment, storytelling and teaching using this expertise. He draws gamification knowledge from his experience as a freelance filmmaker, media producer, expert blogger in game-based solutions and a team-building facilitator, working as a consultant with a great many international businesses, including Hult International Business School, England & Wales Cricket Board and UK Sport, to name but a few.

With these skills and this knowledge, he now helps businesses, educational institutions and other corporate organisations to improve team co-operation and develop deeper, more meaningful learning through the use of narrative and gameful design techniques. His main focus is in creating environments and experiences where individuals learn through adventure and fiction to gain interpersonal and leadership skills.

Dan Griffin is a professional marketer with over 10 years of experience working for international businesses such as online retail giant Amazon and international business schools, as well as numerous charities and small businesses. His practical experience across B2B and B2C marketing is backed up by theoretical knowledge from his CIM marketing qualifications, plus numerous individual and team awards from Amazon and The Learning and Performance Institute.

He is a multi-disciplined marketer but has gained extensive experience in digital marketing throughout his career, developing an interest in gamification when researching consumer psychology. Since then, he has deep-dived into the subject, testing multiple frameworks and ideas across various industries, gaining a comprehensive knowledge of what does and doesn’t work from the frontlines.

Who is this book for?

We’ve written this book to guide you through creating your own marketing gamification solution.

In this book, we imagine that we’re talking to a marketer in an organisation or a business owner who is looking for new ways to engage with their customers meaningfully. Someone who has tried the standard approaches to marketing but feels like there is something more, something missing from the online guides that the industry just shares back and forth.

You will have a genuine desire to engage with the people you do business with, and the understanding that building long-term relationships and trust with your customers is the best long-term strategy for your organisation. You will not be looking for a quick fix, because what we talk about in this book will not work for you if you are.

If this sounds like you – great! Welcome to the book. If it doesn’t, know that this book has been written specifically for this type of person, so you may want to skip parts of the book that cover information you may already know, or that doesn’t apply to you.

Lastly, three quick caveats

1) We cover a huge range of subjects in this book: gamification theory, motivational psychology, brain chemistry, marketing theory and marketing strategy to name just a few topics. Because of this, we cover what we think are the most relevant and need-to-know aspects of these topics and then move on to the next thing you need to know. We do not pretend to give a comprehensive analysis of entire subjects, so if you want to know more about something, we suggest either buying a book dedicated to it or going through our further reading section at the back of the book.

2) We also don’t look at specific technologies or companies that provide the tools we discuss. This is because the industry is fast moving and we do not want to give advice that is out of date within just a few weeks of being released. What we do give you is the knowledge to apply the principles yourself and to be able to spot tools that can genuinely help you in the market.

3) Lastly, you should know that gamification won’t be the right tool for every situation. It is particularly well suited for specific types of business and certain customer types, but we will explain all this throughout the book. That said, even if you read the entire book and decide gamification isn’t for you, we’re confident you will take away a better understanding of consumer psychology and a better method for targeting your customers with your marketing.

But enough caveats, on with the book!

SECTION ONE

Theory

There is unfortunately still a fair amount of scepticism around gamification. This is largely because it had a bubble around 2012 that burst after a lot of very public failures. This was only made worse over time as countless ‘gurus’ emerged with one-size-fits-all solutions that cemented gamification’s reputation as a fad.

So why even bring it up again? Because gamification – especially in marketing – can be an incredibly effective tool, one that is used by many successful businesses across every industry. So we’re going to show you how.

However, first, we need to agree on exactly what gamification is. This lack of a concrete definition is another reason why gamification is often ignored because not enough people understand it or they quickly oversimplify it. This is why we start by examining what gamification is, breaking down several experts’ definitions and then providing our own fit-for-purpose definition that we will use throughout the rest of the book.

Next, we’ll look at the gaming and gamification industry and talk about why it is such a relevant and important factor right now. There is a reason gamification took off when it did, and there is a reason why its growth has never really stopped. This is vital for you to understand if you’re going to sell the idea of marketing gamification to the rest of your organisation; its increasing relevance cannot be overstated, and organisations that get it right now will be far ahead of their competition.

Finally, we’ll give you a quick tour of motivational psychology, the ‘engine’ that drives each and every one of us to act the way we do, and the thing that gamification targets specifically. These drives are common to all of us, but the exact way they push us to act will vary based on the individual and the situation they are faced with. This is important to understand, as you will be basing your gamification solution on these levers. Get it wrong, and you’ll build something that your customers won’t engage with or care about.

So as you can see, Section 1 is the – bluntly titled – theory part of the book, but don’t let that put you off even if you are familiar with a lot of the concepts we’ll be covering. Understanding what gamification is and the psychological levers that link with it will help you to build something that truly engages with your customers, something that most gamification solutions fail to do.

CHAPTER ONE

What is gamification?

Let’s start at the very beginning. What is gamification?

Unfortunately, defining gamification is tricky, because at the moment there isn’t one single definition that everyone agrees on – even though it’s been used across different industries and professions for several years now.

There are multiple streams of thought (and arguments) on what gamification is from academics, professionals, consultants and ‘gurus’, but while many agree with each other, they can disagree on some pretty fundamental things.

So to better explain gamification to you, we’ve picked out a handful of experts with whom we mostly agree, and we’ll work through their theories to give you a better idea on the current thinking on gamification. Note, though, that while there are many more thought leaders out there who we could have listed, we’ve chosen who we have because they represent a cross-section of the most popular and relevant definitions. It is from these explanations of gamification that we’ll then explain our own working definition which we’ll be using throughout this book.

It’s important to understand and agree on these basic terms and ideas now before we move on to more complex concepts. Otherwise, it becomes too easy to get lost or to misunderstand points later on in the book. That said, more experienced readers may choose to skip this section and move on to the practical sections of the book.

Asking the experts: ‘What is gamification?’

The Consultant

Yu-Kai Chou is an author and active consultant on gamification and the wider application of these principles, which he calls ‘behavioural design’. He is the creator of the Octalysis Framework¹ (a method for quantifying the impacts of gamification on different psychological motivators), and the author of Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards ². He is a large influence on our thinking when it comes to general gamification, and we highly recommend you read his book and online articles.

Yu-Kai Chou believes that:

‘Gamification is the craft of deriving all the fun and addicting elements found in games and applying them to real-world or productive activities. This is what I call Human-Focused Design as opposed to the Function-Focused Design. It is a design process that optimises for the human in the system, as opposed to pure efficiency of the system.’³

Yu-Kai Chou’s emphasis is on designing a system for the human end-user using the fun and addictive parts of games. Hopefully, you can already see how this type of thinking fits perfectly with the customer-focused marketing strategies that you will no doubt be trying to deploy in your organisation.

Like us, Yu-Kai Chou focuses heavily on human psychology and designing gamification in ways that appeal to specific motivators of players. We cover motivational psychology in later chapters, as this will be key to understanding why gamification is so effective, and how you can best deploy it for your specific customer base, industry and organisation.

The Analyst

Brian Burke is a Research Vice President at Gartner and author of the book Gamify: How Gamification Motivates People to Do Extraordinary Things ⁴. In his book, Burke discusses the origins of the term gamification and how such an ‘ugly word’ has maintained its grasp on the industry despite numerous (unsuccessful) attempts to change it over the years (like Chou’s ‘behavioural design’ that we mentioned).

Unsurprisingly given his background, he uses Gartner’s definition of gamification:

‘The use of game mechanics and experience design to digitally engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.’⁵

Burke highlights the use of game mechanics and experience design to influence motivation. He does seem to imply that gamification is purely a digital application; however, this is something that we disagree with as it can be equally effective (and sometimes more feasible for small businesses) when done non-digitally.

What Burke does point out, though, is that gamification is about motivating people to achieve their goals. ‘Their goals’ is vital here, too many marketers have failed because they forgot this fundamental principle. When you try to gamify something, you need to remember to focus on the player – not yourself.

This book aims to show you many examples of game mechanics and how you can meaningfully apply them to your marketing both online and offline to help your players achieve their goals. We want you to be able to use these techniques regardless of whether you are a start-up with no marketing budget or part of a mega-corporation with limitless resources.

The Professor

Kevin Werbach is an associate professor of legal studies and business ethics at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the creator and instructor of the Gamification MOOC on Coursera, and co-author of For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business ⁶.

Werbach’s commonly cited definition of gamification is one of the more widely spread academic ones, covering many of the different aspects of games, game design and gamification itself:

‘Gamification is the use of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts.’⁷

Now this definition may throw up more questions than answers depending on your pre-existing knowledge. What are game elements? What exactly is game design? What are non-game contexts?

The answers to these questions are vital building blocks to understanding what gamification is, which is why we’ve decided to take apart Kevin Werbach’s definition: ‘Gamification is