Five Reasons Why Gamification Is a Hot Marketing Topic

Integrating game-play elements into marketing campaigns is gaining momentum across Asia. The goal of gamification is to redefine personal engagement with a product through task-based challenges and lifestyle experiences. More brands introduced gamified promotions during pandemic lockdowns to drive interaction with consumers who were staying home more, visiting stores less, and purchasing more items online.

In Vietnam, for example, Heineken partnered with celebrity DJs Tiesto and Dmitri Vega for a House Party promotion activated via a QR-code on beer packs. Consumers could sip a beer in their lounge or bedroom, listen to specially curated soundtracks, and take part in a virtual DJing competition to win prizes, such as music streaming subscriptions.

Takeaways:

• Mobile consumers are surrounded by gamified elements, from social media quizzes and TikTok dance challenges to in-app competitions promising desirable prizes
• Gamification converts the competitive excitement of video gaming into activations that become shareable lifestyle experiences
• Introducing challenges and tasks generates new perspectives and viewpoints around a product for existing and potential customers.

Earning purchase-based points and rewards is not new. Airlines, hotels, and supermarkets have offered loyalty programs for many years. Mobile commerce is rebooting the genre. Lifestyle services apps and e-retailers entice shoppers with digital coupons, plus bonus rewards for selected products, and time-limited offers.

Milo in Vietnam, for example, introduced QR codes on the caps of its drinks. Each unique scannable code offers the chance to earn special rewards, which are claimed via the popular Zalo messaging app.

Encouraging consumers to stay vigilant for opportunities to earn extra benefits and privileges opens new points of engagement and generates new data streams for brands. While this may not be viewed as pure gamification, it fosters a buying culture around incentivization throughout the year. These tactics are hyper-charged during annual online shopping festivals when the race intensifies to earn big product discounts and rewards boosts.

Takeaways:

• Brands are enhancing gamified promotions with cumulative rewards that scale up over time and offer access to exclusive promotions
• Enhanced incentives for time-limited promotions can amplify consumer engagement
• Consumers can also aim for target thresholds to redeem rewards with partner brands

Competitive and incentive-driven promotions aim to bolster consumer goodwill in saturated digital spaces, where eye-catching content constantly competes for attention. They also enable brands to thread individual gaming phases throughout various channels.

This means that distinctive parts of a campaign can drive engagement via a website, TV and digital ads, marketplaces, social media, content streaming, gaming platforms, in-store, and via co-branded promotions. Each element can be integrated using a QR code or hashtag.

Creative challenges founded online can also connect consumers in the physical world. Online retail, travel booking, automobile, and soft drink brands use app-based competitions to add extra fun and participation at sporting events, pop concerts, and roadshows. These drive engagements, create unique gamified moments, and attract media coverage. In turn, they generate proprietary streams of consumer data across each phase of the campaign.

Takeaways:

• Game-play marketing generates interest from consumers by inviting them to take part and share their experiences across different platforms
• Gamified promotions generate emotional engagement between young, mobile-first consumers, and brands in both online and offline settings
• Challenge-driven marketing creates multiple competitors who share their content using a specially created hashtag or platform link

Game-play promotions are customized for bespoke products and gifts themed around cultural festivals, such as Lunar New Year, Eid al-Fitr, Deepavali, and Christmas. Exclusive digital challenges offering access to extra discounts, product bundles, and rewards are also tailored for online shopping festivals, such 11.11 Singles Day or Shopee’s monthly Pay Day sale on the 25th of each month.

For Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam, Kin Do mooncakes partnered with a specialist Artificial Intelligence firm in Vietnam to create an interactive app enabling consumers to animate old family photos. Users that uploaded photos could bring them to life on screen and share using a special hashtag for a chance to win limited-edition luxury mooncakes.

Takeaways:

• Gamification stimulates consumer interest during peak gift-giving and shopping periods, throughout the year
• Encouraging emotionally-inspired responses is a powerful marketing tactic during times of shared celebration
• Interactive promotions that enable consumers to add new twists to cherished customs and festive traditions are proving popular

Rising smartphone penetration rates across Asia have broadened the user base for gamified marketers. This has occurred in tandem with surging interest in video gaming and e-sports, especially among Gen Z consumers.

Advances in AI and machine learning are ongoing, and the rollout of 5G networks and Internet of Things connectivity between humans, machines, and other interfaces, such as buildings, buses, and trains, prefaces otherworldly new frontiers for gamified interaction.

The hottest emerging topic, though, is the metaverse. For people who are comfortable transporting between multiple realities, metaverses offer the visual thrills of hyper-augmentation. In markets like South Korea, the pandemic has seen a big shift of people socializing, shopping, eating, and playing games on metaverse platforms.

Companies are being created to produce metaverse-only music and dance, role-playing, and gaming content targeted at youthful consumers. Creative firms are also building office-style mini metaverses to interact in gamified ways with customers, suppliers, and potential clients.

Takeaways:

• Broader access to 5G networks metaverses will spur creative marketers to devise hyper-augmented gamification experiences
• Gamified marketing in the metaverse will drive proliferation of pop-up and time-limited promotions that seamlessly connect physical and digital spaces
• Smart wearables, including eyewear, rings, and clothing, could connect brands and people via gamified promotions without needing to use a smartphone