Gamification
‘Gamification’ – it’s definitely been a top buzz word for 2011. Gaming has always been a big deal, but when social media took off, gaming just got bigger – apps on Facebook, smartphones, tablets etc. People are always connected and, quite a lot of the time, they’re playing a game. But why the need for ‘gamification’? Brands are being told they need to add gaming elements to their offerings – whether through apps, their websites or even their advertising – like McDonald’s have done in Stockholm.
Back in Jan 2011, I viewed a New MR online conference, which looked at the implications of gaming in market research. In our qualitative work this is often a feature of focus groups (ie, making brand mapping into a game, or brand personification tasks). When it comes to quant, we’ve been, um, ‘gamificating’ for years… Back in 2006, we launched the Find Your Tribe survey as part of our UK Tribes work for Channel 4 – segmenting the youth of the UK. In 2008, we gave the survey a make-over and it has seen over 70,000 entries, providing results for many brands on media and purchase trends among young people. The reason for its high completion rate was the gamification of the survey. Engaging, interactive and highly visual, it allowed users to embark on a journey, selecting their favourite brands/media/hobbies/music in a game format with the output at the end presenting the tribe they belonged to (and if they disagreed with the youth tribe they were assigned to they could disagree and let us know!). Gamification works particularly well with youth sectors and the Find Your Tribe survey saw high pass-on rates with most users who participated – inviting friends to take the ‘challenge’ and compare the tribes that they were aligned to.
A lot of our work is often youth orientated – MTV, Nickelodeon, Red Bull, Nuts, Kerrang! Etc, and when it comes to quant for these types of brands we always ensure that the look, feel and language of the surveys have a relevant feel. If it looks good, and is fun to take part in, the respondents will take time to participate – thinking through their answers and therefore providing us with deeper insight. Take Play Respond - a bespoke survey we made with a gamification feel for Viacom. It needed to be visually creative for a youth audience interested in art to take part, and from a quant perspective we added ‘design’ questions that allowed the user to create their own watch (rather like a game). This design element ensured that the respondents took their time over their watch creation, providing some great visual results to present. To make the challenge greater still, we were tasked were producing this in different languages for deployment across a range of markets.
While making sure the look and feel of a survey helps provide a gaming feel, the language used is also key. Gamification language in quant – especially to a youth audience – sees us often use terminology such as ‘guess’ or ‘challenge’, which the audience is familiar with and makes them think a bit harder about their choice of answer (they don’t want to be wrong!)
Let’s be honest, not a lot of young people actively want to take part in an online survey, but through our understanding of what makes them tick, gamification has proved to be a highly successful metric to ensure we get them to take part, think about their responses and perhaps even enjoy the experience!
Dos and Don’ts of gamification in quant surveys
Dos
- Keep it highly visual, interactive and engaging – if it looks nice and flows well people will take the time to answer the questions
- Use it for the right audience and topic, works great for a young audience who understand gaming terminology
- Think about using an ‘output’/answers screen at the end of the survey, whether it’s knowing how other people have answered certain questions or providing an end ‘result’ (ie like Tribes)
Don’ts
- Know your target audience - gamification isn’t for everyone – eg, obviously if you’re talking about a serious topic such as finance
- Don’t go overboard, it’s good to have some gaming terminology/aspects to the survey, but not every question needs it
- It shouldn’t be overtly ‘gamified’ – just subtle enough to draw an interesting slant to the way a question is worded; no one wants to be patronised!
Impact DNA - A new campaign effectiveness tool from Crowd DNA
As campaigns become increasingly complex, taking in more media channels and connecting with audiences in new ways, it becomes even more difficult to measure the success.
At Crowd DNA we have tested over 75 campaigns and brand partnerships across TV, online, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines and events over the last couple of years. In addition to standard effectiveness measures like awareness, comprehension, loyalty and participation, we have developed Impact DNA to test campaigns in a more comparable and actionable way.
Impact DNA’s combination of normative measures allows for the tracking and comparison of campaigns, or brand partnerships, regardless of media mix or sector.
Impact DNA uses six easy to understand, but highly powerful measures to assess the success of campaigns. It utilises tried and tested measures alongside innovative metrics that take into account online and offline performance.
The results are presented as a single-page PDF using the Impact DNA performance dashboard, as well as in a full debrief document, making the results easy to access, share and act upon.
For more information on using Impact DNA, or about any of our other work, please contact Paul Allen
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Google+ - A new research tool
Google+ launched on June 28 to mainly upbeat reviews, making a positive start in establishing a credible social media presence for the company. It reached the 10 million-user mark in just 16 days while it took Facebook 852 days and Twitter 780 days to reach the same number of users.
Google+ has blended many of the most popular and established features of Facebook and Twitter along with a few new features of its own. One of these new features is Hang Outs, a development that offers a fresh and exciting tool for researchers.
Hang Outs lets up to 10 people come together in a video conference. This might not seem like anything new, but a few features make it standout from a research point of view. The interface is simple to navigate, allowing everyone in the Hang Out to be seen in small windows below a larger window that changes to show the user speaking. There is also a chat feature and the ability to invite new people in, mid-Hang Out.
It also allows YouTube videos to be viewed within the Hang Out, chosen by one user and seen by all. It is this, along with the interface and way that users are linked through Circles that make Google+ Hang Outs an exciting research tool.
Hang Outs is well equipped to host online groups, allowing participants to contribute to discussions and complete tasks using both video and chat. The YouTube feature allows the testing of visual content in a simple and effective way. This would work for the testing of a film, ad or a game, just as it would for a pre-made film introducing a new product, service, website or brand. Visual, voice and chat reactions can then be recorded and responded to, just like in a real-World group.
We have tested Hang Outs internally and we don’t think it’s going to be very long before we are running our first online group for a client through Google+. We don’t think it’s going to replace the traditional focus group, but we do think it offers a new way of conducting small groups online.
Loving Local for the Newspaper Society
We have just finished a project for the Newspaper Society looking at the impact of the recession, the recent change of government, and the continued growth of social media and mobile technology on local community, local life and the role of media.
We spoke to almost 5,000 UK adults about a range of areas including community life, media consumption, the role of different media channels on purchase decisions, and the economy.
We incorporated questions from previous Newspaper Society research projects and therefore were able to benchmark change over the last few years; we also used lots of new metrics.
Since 2008, when the Newspaper Society conducted its Local Matters research, more people feel safe in their area, and there is a greater sense of pride in communities. It would appear that despite the recession and cuts to public services people still have a positive outlook when it comes to their area; unsurprisingly, scores on the state of the nation are down across the board compared to three years ago.
Another interesting finding is the acceptance of brands in communities. 84% of respondents said they are more likely to buy from brands that give something back to the local community. This offers a really good way for brands to positively connect with people in a space that they are passionately engaged with.
Supermarkets have being doing this for years with voucher schemes like Sainsbury’s Active Kids, Tesco For Schools, Morrison’s Let’s Grow and Waitrose Community Matters, where shoppers use tokens to vote on which local initiative receives a donation each month.
Other brands are also expanding their involvement in this area with the likes of Nike setting up a football training centre in Soweto and KFC mending potholes. VW’s Fun Theory is using fun to help reduce speeding, increase recycling and encourage people to be more active by using stairs instead of escalators. The Newspaper Society’s Loving Local research shows there is an acceptance and appetite for this kind of involvement. All that’s needed now is for more brands to get involved.
Cross Platform Effectiveness
The consumer journey has become more complicated, with multiple touch points, spanning both traditional and digital media. A lot of the brands we work with are keen to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns across the consumer journey as this is where we really see effect on measurements such as word of mouth consideration, brand consideration and purchase consideration.
We’ve been able to test this multi-platform consumer journey for many brands, and have seen some excellent results – one of our recent quant projects looked at an audience who were not exposed to a campaign, those who were exposed to one media touch point in the campaign and those who were exposed to multiple touch points. The audience for the multiple touch points had consistently higher agreement scores across all measurements, for example:
- Would most definitely recommend (brand) to a friend; non-exposed: 11%, one touch point: 19%, multiple touch points: 40%
- Would most definitely consider purchase of (brand); non-exposed: 7%, one touch point: 13%, multiple touch points: 31%
With our Global Radio work, as well as testing radio effectiveness, we also occasionally have the opportunity to measure effectiveness on multiple platforms – for example when brands pair radio with events or print. Segmenting audiences based on their media usage is also something we are regularly asked to do – for example, those who just read magazines, versus those who read magazines and visit that magazine’s website. At every level we have witnessed how multiple touch points in a consumer journey leads to a more switched-on and positive consumer.
So what does all this mean and what have we learnt? As you would expect, areas of measurement, such as campaign recall fares well – those who are exposed to multiple platforms in a campaign will of course be more likely to remember the campaign. However, there are other elements of measurement which support multiple touch point exposure (and the case for brands to ensure a multi-platform campaign):
Brand cohesion/partnership
When two brands merge in sponsorship, e.g. radio station sponsorship adverts, or event sponsorship, the brand cohesion works really well among those exposed on multiple media touch points; they will understand brand partnership a lot more (assuming the brand partnership is a good fit!)
Sharing
Consumers exposed to multiple touch points are more likely to participate in word of mouth and/or share content. This could be in general, or more specifically sometimes relating to a particular campaign.
Brand purchase consideration
Being exposed to a campaign on a number of platforms (for example, any combination of TV, magazines, press, radio, a website, mobile apps or a social networking site), sees purchase consideration increase impressively versus those who are exposed to a campaign on one touch point (or not exposed at all).
Our insights into multi-platform communications, across many media forms, has enabled us start to analyse campaign effectiveness on a much more micro level. Next steps could include advertising and effectiveness tracking, which would lead to recommendations for brands about particular media combinations they should achieve in order to reach their target audiences. Demographics are one measurement, but when we are able to present results that indicate how particular media platforms, when used together, provide greater brand partnership understanding, or a greater likelihood to share, multi-platform marketing communications really will be the only way for brands to benefit from their advertising or sponsorship campaigns.
It is not just about being on more platforms, though; it is about having the right tone for your audience across different platforms without confusing the wider brand message. It is important to have a holistic approach to multi platform campaigns, with brands understanding the role of each channel in the context of the campaign as a whole. The most successful multi platform campaigns we have tested have intelligent approaches that integrate channels into campaigns to fit with considered strategies. Success doesn't come from brands spreading themselves too thinly across a number of channels, or simply adding additional channels to campaigns in order to use up budgets or because they have secured a good deal.