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!
Metallica and research project process – the missing link
It's amazing where holiday reading takes you… Somehow we got to reading something on how author/lecturer Silvia Hartmann had modelled the creative processes of Metallica, to gain a better understanding of their 100 million unit shifting success. She discovered that they jam together for hours, meticulously recording everything and subsequently looking for events within the jams with an extraordinary quality to them. They then isolate these events, before looking to build upon them. When Hartmann came to break the approach down into tangible stages, the parallels with developing powerful research projects becomes apparent (if you replace the quest for noisy, grunty creativity with that of achieving commercial advantage, that is)…
- Generate as much material as possible
- Review the material and localise the extraordinary events
- Isolate and lock down these events
- Use the events discovered as a new second level jump off point for generating further material
- Review, localise, isolate and lock down further extraordinary events
- Group the events according to their energetic flavour and matching relationships
- Use the group of events to understand the finished product, and fill in the blanks accordingly
This sounds very much like the approach we aim to deploy on many research projects, chiseling away at the incoming material until we get to findings that genuinely have the power to drive change, then exploring the additional depths achievable through focusing on the most head-turning of findings; with the grouping of events key in terms of presenting organised, structured findings at the project conclusion. It's a sometimes demanding and exacting process but it's one that gets to the evidence-based recommendations that all good research needs to be making. For those about to rock/research, we salute you...