Gamification is surfacing in all corners of life from education and training to physiotherapy, improving your health with health monitor, communicating a social cause, soliciting friends for moral support with nike+ and even driving the new Ford Focus. Market research is one of the more obvious and advantageous applications.

Here’s my beginner’s guide to gamification…

1. Gamification is the concept of creating a fun, engaging experience to encourage users to participate in what otherwise would be a relatively boring task.

2. Worldwide, a staggering 500 million people spend an hour each day playing games online and on mobile devices and by 2016 corporations are expected to spend $2.8 billion on gamification.

3. Brands and organisations are discovering that interacting with people in a fun way produces positive results. Meanwhile traditional methods of marketing, education and other activities are failing as people seek out and receive new, more engaging ways of doing things.

4. The key benefit of gamification is the enhanced level of involvement and engagement. When an interaction is gamified, it creates a more intimate connection through the positive experience, rewards and recognition that build affinity and loyalty.

5. With gamification there is enormous potential for word of mouth recommendation through the sites like fanzy that reward fans
for spreading the word about your brand via social networks.

6. The success of the activity can be easily monitored through the use of metrics to track users who share content and friends who track back to the brand.

Surveys have traditionally been gap fillers, but these days, the prospect of completing a questionnaire is much less attractive than doing something like honing one’s investing skills in the carefully tailored Commonwealth’s Investorville, helping bring back rare creatures to the sea through theblu app or earning points while saving the planet on recyclebank. These are the calibre of activities with which our surveys compete making it increasingly more difficult to attract participation and a quality, considered response.

I’ll leave you with this short film, an entertaining perspective on where we may be heading with gamification and virtual reality. Enjoy!

Futurists are predicting a meeting of the digital and real world is not far way. I’d almost say this ‘union’ is already happening. Smartphone (iPhone / Android) adoption in Australia is cited to be outperforming the US by 5 – 10%. Amongst other things, this means retailers also need to unite with the digital world.
Unfortunately, so far many Australian retailers are lagging in terms of digital marketing (in particular mobile and online).
I’ve just come across stats that make it clear that retailers needs a well thought out digital ‘vision’:

• 35% of Australians own a smartphone and 38% have already downloaded a shopping app

So it’s not hard to then make the leap that mobile, particularly smartphones and apps, is already influencing sales and ongoing loyalty.
But shopper apps need to be well thought out and deliver on certain features to be useful.
Other stats from the US and Europe make it clear that shopper apps, to be useful, need to deliver on certain features:

• 84% of US shoppers use their phones while they shop
• 70% are comparing prices
• 67% are accessing product reviews
• 61% are looking for specific store information – hours, other locations

There’s nothing really surprising in these stats, but certainly worth keeping in mind when designing a shopper app. No point in having an app that no one uses!

Now that I’ve got my shopping apps sorted, the next part of the story will be to download Google Wallet (when it’s released), then really there’s no need for my handbag or wallet. My smartphone and car key is all that’s needed. Much easier then for me to carry shopping bags! Ok, time to go shopping…

It’s widely recognised that the success of Apple’s iPhone has a lot to do with iTunes and the mammoth number of apps in the App Store. With more than 100,000 apps available across many categories, it seems there’s an app to suit everyone, for every need.

However, despite apps being a legitimate and increasingly powerful distribution channel for content, services and brand experiences, iPhone users are seemingly reluctant to spend a lot of money to access paid apps.

So, can brands charge for their apps?

Apps are gradually being recognised as a new distribution channel for brands, particularly those that can deliver content, or provide access to their services via mobile Internet. Furthermore, many iPhone users are looking for more brands to engage with them via their mobile device, however, not at a cost.

iPhone users are looking for new interactions or ways of dealing with companies anywhere, at anytime, and branded apps provide companies with another opportunity to connect with their customers. But, most brands cannot charge for access to their own distribution channels, or for content that is not unique – why pay to access something that can be obtained elsewhere for free?

There will be, of course, exceptions, particularly when a branded app can be a primary distribution channel for unique content or intellectual property, and/or the experience has significant benefits and value to the consumer. Although, at this point in time, consumer brands are yet to fully explore how they can become part of their customers’ lives via owning app territory on their customers’ Smartphone.

Apple’s iTunes App Store has in excess of 100,000 apps across a multitude of categories. There’s apps for fun, for making your life easier, for saving time, for sleeping better, for unleashing your creativity. Basically, there’s an app for just about anything you can think of doing via your iPhone (and for many things you’ve never thought of doing).

The problem is, how do we find these apps when there’s so many of them in there? It’s like being in the biggest shop in the world, but all products fit into 20 simple categories. For new apps, whether free or paid, branded or unbranded, the real challenge is being found in the first place. In a digital shop where browsing is very linear, from one click to the next, it’s difficult for apps to rise to the surface so that they are found before ‘shoppers’ move on.

Latitude Insights conducted an online research community amongst iPhone users from March to April 2010, in which finding apps was an interesting topic of discussion. The main method used to find apps were the Top 25 lists, and word of mouth recommendations from other iPhone users.

App downloading can be either planned or spontaneous. Sometimes people will specifically look for an app they know the name of, or a type of app (but do not know its name) by using a key word, or category search. Other times, browsing the app store may be like window shopping – purposeless, but sometimes resulting in a new acquisition.

iPhone users recognise the inherent problem in relying on the Top 25 list to find new apps. Following the ‘crowd’ when it comes to apps means that the most downloaded apps, continue to be the most downloaded. There’s a certain level of ‘cred’ associated with having a more unique or rare app.

“I would imagine that there are a lot of great apps that never make it into the Top 25. Especially, considering that most of the apps in the most popular list are so amazingly stupid”

Branded or commercial apps need to utilise other communication channels to promote their apps, to facilitate uptake/downloading. Ironically, it may be that non-mobile media, particularly websites and print in the form of both advertising and reviews, are the best way to tell the target market you have an app for them. And then a good app can begin to rely on recommendation to build its fan base.

Ultimately, a good recommendation or a positive experience with an app on someone else’s iPhone is the strongest driver of app selection. That’s why ‘what apps have you got?’ could be the universal catch-cry for iPhone users.