Gamification is a fascinating subject; it’s the process of engaging audiences by leveraging the best of loyalty programs, game design and behavioral economics.  While we may not notice it, virtually are all of us are involved with gamification everyday, whether it be through airline miles programs, credit card rewards, supermarket loyalty cards or liking something on Facebook.  About a month ago, Gabe Zichermann and Joselin Linder released a thought provoking, worthwhile read, The Gamification Revolution: How Leaders Leverage Game Mechanics to Crush the Competition.  It focuses on gamification in two arenas.  It discusses a company’s internal gamification of their employees in order to find, retain and entice talent.  Secondly, of equal importance, it looks at the art of increasing customer engagement through positive feedback loops, to generate excitement, enthusiasm and loyalty.

Gartner Group predicts that by 2015, nearly 70% of the world’s largest enterprises will be using it, driving 50% of all innovation.  M2 Research expects that US companies alone will be spending $3 billion per year on gamification techniques and services before the end of the decade.  Gamification has always been a vital marketing tool, even if we called it by other names in the past.  It will play an even bigger role in the future.

A few highlights from The Gamification Revolution: How Leaders Leverage Game Mechanics to Crush the Competition are listed below:

• Gamification presents the best tools humanity has ever invented to create and sustain engagement in people.
• The best way to beat the competition is make your employee and customer experience as fun and engaging as possible.
• Mastery is different that winning – although it’s easy to confuse the two.  Winning is really about achieving a goal, while mastery is about acquiring knowledge and demonstrating control and doing so in a steady consistent progression.  Mastery is continuous improvement, whereas winning is a destination.
• Games are not synonymous with winning – and arriving at a “winner” is seldom the goal of gamification.
• Points are feedback systems used to track behavior, keep score and provide feedback.
• Gamification and the entire engagement layer are essential elements of the whole, and as the top layer, they serve as an invitation to the cake.  But remember, people will not eat a second bite of the cake if its bad, nor will they be excited to keep eating if the icing doesn’t do its job to complement the cake.

Contagious: Why Things Catch On, is written by Johan Berger, a professor at The Wharton School (so I’m probably biased).   Contagious was published a week ago, and is genuinely a fun, worthwhile read. Johan Berger discusses why certain videos (products and ideas) go viral, while others languish unknown.  The book is very well written, uses memorable examples, and is backed up by solid research.  The author describes six STEPPS to give an idea/product the best shot at going viral: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Values, and Stories.  This book is a fantastic overview of social contagion and is a must read for any marketer.

A few tidbits from Contagious:

• Word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20% to 50% of all purchase decisions.
• Word of mouth is more effective than traditional marketing for two reasons.  First, it’s more persuasive…Second, word of mouth is more targeted … is naturally directed towards an interested audience.  We don’t share a news story or recommendation with everyone we know.  Rather we tend to select particular people who we think would find the given piece of information most relevant.
• We need to design products and ideas that are frequently triggered by the environment and create new triggers by linking our products and ideas to prevalent cues in that environment. Top of mind leads to tip of tongue.
• Making things more observable makes them easier to imitate, which makes them more likely to become popular.
• People don’t care how they are doing, they care about how they are doing relative to others.
• To get people talking, companies and organizations need to mint social currency.  Give people a way to make themselves look good while promoting their products and ideas along the way. There are three ways to do that: (1) find inner marketability; (2) leverage game mechanics; (3) make people feel like insiders.

Update:

Interview with Johan Berger:  www.goodlifeproject.com/jonah-berger-how-to-make-your-quest-contagious/