Gamification for Recruiting

While it's not clear if "Farmville" ever did anything to inspire future farmers, Marriott International Inc. is hoping a hotel-themed online game could be a recruiting tool for the hotel industry. Unlike Zynga Inc.'s "Farmville," which was developed as a revenue-generating game, Marriott's title is part of an emerging trend of using computer games for recruiting. Nearly a decade ago the U.S. military introduced America's Army. "Virtual Team Challenge" is an employer branding and recruiting program that attracts talent to the accounting/audit career path through the first-ever use of multiplayer virtual worlds for talent. (See New York Times).

Like Flight Simulators for best practices, "Sims" and learning games can improve organizational performance and individual development. BusinessWeek cites it as a format that acknowledges the changed media needs of the next generation workforce that are more engaging than any other.

The strategy for talent acquisition: Sims tell the employer brand story and deliver 'self-selected' inspired candidates. Through integrated assessment instruments, companies can cast a wider net and prioritize who funnels out, helping identify rising stars and future leaders.

Marriott's game is designed to be purely marketing and does not attempt to evaluate and select employees. Marriott says "My Marriott" may help attract newcomers to around 50,000 hotel positions this year, many in emerging markets such as India and China, which don't have strong hospitality-industry traditions.

The first iteration includes a depiction of a Marriott kitchen. The player hires staff, choosing from a range of experiences and salaries, and buys stoves and kitchen utensils. The company says it will roll out games depicting other aspects of the hotel business and will introduce mobile-phone play next year.

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HSN and Gamification: Shop Till You Drop

With Gamification already driving page views and sales for USA Networks, HSN is now banking on gamification to draw, retain, and engage its shoppers.

This week, the TV-shopping network is adding videogames to its website in hopes of piggybacking on—and better competing with—the attraction of online games. The new feature, called HSN Arcade, will pair 25 games like Sudoku and Mahjongg with a live stream of HSN's main television channel.

The move highlights how retailers' aggressive push online is putting them in competition not only with established e-commerce outfits, but also with other demands on Internet users' time. Retailers have experimented with selling goods via Facebook Inc., for example, an acknowledgment of the draw of social media.

Earlier this year, USA Network launched the seven-mission online game based on its hit TV show, Burn Notice. The plot of the game ties in with the unfolding drama on the show and integrates the show’s major advertiser, Hyundai. Players try to unravel a mystery related to the show’s plot and travel through the same environments as the show. The games have plenty of live-action videos that use the actors from the show as well.

"These efforts show that games have become an integral part of the network’s strategy for making money," said Jesse Redness, vice president of digital at USA Network in New York. “We’re taking the Blockbuster shows with ratings and marrying them with what we call immersive games,” he said. USA Network's Character Arcade portal has 50 games and 500,000 unique visitors a month, or about 20 percent of the traffic that comes to USA Network’s web site. The games have drawn 17 million page views. USA Network, a division of NBC Universal, is the top free cable network and is available in 98.5 million U.S. homes.

While gamification goes back almost 15 years to advergaming in the pre-Internet era, it is how videogames are tying up an increasing share of Internet users' online minutes that hasn't gone unnoticed by advertisers and has sparked acquisitions like Disney's purchase of Playdom Inc. last summer.

Both HSN and online games are popular with middle-aged women. HSN is hoping the games will keep customers on the site longer and expose them to more products. Users of the HSN Arcade will play a game on about two-thirds of the screen, with the remaining space dedicated to a high-definition live stream of the company's primary television channel, featuring items for sale. The site also prominently features links to the most recent products to appear on air.

The television channel has a sizable online audience already, with 2.4 million unique visitors last month, according to comScore. Last year, HSN sales increased 5% to top $2.1 billion, with one-third of that coming from online customers.

Hanging on to that audience in part means competing with the surge in casual online gaming. More than 93 million people in the U.S. played games online in April, about 43% of the total Internet audience, according to comScore. Roughly half of online gamers are women. Last month, women spent 128 minutes playing games, about 40 minutes longer than men did.

Only two of the games have direct tie-ins to HSN, but the company says it is looking to do more. It is exploring using some of its on-air celebrities, including tennis player Serena Williams, in future games.

The most direct product correlation is the Today's Special Puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle that pictures an item HSN will feature repeatedly for 24 hours. A new puzzle will go up online every night at midnight, when that day's item first appears on air. Users who complete the puzzle fastest will be eligible to receive prizes, including the item itself.

Most of the games award users with virtual tickets or badges that currently offer little more than bragging rights. HSN says it could eventually turn those prizes into promotional tools, for example making them redeemable for discounts or free shipping.

USA Network says the engagement by gamers is high, with average session times at 15 minutes. Compare that to the usual engagement time of a 30-second TV commercial.

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Tablets, iPhones, Gamification, Big Pharma

Big pharmaceutical companies have found replacements for the army of sales representatives they've laid off in recent years: digital sales tools that seek to sell doctors on drugs without the intrusion of an office visit.

Tens of thousands of pharmaceutical sales reps have been eliminated in the U.S., creating a void that drug makers are now increasingly filling with websites, iPad apps and other digital tools to interact with doctors who prescribe their treatments.

Doctors can use the tools to ask questions about drugs, order free samples and find out which insurers cover certain treatments. Sometimes drug-company representatives will engage them in live chat or phone them back if they have more questions. 72% of U.S. doctors own a smartphone, and 95% of them use it to download medical applications. Interactive multimedia for doctors may be the new "virtual rep."

The changes are designed to cut costs and to reach doctors in ways other than the traditional office visit, which many busy physicians say they find intrusive and annoying. In 2009, one of every five doctors in the U.S. was what the industry calls a "no see," meaning the doctor wouldn't meet with reps.

About three-quarters of industry visits to U.S. doctors' offices fail to result in a face-to-face meeting. Most companies say they're using digital tools to supplement personal sales calls but widespread layoffs in the sector suggest that technology is replacing, not just supplementing, human reps.

AstraZeneca substantially ramped up its digital marketing group which is primarily focused on marketing to health-care providers as opposed to consumers. "AZ Touchpoints," Is a website doctors can use to ask questions, order free samples and ask about insurance coverage.

Touchpoints gives doctors a number to call if they want to speak to an AstraZeneca rep, or they can request a callback. Many of these calls are handled by third-party call-center providers. If those reps can't answer the doctor's questions, the call gets passed to an AstraZeneca staffer with more scientific training.

Many other drug giants are slashing their sales forces and experimenting with digital marketing. Sanofi-Aventis has www.ipractice.com, which offers services and information similar to AstraZeneca's Touchpoints, and Merck & Co. has www.merckservices.com.

Digital marketing isn't always as successful as the human variety. Boehringer Ingelheim put together a digital-marketing package to target doctors, including organizing webcasts for leading physicians to speak to other physicians about the drug , but the company found that sales calls to doctors' offices were still the most powerful tool for driving new prescriptions. Danish drug maker Novo Nordisk says it hasn't cut its U.S. sales force over the past five years but is still adding digital marketing tools. Late last year the company launched a website and iPad/iPhone application called Coags Uncomplicated, which offers tools to help doctors diagnose bleeding disorders.

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Can a 3-D Avatar Make a Better Impression Than You Ever Could?

A new book, Infinite Reality, predicts that 3-D conferences with avatars are coming – big time – as consumer technology is suddenly catching up with the work taking place in virtual-reality laboratories in academia.

The authors point to three developments in the past year: the Microsoft Kinect system, the Nintendo 3DS gaming device, and the triumph on “Jeopardy!” of I.B.M.’s Watson computer.

“These three events have been paradigm-shifting for avatar conferences,” says Dr. Jeremy Bailenson, the book’s co-author and founding director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. “Virtual reality scientists have been waiting for these events for decades — and the technology is finally ready for the living room and the cubicle.”

The Kinect tracking device, sold for $150, shows that it’s now practical for you to control your avatar simply by moving around the living room — no more need for special suits or elaborate sensors in a lab. Nor do you have to wear special glasses to see in 3-D, -- the new $250 Nintendo 3DS beams a three-dimensional image to the naked eye.

With these technologies — and a few tricks already been done in the lab — you can sit at a virtual conference table and exchange glances with the avatars of the other participants. Unlike the two-dimensional avatars that are already convening on Second Life and World of Warcraft, your avatar would appear to be three-dimensional, and you’d feel immersed in the scene as you looked around at the other participants from the eyes of your avatar.

The book predicts:

1) Without leaving your living room or office, you’ll sit at three-dimensional virtual meetings and classes, looking around the table or the lecture hall at your colleagues’ avatars.

2) Your avatar will be programmed to make a better impression than you could ever manage.

3) While your avatar sits there at the conference table gazing alertly and taking notes, you can do something more important: sleep.

Now that computers like Watson have gotten so good at emulating humans, avatars could be programmed to go on autopilot during a class or meeting, according to Dr. Blascovich and Dr. Bailenson. In “Infinite Reality,” they imagine a slacker named Dave who sleeps in while his avatar attends an 8 a.m. corporate meeting.

“Dressed impeccably in a digital Italian suit, the avatar was programmed to be a perfect participant,” they write. “It laughed at jokes (taking cues from voice inflection changes of the other avatars), nodded in all the right places, and dutifully recorded the details of the discussion.”

To make a really good virtual impression, Dave could exploit a tactic that has been demonstrated in experiments involving politicians' faces. When researchers partially morph a person’s face with a politician’s, that person becomes more likely to approve of the politician — and has no clue why.

As long as the ratio of the politician’s features remains below 40 percent, the person doesn’t even realize the photograph was doctored.

Therefore, you could conceivably create an avatar with a face partially morphed with that of anyone in the room that you wanted to impress. In fact, you could customize it so that each person saw a face containing some of his or her own features. That would presumably make you more popular with your colleagues or clients — who, of course, might be using exactly the same strategy by displaying avatars morphed with your facial features.

There’d be a lot of love in the room, assuming that any of the avatars’ owners were actually awake.

Read more at The New York Times

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Gamification is the New Web 2.0

BatesHook is my favorite name for a marketing firm. Ms. Bates and Mr. Hook are avid bloggers and well-respected marketing consultants, so this entry caught our eye:

"Gamification is the new Web 2.0"

Mr. Hook says "Try it out: Next time you talk about the future of marketing, add the words "Gamification" and "Game Mechanics." Suddenly you morph from marketing expert to marketing genius. You might be promoted on the spot. The world will be your oyster."

He goes on to half-ridicule, half-celebrate the power (and the hype) around game-based communications.

Hook's points:

Gamification will transform education and finally fix that darn Global Warming thing. Seriously, wouldn't you study that much harder if a class valedictorian was called "White Knight Paladin Level 20"? Of course you would. At least that's what Seth Priebatsch, the founder and Chief Ninja (You can't make that stuff up.) of SCVNGR told the world at his South by Southwest keynote in Austin. He referred to the education system as "one of the most perfect game ecosystems that's out there, "full of challenges, rewards, rules, allies, enemies, countdowns, and incentives, "all sorts of things that basically make school the best real-world implementation of a game that's out there. Priebatsch called education "a poorly designed game; it's kind of broken."

What is gamification? Gamification is the use of game place mechanics in order to encourage people to adopt applications and, ultimately, change behavior. Think about Foursquare: People are encouraged to check-in at physical locations in order to earn badges, mayorships and rewards (coupons, freebies, etc.). Gamification or Game Mechanics work because it makes technology more engaging/entertaining by encouraging desired behavior and taps into the human desire to play a game. It can help to perform tasks that are normally considered boring or arduous.

Gamification will gain in importance. There's a good case to be made that 'Pleasure' should be added to the 5 P's of marketing. Why shouldn't pleasure be an extension of a great customer experiences? Right now, customer experiences are mostly limited to well-working and easy to use. In the near future, a great customer experience has to add the fun factor. When you're being rewarded to do your timesheets, you'll them more timely. And it might be even a task you'll be looking forward to. You can create 'player journeys' to reward people with status, access and power – you create meaning inside of the mechanics. Loyalty programs can be expanded through leaderboards, each customer interaction can become an enjoyable experience.

But, please, don't overhype the hype. Gamification is an important tactic to help change human behavior. It can make life more entertaining and more pleasurable. It will make arduous tasks more enjoyable. It can be used to change bad habits and transform into more positive actions. But, let's stop the hype before it gets really started. Let's deliver on small promises before we promise the world.

And speaking of hype. What's the theme of this months (5th annual) Ad Age Digital Conference? "New Gaming Economy" with a keynote delivered by EA's CEO. With 700 attendees over its two day event and a goal to showcase the best and most interesting digital innovation, highlight how technology is changing consumer behavior, and highlight what's working for marketers...gamification should be giving Mr. Hook ample targets.

Read more at MediaBizBloggers.com

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