The Contagious Conversation / Captured in an Image
An awesome live-scribed rendering of "The Contagious Conversation" presentation at this year's Cannes. There's plenty to enjoy within its quickly articulated lines.
As you may have figured out, my name is Matt Griswold. This is where I think aloud, tag the trappings of the interwebs, and rant about all things interesting and ridiculous. You can reach me at mgriswold[at]gmail.com
An awesome live-scribed rendering of "The Contagious Conversation" presentation at this year's Cannes. There's plenty to enjoy within its quickly articulated lines.
Buried in between the lines of this brief correspondence, Edison seems to diplomatically rephrase a frustration for the slow tide of mass adoption... that is, not just REACHING "the average man" but also convincing him to "accept" the cure.
There was a time when Old Spice was old and generic. Then came Will Ferrell and an exceptionally executed brand makeover that has made Old Spice smell youthful, fun and sexy again. The above spot pretty much sums it up.
The following is the full text of my article for the Society of Digital Agencies' 2010 Digital Marketing Outlook.
Marketers take comfort – contrary to the headline-seeking predictions first popularized by Nostradamus and since repeated on every generation of marketers in the face of change, it is still possible – with diligent planning, gratuitous spending, and often a bit of rare luck – to be seen these days. If you are especially adept and provocative, it’s possible that your message may even be heard – no small feat considering that consumers continue to arm themselves against the growing onslaught of noise and interruption. Now, not to undermine your triumph, I ask: how will your message be played? In 2010, and the years to follow, the burden of success will have less to do with simply getting noticed and everything to do with driving participation. Participation which builds lasting relationships, which impacts fundamental business objectives, and for which there is no better guide than the lean-forward, drive-to-achieve embodied in gaming.
Long before Guitar Hero took to the stage of living rooms across the nation or Farmville rapt 30 million “casual” Facebookers in the pastures of their own design, games have been a frequent pastime in our lives. Yes, even before Mario ushered in the era of “video games” as mainstream entertainment, we have always been magnetically attracted to game experiences and the design principles which make them so compelling. The difference today is that gaming is more than just a staple of our pastime – its principles govern a new model for consumer expectations and behavior. Consumers today expect a joystick – whether real or metaphoric – with which to control their media, entertainment, relationships and consumption. They expect the freedom to pause, restart, find alternate paths to the same goal, be rewarded, succeed within (or many times against) a community, and rank up along the way. The onus upon brands – and the partners engaged to bring them to life – therefore is to find a way, without masquerading, to play along.
Before you hastily relegate this notion to the ‘kids corner’ of your marketing handbook, consider that gaming has quickly become the most prevalent activity on the web today, regardless of demographic, and eclipsing – or often fundamentally tied to – every other headline-grabbing trend du jour (see: Social Media, Earned Attention, iPhone). There is a bright future for gaming in literal form, sure; but the implication is much greater than any one medium and in many ways has little to do with actual games at all. Most importantly, marketers will increasingly need to draw upon the principles of gaming in order to understand, enable and communicate with a population that relishes a game in any form.
Pierre de Frédy, largely recognized as the father of the modern Olympic Games, acknowledged this fact more than a century ago when he wrote: “the important thing in life is not to triumph but to compete.” Many thinkers before and since have analyzed the psychology of competition, though we know it intimately: we all compete, though only a fraction of our efforts are ever realized on a leaderboard. Rarely do we consider these actions part of a game, but they often are just that – and are thus governed by many of the same principles and driving forces that keep users coming back to Farmville. This same underlying premise is now bringing companies to introduce gaming principles both in their marketing and, most interestingly, in the very design of their products and services.
While Nike+ enables runners to better compete against themselves, Foursquare – a location-based service that enables users to “Check In” at their favorite real-world destinations – is ultimately a mobile platform enveloped by a game of Monopoly. You won’t find any end bosses or cheat codes, per se; but for those on the go, the honor of being recognized as the “Mayor” of your local eatery is a trophy in and of itself… and a powerful incentive at that, especially for businesses willing to play along. Most people – outside of perhaps accountants and part-time masochists – don’t consider personal finance to be much fun; but Mint has shown otherwise. In re-launching its free, Quicken-like web service the company introduced a new feature to the personal checkbook: scoring. Avoid bank fees: +250 points. Transfer some funds into savings before they can burn a hole in your pocket: +1000 points. The points are, of course, meaningless; but the implication is powerful: by tapping into the basic principles of gaming and our drive to compete they are transforming perception about an otherwise lamented chore. 23AndMe may one day do the same for genetics, Droga5’s lauded effort for the New York Department of Education adeptly re-imagined education as a competition, and Kiva lends a public leaderboard to the world of microfinance. Expect to see charities, mobile phone carriers, frequent flier programs and many more non-gaming-related brands follow suit to incentivize behavior with game-like mechanics.
At the root of this lies the premise that the principles of a game empower the desire of its players to participate and be rewarded; and with that comes the enviable opportunity to rethink our approach to consumers. For some brands, there is indeed a great opportunity to find new expression in the form of an actual game; but, for all of us, it is moreover an invitation: to move beyond the need simply to be seen, endeavor to re-imagine our businesses in a new light, and drive meaningful participation. The tactics we have mastered over a generation will continue to work for some time, albeit their value will deteriorate; but the promise of a play-minded strategy is that ever greater opportunities now exist, ready to be seized – and the game is on.
Games (and movies, books, music, etc) don't solve problems. They may, in retrospect, help solve a problem that the player never knew they had, but players don't start looking for entertainment in a problem-solving mindset. An interest in some subjects may help you target advertisements with partial success in targeting, but for most games that really doesn’t translate into anything meaningfully useful. Like-for-like data usually translates into boredom. To be entertained, a customer needs to be surprised. Entertainment must take us somewhere new or we quickly lose interest.
A great article on the growing fatigue within social gaming - the product of its own success. Worth reading the whole thing; but I found this point about marketing entertainment particularly noteworthy.
