Gamification in marketing - a passing trend or a real strategic tool?

WANDS Paris

21 March 2022

Gamification in marketing - a passing trend or a real strategic tool?

Gamification is everywhere and is expanding thanks to the revival of gaming. Is it a lasting tool or just a trend? If we consider studies that state that the engagement rate is higher by 100% when mechanisms from games are used in a marketing campaign, then the strategic strength of gamification cannot be denied. WANDS Paris, a creative and innovative agency, draws its inspiration from emerging trends and builds dialogues between brands and their audience.

The use of playful characteristics is common to drive engagement and motivation – learning methods, commercial challenges, contests, retail animations. A recent study highlights that the global gaming industry is worth $150 billion with over two billion gamers. The rise has contributed to the adoption of gamification in other contexts reserved for pure gamers, as a powerful marketing tool that is bound to stay. Gamification may be used in the choice of format for brand content and the selection of platforms (Instagram or Snapchat filters for instance), or in the mechanisms (TikTok contest, Web App, transforming a customer journey on an e-shop, use of motion design to bring interaction on a landing page).

Within the core of an efficient marketing strategy implementing gamification, we may find the notions of rewards, fidelity, ranking and challenges. Gamification is based on a vital social aspect where the user seeks interaction, recognition, competition. Hence, the user is active at the heart of the experience, an actor, and a growth driver. It is then possible to unite a community around common interests and values. Furthermore, data collection makes gamification a useful device to develop commercial campaigns, as long as they are accompanied by a recurrent reporting.

A brand should adopt gamification for various reasons:

It brings an immersive experience that prolongs the brand’s storytelling;
It allows the construction of innovative and customized customer journeys that maintain attention;
The engagement rate is high, just like conversion and transformation rates
Customer loyalty is retained and higher.

The art of creating emotions, of surprising and of engaging is inscribed in the cosmetic universe in which it is essential to embark the customers in a world that combines visualization and usage. The brand NYX is a paragon in the use of new technologies and gamification, from augmented and virtual reality to the metaverse. After using filters on social media for virtual try-on, an efficient means for cosmetics, the brand has developed a virtual makeup artist named MYAIA who offers personalized makeup consultations by an artificial intelligence. Virtual shopping was also developed by the brand, with a shop designed in augmented reality on Snapchat and Thriller, offering an immersive shopping experience with virtual try-on and games. In 2021, NYX launched an NFT skin during the Meta Gala at the first Crypto Fashion Week. Gamification is a way to get a foothold in Web3 defining the trajectory of a playful universe in which the community is involved.

The synergy between gaming and the luxury industry is obvious: the need for a personalized, engaging, and immersive experience to seduce the audience before and after the buying process, is constant. As an agency specialized in visual innovations for luxury Houses, WANDS Paris accompanies brands from the strategy to the deployment, in adopting gamification for their brand platform and versions – filters, augmented reality, 3D, Wep App, immersive universes…A way to guide brands in defining their objectives, taking into account the question of adaptability, fluidity and brand content to unleash the full potential of creativity in the realization of gamified experiences.