Playing the Brand Game

by Rishi Dhir

It seems we humans are hard-wired to play games. Whether it's solving a Sudoku puzzle on our commute to work, playing a game of Monopoly at Christmas with the family, or having a relaxing round of golf at the weekend with friends, game playing satisfies an innate need to flex our intellectual, creative and social muscles.

Of course, games are nothing new: they have been a feature of most cultures and societies throughout history, sometimes even predating literacy. Senet, the oldest board game in the world, was played in pre-dynastic Egypt as long ago as 3,500 BC.

The very act of participating in a game can be a satisfying experience, but winning against the odds can be highly addictive. At their best, games can create a deep sense of engagement, leading to a state of 'flow' - in which we are completely immersed in the experience. These core ideas of satisfaction, engagement and addiction are similarly the Holy Grail of brand-building and in recent years brand owners have applied the principles of gaming to enhance brand experience. Ultimately, brands have borrowed five core principles from the gaming fraternity:

Principle 1: Make it challenging. Challenges are irresistible. All games, no matter how simple or complex, challenge the player to achieve something, be it fitting differently shaped pieces together as quickly as possible (as in Tetris), or successfully negotiating the underworld to become a notorious gangster (think Grand Theft Auto). The best games make the rules and parameters very clear, so there is no ambiguity as to what you're being asked to do, or how you need to do it.

Nike iD is a great example of the concept of challenge applied in the brand context: customers are given the tools online to design and create their own shoe, choosing the style, material and colour. Even though it's far easier to buy a ready-made (and probably better designed shoe) off the shelf, the task of building your own is somehow far more involving and satisfying.

Principle 2: Make it competitive. Competing against others to prove our superiority can add intensity to the overall game-playing experience. Board games, card games and sports all do this brilliantly well, appealing to our innate human need to out-do others.

The idea of competition was successfully applied by the state of Queensland in Australia, in a bid to boost its brand profile. It ran a campaign offering the "best job in the world" to one lucky winner for six months. The role was for an "Island Caretaker", whose responsibilities would be to stroll the white sands, soak up the sun, snorkel the reef, maybe clean the pool and report to a global audience via weekly blogs, photo diaries and video updates. In exchange, they would be paid 150,000Australian dollars (105,000 US dollars). To get the job, candidates had to compete against one another in a high profile reality-TV style game. The process attracted thousands of applicants and caught the attention of the global media, boosting Queensland's awareness and appeal.

In a very different way, Ebay.com uses the idea of competition in its online auctions. By getting customers to bid against one another to 'win' their chosen product, they've injected fun and a sense of rivalry into the buying process.

Principle 3: Make it rewarding. Nothing satisfies us more than the feeling that comes from negotiating an environment and being rewarded for it. The "reward schedule" is an inherent part of every video game - it defines the rate at which rewards are given to players and is carefully orchestrated to keep the gamer yearning for more. At the start, when a lot of basic learning is going on and the player doesn't have much invested in the game, the rewards will come close together: more powers and options, graphics, new equipment, new areas to explore and so on. Gradually, these rewards will come further apart. Psychologically, it's a similar process to the kind of satisfaction gained from becoming better at a sport, like golf or tennis.

The brand equivalent of the reward schedule is the loyalty program, designed to create an on-going sense of achievement and making the customer feel as though they are continually progressing. Health brands like Danone use the idea of reward by encouraging the customer to consume their products to look better or feel healthier. Danone's Actimel Challenge urges users to use the product daily for 14 days, confident that they'll notice a difference.

Principle 4: Allow continual discovery. The best video games take the player on a journey of discovery by providing an ever-evolving environment. Second Life, an online role-playing game, allows players to create a personal 'avatar' and essentially live (and even work) in a virtual world. As in a truly living, breathing environment, there are always new people to meet, new things to do and new places to visit, which keeps players coming back again and again. Even apparently 'simple' games, like Soduku, with a virtually infinite number of puzzles of varying levels of difficulty, offer the gamer the opportunity for endless discovery.

Facebook and Amazon keep customers in a perpetual state of discovery. Whether it's to stay in tune with what your friends are doing, or to discover a new artist, movie or book, as a result of a targeted recommendation based on your past purchases, the content is continually updated to stay fresh and exciting. This keeps users coming back for more.

Principle 5: Incentivize collaboration. Online games like World of Warcraft require players to collaborate with one another, forging alliances and develop common strategies to overcome the enemy. The game itself is essentially reduced to a platform of rules and parameters, where success can only be achieved through cooperation. The environment encourages dialogue and creativity, both of which are intrinsically rewarding.

What's clear is that technology advances, particularly in the area of social media, have made it easier for brands to adopt gaming principles to excite and captivate customers. Online brands, such as Ebay, Facebook, and Amazon are fundamentally engineered around the principles of competition, discovery and collaboration, so it's no wonder they enjoy high levels of engagement and loyalty. For offline brands it's arguably more difficult to 'bake' gaming principles into business-as-usual activity, but well-designed product ideas can help to not only build awareness, but also engage the customer at a deeper level with a brand's positioning.

The trick, as ever in the world of branding, is to ensure that the principles are designed and executed in a way so as not to appear gimmicky or superficial. They should always be tied in some way to a fundamental brand truth - but that is not an easy game.

Rishi Dhir is a consultant with Brandsmiths in London. He can be reached at rishid@brandsmiths.co.uk