Gamification

What is gamification?

It’s a term invented by an engineer, Nick Pelling, in 2002, but hadn’t been widely used until 2010. The definition of gamification is, “The use of game elements and game-design techniques in non-game contexts." That is, to put game factors into non-game situations.

The ultimate goal of gamification is to stimulate people’s interests while pursuing a target and feel fun in the process. Therefore, people will be willing to spend more time and focus more on it.

The process of engaged in a gamified situation can be easily shown in a loop.

 Gamification is widely used in marketing nowadays. Take the airline industry for example. The company will come up with a sequence of rules, allowing the passengers who have accumulated more mileages to be upgraded to the first class. Therefore, every single passenger is a character in the game. When they take more flights, their level will get higher. After reaching the goal, they can win a prize!

This make passengers feel competitive and engaged. Finally, they will spend more money in the airline company.

Viral marketing

Nowadays, unlike the past, information are spread extremely fast through the internet. With a click on the screen, people can search for any studies and look for any video they want. Due to this convenience, businessmen came up with a new technique for marketing, viral marketing.

What is viral marketing?

It’s a strategy focusing on spreading information about a product by person, especially in unconventional ways such as internet or email.

The advantage of viral marketing is that it costs low but will gain high credibility. It’s an efficient way to promote ads for companies.

Let’s see a video.

 “Trains travel in a straight line. If you get hit by a train, you’ve probably done something wrong which makes getting hit by a train one of the dumbest ways to die.”

This is one the most successful and innovative public safety videos of all time. Instead of a typically announcement, this commercial appealed the viewers by the catchy back ground music and adorable animated characters. When this video is launched, barely by being shared, it reached nearly 100 million views in a short period of time. The metro company didn’t have to cost a lot to reach their goal.

reference

http://mccann.com.au/project/dumb-ways-to-die/

Guerrilla Marketing

From this week, I’m going to move on to the third main part of my blog, marketing skills. Let’s talk about the first one, guerrilla marketing.

What is guerilla marketing?

It’s a strategy which a company uses unconventional interactions or surprise to promote a product.

Take Coca Cola’s commercial for example.

In this video, the coke truck hit any place randomly. Locals were curious about the button and eventually, they pressed it. Surprisingly, a can of coke popped out from the truck for free. Finally, people gathered together to have cokes and fun.

This is an innovative, impressive, and attractive way of promoting Coca Cola. When this video was posted on Youtube, it sensationally generated over 1.5 million views. The Coca Cola company also increase their brand awareness internationally as it spread joy all over the world. This is simply just a brilliant example of guerilla marketing and it associates with the company image perfectly, to bring everyone happiness.

Emotional Branding

Last week, I introduced the three main ways to persuade audience. Today, let’s focus on the most prominent one being used, Pathos, also called emotional branding.

Emotional branding

It’s the practice of cultivating brands appeal to a customer’s emotion and aspiration directly. Emotional brands is successful when it triggers an emotional response upon the customers.

Commercial using the “pathos” method is associated with strong feeling and affection. Though sometimes, the ad itself has little to do with the product, as long as it captures audience’s heart, the commercial is successful. However, this method is usually only suitable for famous companies.

Let’s take the Budweiser’s 2014 Super Bowl commercial for instance.

The topic of adorable animals is always loved by people. From the ad, we can see the strong bond between the puppy and the horse. The narration and the BGM is perfectly shown to the audience. At last, the word “BestBuds” not only points out what the ad wants to show, but also stick to Budweiser’s brand image.

Another example for emotional branding is Guiness’ commercial.

The ending is the soul of the ad. It demonstrates the value friendship. This also indicates the slogan of Guiness, “Dedication. Loyalty. Friendship. The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character.”