TBWA Worldwide CMO Laurie Coots: Focus on gamification, not the game

 

I came just in time to see the "1984" commercial be prepared (I can honestly say that I absolutely had nothing to do with it). But Apple, that commercial, and a lot of things that followed were very much part of our culture, which was really about good enough is not enough.

 

Part of our agency is the drive to never get too comfortable, to constantly be reinventing ourselves. So it doesn’t hurt to have clients like Apple who are not only reinventing themselves but the entire categories that they compete in, clients like Apple, adidas, Nissan, who are always pushing you to be the best you can be. I think there are probably many times in our history where we might have wanted to kind of put our feet up. When you have a client like Steve Jobs saying, “No, no, no, we’re not done yet. I’m pushing you a little bit further”, that is exceptionally helpful in keeping your corporate culture. [Editor’s note: this interview was recorded prior to Steve Jobs’ passing]

 

The principles of gamification are: you want to invite people in, you want to give them something to do or be a part of that will help them lose time and lose their sense of self, something that’s fun, and something that’s going to inspire them. Those are things that don’t have anything to do with money. They have to do with creating an activity or creating some sort of an invitation that they’re going to love. 

 

One of the things that I would say to people is that even though we got a lot of technology out there right now. Think about what you could do locally. Think about how you could invite people in to share. How could you create a collaborative yet competitive environment? It could be a scavenger hunt; it could be putting everybody together in a flash mob; it could be having an event for a given period of time, that will only last fifteen minutes, and you want to be there because you don’t want to miss the fifteen minutes. So all sorts of ideas that are out there and they all have to do with creating an invitation, really making it fun and interesting; [giving] a sense of reward for people; helping them master something or be better; having a little mystery, surprising them, daring them to try something they haven’t done.

 

What I worry about is those clients who have big budgets who are focusing not on gamification but on the game. And they are trying to be great at the game, at inventing the game, but the game isn’t the point. The point is the gamification – the behavior of getting people to try something new, to behave differently, to play, to lose a sense of time and be involved. The creativity isn’t going to live necessarily in the game and the game can be pretty expensive. 

 

So what we should be focusing on are the qualities of gamification, not the game itself. And personally it’s kind of gotten tangled up because the overuse of the word gamification has come about during the time when we’re struggling with a lot of technology platforms – so everybody thinks it has to do with digital, it has to do mobile phones, and all that stuff. It doesn’t. My message is, focus on the quality of the gamification, not on the game.

 

I think you have a sort of fatigue when it comes to badge-ification. I start playing, I get to this level, so I get a badge. I get to somewhere else, I get a badge. And after a while, “Oh, forgot to check in for four days and now I’m out of the running.” Badge-ification, that acknowledgment of having done something, is really only relevant if somebody else sees it. If my circle of friends is not watching me win that badge, the badge might not be as important just for me to mark my progress. The whole point of badge-ification is to be recognized publicly, in front of your friends, in front of your social network. You have to dole it out in a way which it’s actually really earned and you have to make sure that it adds up to something else. 

 

What I find really interesting about Starbucks is that they don’t send me a lot of “Atta boy, you’ve been to Starbucks, you’re the first one, blah, blah, blah…” but they reward me immediately. I see that star go right in for that cup and I know exactly how many cups of coffee until my free one. So their badge-ification adds up to something. And I think that it’s really important to think that people are going to get fatigued with badge after badge after badge if it doesn’t add up to anything. 

 

Coach has enabled, very inexpensively, for women to be able to kind of publish their fashion archive. So I put it on and take a picture and I pose with that and I have a variety of different pieces, and then Coach helps me mix and match accessories and stuff. They also have had exchanges: “Oh, I’m tired of this particular purse but I’ve paid a lot of money for it so maybe I’ll exchange with somebody else who’s got a different purse that I can try for just a while.”

 

The same qualities apply to luxury but you are going to make it very, very high end. You are going to invite people in to experience something. You are going to ask them to be brave and try something new. You are going to ask them to maybe give their opinion, because you regard it. In this case you really spend a lot of time doting on them as a user of the brand to give their advice to somebody else. And so you use the same technique – the mastery, the mystery, and fun, and all of that – but you do it in a very upscale, recommended way.

 

I know that iTunes has changed how people do allowances for their children and paying baby sitters. Imagine you’re rewarding your children for checking in with iTunes dollars. There are a lot of places to play in that ecosystem. It is a huge marketing opportunity for all big brands that might play.