The use of gaming as a potent social marketing technique was front and center last month at BtoB's annual Social Media Marketing Awards presentation in Manhattan. Communications technology company Cisco Systems won social marketing honors in two categories and also took home its second straight “People's Choice” award for a campaign that prominently featured an interactive gaming experience.
If gaming has been a bit under the social media radar, eclipsed by the Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter juggernaut, its time in the sun may be dawning.
“Yes, we did get questions from a number of internal executives when we came up with the whole gaming notion,” said Doug Webster, Cisco's senior director-worldwide service provider marketing. “But we wanted to change the mindset of marketing away from just the traditional white paper targeting people who need to be influenced.”
Cisco's online games aren't for everyone, Webster said. Their intent is to appeal to the software engineers who influence purchasing decisions.
Cisco's winning social marketing entry was a viral video campaign in support of its ASR 9000 network router. While watching a live streaming video, viewers were able to operate a robot arm to yank a switch processor card out of the ASR 9000—essentially, to break it—to observe the impact on video performance.
The 100-second invitational video was posted on YouTube in October 2010 and promoted through banner ads, blogs, social networks and email blasts. In its first four months, the promotion drove nearly 6,000 video impressions, 500 contacts from interested users, 216 demos and 60 qualified leads, and was responsible for more than $80 million in revenue, according to Cisco.
Last year, Cisco took home a BtoB People's Choice award for its myPlanNet campaign, which included a downloadable simulation game in which participants played the role of a CEO solving business challenges using Cisco products.
Gaming makes perfect sense as a social marketing device, said Gabe Zichermann, CEO of Gamification Co. and producer of the Gamification Summit to be held in September in New York.
“Gaming has become the mass-market medium of our time,” Zichermann said. “In simple terms of reach, three of the top five programs in America today are FarmVille CityVille and Mafia Wars,” he said, referring to games developed by Zynga Inc. and widely accessed through Facebook and other social sites.
Applied to marketing, Zichermann said, gaming's core strength is engagement. It can underscore everything from loyalty programs to education, and any other customer activity that can be rewarded and reinforced with virtual goods, points, badges and rankings.
Bunchball Inc. is a game development company that works with such clients as United Business Media in deploying gamelike interactions with customers. The company developed a trivia competition on the UBM TechWeb site, using knowledge of the technology publisher's own content at its core.
“UBM enjoyed a huge re-engagement rate,” said Rajat Paharia, Bunchball founder and chief product officer. “I wouldn't call it a game; rather, it was using UBM's existing content wrapped in game mechanics.”
Paharia said a company's products must already be strong for gaming to help.
“Gaming's whole purpose is to be a carrier for some other content, such as driving knowledge or excitement about your product,” he said. “You don't want to modify your content or product; you want to get the heart beating.”
THE CONVERSATION (add your response in the comments): Have you used social gaming for marketing purposes, and how has it worked out?
