Enhancing Gen Y Financial Literacy With Gamified Competition Sun Life Financial (@SunLife) has employed gamification to interact with a broader demographic in an effort to better promote its group retirement services. The company partnered with Bunchball in order launch its “money UP” campaign in Canada at the end of 2013. Sun Life’s success with gamification…
Sing Your National Anthem For A Cold One On July 1, 1867, Canada became a self-governing dominion of Great Britain and a federation of four provinces: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec. The anniversary of this date was originally called Dominion Day, but was officially changed in 1982 to Canada Day. This is the…
Gamification Enters College Curriculum Lambton College in Sarnia, Ontario is set to roll out a new gamification application that will help teach the course material to its students in six of its college courses this coming fall. This Canadian college (@LambtonCollege) is hoping that by incorporating games in education in a way that connects with today’s students, they will increase…
Getting More People in Mazda Driver Seats To launch the 2014 Mazda3, Mazda Canada and their agency, JWT partnered with Cineplex Odeon theaters and Timeplay to create the world’s first dual screen in-cinema driving game that leveraged the mobile accelerometer. Their social driving game turned every phone into a wheel, and every seat in the…
When Brenda Brathwaite Romero’s 7-year old daughter came home talking about the Middle Passage, she clearly didn’t understand its significance to American and black history. Instead, she thought of those slaves as going on a cruise. Romero needed her to understand the truth.
As a long-time game designer, Romero (then Brathwaite) gathered together some game pieces and 3 x 5 cards and on the spot created a prototype for a game she called The New World. By the time she and her daughter were done playing the game, they were both crying. The historical events impacted them in a new way. Not only did they understand the facts, they began to gain a deeper respect and empathy for those players of history.
Whether for a new launch or increasing awareness of existing benefits, educating customers about your product offering is critical. This is no less true amongst loyalty programs that for years have been telling us about their reward offerings and the various ways to earn their points.
At Friendefi, we’ve found that gamification can be an effective tool for not only improving members’ understanding of their frequent flyer program but also improving engagement with partners.
There’s little question that the loyalty “industry” has an innovation problem. With few exceptions, the world’s largest loyalty programs (mostly in travel, finance and retail) are mostly the same as they were 20 years ago. Social, mobile, gamification have struggled to find a footing, even as they are the entire foundation of next-gen loyalty systems such as those developed by Square, Belly or any number of gamified providers. With so much inertia and torpor, it’s easy to give up on traditional loyalty providers when it comes to innovation…but perhaps the old dog has a few tricks left.
A few weeks ago, through a social sharing post by a friend (this data point will be crucial), I came upon a new promotion run by Air Canada, called Earn Your Wings. The program created a leaderboard of top flyers during the promotional period that were ranked based on a range of activities. These included, but weren’t limited to, miles flown and were supported by a series of badges awarded for different activity loops. Top players split a large pot of 10 million miles at the end of the promotion period, and that activity seemed especially fierce, which is what really excited me.
In the recent months, efforts to combine gamification and training programs in the corporate work environment have been gaining steam. With news such as TrueOffice hitting the headlines and major companies like Deloitte embedding gamification into their training programs, gamified training is soon becoming the new lingo in corporate speak.
Canada’s gamification efforts are being heard, especially with Audi Canada’s recent reimagination of the test-drive and VIP public transport but something much more important and dear to all my heart has become a gamified experience, and that’s Montreal’s decision to gamify Poutine Week for all the food adventurists participating in it last week.
Poutine Week or Semaine de la Poutine Week is a celebration of the delectable poutine: a dish consisting crispy french fries topped with gravy, and cheese curds.
“How long till life is one big video game?” asks Ivor Tossell in his recent article in the Innovation section of The Globe and Mail. In the piece he gives and introductory definition of gamification and quotes Gabe Zichermann for his insights as someone “at the forefront of a new strain of marketing thinking” and…
