Game-Based Marketing: Inspire Customer Loyalty Through Rewards, Challenges, and Contests

Can brands afford to be boring?

From Foursquare and Farmville to the frequent fliers popularized in Up in the Air, playing “everyday games" has become an obsession that's entered the popular culture, mirroring the worldwide growth of interactive entertainment. Consumers have also begun to expect and demand fun in their everyday interactions with companies. 

Based on ten years of research and written by the "Father of Funware", Gabe Zichermann & co-author Joselin Linder, the upcoming book GAME-BASED MARKETING: Inspire Customer Loyalty Through Rewards, Challengers, and Contests (Wiley; March 2010; 9780470562239) explains how companies like JPMorgan Chase, Nike and scrappy upstarts alike have achieved extraordinary success by shaping their marketing strategy around a “fun” future - and why failure to grasp this opportunity means "game over" for others.

Game Based Marketing explains how competitors of all sizes can play to win by following simple strategies: 

• Issue fun, social badges (as in Foursquare) that drive engagement on social networks
• Build a simple point system and track every consumer activity
• Create status & bragging rights opportunities to turn users into evangelists
• Replace cash prizes and contests with virtual rewards
• Speak to consumers of all ages and genders with "casual games"
• Improve the costs and success of marketing campaigns through game mechanics