Publishers' Dojo
By Linda Ruth
About Linda
Linda Ruth is president & CEO of Publishing Dojo. She offers advice on the keys to marketing at retail and online. She is one of the original founders of Exceptional Women Publishing and Women in Digital Media and a current board member. Linda also is president of Newsstands of America, the coop of independent booksellers. She has more than 20 years' experience in magazine marketing, and has held management positions at McGraw-Hill and IDG Communications. Her books, “Internet Marketing for Magazine Publishers,” “Secrets of SEO for Publishers,” and “How to Market your Newsstand Magazine” can be found at Amazon.com. She can be found on the internet at:www.magazinedojo.com
www.twitter.com/Linda_Ruth
Profit from Publishing!
How will media convergence affect the production and distribution of news?
May 22, 2013I thought you all might be interested in this brief interview, conducted online by Jenna Batchelor, a student at Nottingham...
Pub Talk
Is Yahoo asking itself the right questions?
May 21, 2013After the news broke about Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr, I paid a visit to Yahoo.Com (it has been quite a...
B2B Beat
ABM Annual Conference Greatest Hits
May 17, 2013Much has been written about ABM merging under the umbrella of SIIA. But much more was going on during the...
Media Vent
On Meredith Corp. Buying, Closing Parenting and Babytalk
May 17, 2013A wise friend in the know suggested to me that the new acquisition by Meredith of the Bonnier titles should...
The Digital Domain
To Pay or Not to Pay ... That is the Changing Question
Apr 30, 2013In an era, where citizen "journalists," aggregators and content farms threaten to turn the information media companies produce into a...
The Digital Market
What do you think of the new mobile Google Play?
Apr 18, 2013A blog came out recently on the redesigned Google Play for mobile. It appears Michael Siliski, group product manager for...
The Postal Pundit
Climbing Out Of The Rubble Of Sandy
Dec 11, 2012The entire Eastern seaboard, but now mostly New York and New Jersey, has been struggling through the aftermath of Sandy,...
Everything Publishing
A New Way To Be a Player
Sep 19, 2011If you want to increase affinity with your brand, grow traffic (up to 20x for some sites) and retention, create...
Byte Back
What Is “Interactive” Anyway? (Part 2)
Feb 28, 2011The real question, it turns out, is less about embedded multimedia than it is about personalization, relevance and immediacy of...
Gamification Adds Play Element Magazine Publishers Have Always Sought
|
Talented teachers, leaders, motivators, and, yes, marketers have always integrated varying levels of play into the serious work they do; but as a marketing concept, gamification has been around since late 2010. Gamification uses technology in engaging ways to encourage desired behaviors.
Gamification is still a pretty hot marketing concept, the more so as manufacturers and retailers continue to dream up new ways to make buying stuff even more fun than it is. Gamification uses game design techniques and game mechanics, such as achievement levels, points, scoring, badges, and rewards to create challenges, a sense of mastery, a potential win. Shopkick, for example, gives participants points for just walking into a store; the points start adding up to discounts and incentives before a purchase is even made.
Commerce and play came together in a big way recently when WalMart partnered with Angry Birds to create a shopping/games fusion whose entire purpose was to make it fun to buy. The game is based on a treasure hunt; clues are posted on facebook, and additional clues are scattered through branded merchandise in the stores. Barnes and Noble has also partnered with Angry Birds; purchases of Angry Birds merchandise at retail earns the shopper game credits.
Web comic designer (and my daughter) DuCiel Spitzfaden created a contest where gamification techniques—awarding points for participating in conversation threads, for early contest entry, and other interactive behaviors—increased participation 150-200%. To DuCiel, even more important than the increase in participation was the increase in satisfaction among her audience. Participants not only got involved in the contest; they had a great time on a social media level, and to this day they participate more and cohere more than they had in the past.
For those who think that marketing should exist in its own separate silo and not touch on other worlds, gamification might seem like an exploitation of play. But for those who, like magazine publishers, believe that marketing’s goal is not only to make people want stuff but to build audience and develop relationships and trust with that audience, adding an element of play will have the power it always does.
Sections:
 |
|
|
COMMENTS
Click here to leave a comment...
