Tactics

Gamification

Innovative scientific education

One challenge all marketers face is how to engage customers in a relevant and impactful way. Think doctors at large congresses. One can only attract or keep customers engaged at a booth for a while with publication reprints, videos or offering a cup of coffee.

Inspiration can come from the game industry. For a doctors audience, you need to integrate of course relevant medical-scientific content. Two applied gamification examples:

  • POKÉMON GO- inspired. The diabetes team in Ireland created an educational concept, based on this game. Congress attendees downloaded an app on their smartphone. Then they had to locate and “capture” about 30 signs within the massive congress area. Once “captured”, they selected the correct answer from multiple scientific/brand related choices in the projected image. The highest scores and names were continuously updated and projected on a central scoreboard.
  • ESCAPE ROOM-inspired. The HepatitisB innovator in Israel created an “escape box”, the size of a large table, for the brand’s exhibit area. Customers were invited to solve sequential riddles, related to HepatitisB and key brand messages. The score of the fastest game winners was projected on a scoreboard.

The impact was overwhelming: the number of visiting customers and the length of their engagement at the booth increased multiple times, compared to traditional engagement approaches. The message reminder scores were close to 100%. The main reasons were the high level of the scientific content and the competitive nature of the “educational game”.

As Benjamin Franklin said:

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I will learn.”

So, as Innovation Leader, I supported the initial “gamification” innovators to experiment. I created support to scale successful gamification innovations to other countries/brands. I shared these examples as inspiration for other innovators who were looking to increase customer engagement, like through gamification ideation.

More reading on this: 10 Amazingly Successful Examples of Gamification and Gamification Examples: the fully comprehensive list 

More blogs like this? Click here: Wim Vandenhouweele

Do you have other examples of innovation-gamification? Please share below!

Passionate about stimulating innovation within a large corporation. 35 years of global (Pharma) marketing and innovation experience.