Gamification (and the art of getting me to the office early)
Erin Korogodsky is Lithium's social media quarterback. Obsessed with social media, Erin has worked with clients like Newell Rubbermaid, Wieden Kennedy and Vista Print to monitor their brands and brainstorm engagement strategy. She is a frequent blogger on the Lithosphere (as ErinKoro) and you can follow her on twitter at @erinkoro and one of the team on @LithiumTech
Tell me to be at work at 8am every day and I'll probably waltz in at about 8:07, holding a steaming cup of Peets (I like their sugar-free mocha, no whip). Clearly, I'm not that motivated to be precisely on time. What difference does it make anyway?
Seven minutes here, four minutes there…in fact, I stopped for some java KNOWING that I'd be late. Even if I got a tiny slap on the wrist, I'd probably be on time for a while and then slowly fall back into my old habits. Now, set up a competition between me and my office mates, throw in some points and call me out for my timeliness and voila, suddenly I show up promptly at 7:58.
What changed? It went from a mandate to a game. Flipping around the dynamics unlocked my motivation – the true secret sauce of any operation. This would be really easy if I were a professional baseball player (any other ladies out there share this dream?) but I'm not. I have my OTHER dream job, here at Lithium.
Here, games are not just IN our DNA, they ARE our DNA. We don't build "forums," we build brand nations for the likes of Best Buy, Sephora, Verizon…vibrant places full of passionate people who find us for something they need and come back for something they feel.
What is it they feel? Same thing that I felt, getting me to work on time. Motivation. A game made me motivated to do something – continue to do something that I'd not have done otherwise.
Its gamification – unlocking motivation to keep playing, keep reaching, see your name on the leader board and protect your turf once you get there.
Yesterday, our webcast Driving Loyalty, Engagement & Revenue with your Social Customers focused on how gamification can be applied to many things – communities and brand nations included.
The webcast – in our world, #Lithcast – was fantastic with some great conversation between our CEO Lyle Fong (@lylefong) (pictured left), our CMO Katy Keim (@katykeim) (right) and our special guest, New York Times best selling author, Jane McGonigal (@avantgame) (pictured center).
If you missed the webcast you can watch the whole thing on demand here. And just to show off a little, here's the fantastic word cloud from the tweet stream plus a couple of our favorite tweets from the event.
