It’s 10 pm at night, and I glance up from my tablet, look outside and it’s dark. Have I really been playing candy crush for 3 hours straight? The constant voice in the back of my head, “I’ll stop after the next level”. It’s always the next level.

But what is it that is so addictive about these time-consuming mindless games? They have games within the games, reaching milestones at certain levels, using power-ups, in-game bonuses or free lives to get you to that next stage.

With the lockdown in place, gaming and more importantly gamification have increased hugely. Comscore found that in the UK in February 2020, individuals spent 29 billion minutes on a games-related website and the majority of this was via mobile rather than desktop.

We are now seeing the opportunity for brands to be involved in those games – take Animal Crossing for instance. The release of the new game that happened to coincide with the lockdown saw sales of the New Horizons game eclipse all three of its predecessors put together. Within the game, you are able to customise your character with clothing. This is where brands are now getting involved. You can choose branded clothes within the game.

Currently, Animal Crossing is free to join, but there are other games which brands are involved in that are monetised. The Sims formed a deal with Moschino last year and Fortnite the viral multi-platform game is free to play but there are many branded in-game upgrades that players can purchase.

What does this mean for brands?

We are seeing more gamified promotions available to customers. For example, last year Mando worked on British Gas’ augmented reality Easter Egg promotion where customers had to help Wilbur (the then British Gas mascot) to collect Easter eggs to win prizes. Mando also worked on the Vodafone #FindUnlimited promotion where customers had to visit specific locations and collect vatoms to see if they had won.

Both promotions engaged customers like never before, providing that fun entertainment factor whilst simultaneously being able to win prizes.

The future?

While no-one is entirely sure of the future, games are a sure-fire way of being able to get your brands in front of customers and consumers without them even having to leave the house; and there are multiple ways to get that gamification factor into their hands. It could be via a mechanic on your product’s packaging, or via your brands’ app, or through some form of add on an existing game, such as Animal Crossing.

With experience in gamified promotional solutions, and a bank of knowledgeable third-party technical support partners, Mando can guide you every step of the way to creating your first or hundredth gamified campaign, just get in touch using the contact form below.

Lauren Miles is Senior Marketing Executive at Mando and contactable at lauren.miles@mando.co.uk

The post Gamification x Promotions appeared first on IPM Bitesize.

Fixed-fee company Mando has launched a new partnerships agency, Mando-Connect, which uses a data-fuelled approach to leverage a range of different data-sets to develop partnerships based on science.

Mando is part of global marketing services group WPP, and Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP’s Chief Executive, says: “Mando-Connect makes smart use of over 40 years’ hard-won knowledge of people’s response to promotions. Their clients should love it”.

Mando-Connect will design partnerships and rewards based on the smart use of cutting-edge data and insight. Its custom-built Partnership Engine leverages three extensive data sets, including WPP and YouGov data, Mando’s own ProNet database, covering 20 data points from over 3,000 promotions, and the Connect PartnerBank, which covers 2,000 audited brand partners.

Mando-Connect will specialise in partnerships for customer acquisition and awareness, loyalty, promotions and brand perception shift.

It is already working with Merlin Entertainments, MoveGB, Readly and breast cancer awareness charity Coppafeel!.

Charlie Hills, Managing Director of Mando-Connect and also its Head of Strategy, says that smart use of data can create more impactful partnerships, with higher ROI for clients. She observes: “Our unique data-fuelled insights enable us to know which partnerships will meet our client’s expectations, and which will exceed them. Did you know, for example, that by including an element of personalisation in your approach, a brand can see up to seven times more impact from a promotional partnership?”

The Mando-Connect senior leadership team includes Becky Munday (Mando CEO and former Chairman of UK marketing industry trade body, the IPM), Charlie Hills and Jo Ashdown, Head of Partnerships. The three bring decades of experience in partnerships across sectors including media, leisure, sport, travel, telecommunications, financial services, restaurants, FMCG and retail.

Becky Munday is excited to make the step-change: “Mando’s unique promotional and rewards data is the fuel that will enable us at Mando-Connect to propel partnerships to the next level. By working together and leveraging our unique data, brands can achieve far more together than they can alone, creating purposeful and cost-effective relationships.”

The picture show (left to right) Jo Ashdown, Becky Munday and Charlie Hills.

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HighCo MRM has won the IPM COGS Awards 2016 Grand Prix, for delivering the handling and fulfillment element of the 2015 Sports Relief Campaign on behalf of charity Comic Relief.

The work also won HighCo MRM Gold awards in both the Handling and Fulfilment Category and the Direct Marketing Category in the COGS, the promotional marketing industry’s annual recognition program for companies which provide the best marketing services support work.

The IPM COGS Awards 2016 Company of the Year trophy went to fixed fee agency Mando. Mando also won Silver in the Cross Border Campaign Category for ‘Your Nutella, Your Way’ for Ferrero and Gold in the Risk Management Category for The Very Big E.Leclerc Game.

Other multiple award winners at The IPM COGS Awards 2016, now in its seventh year, included i-movo, Black Tomato Agency, Tomato Source and Hive. The full list of winners, covering 14 industry, channel and specialist categories, plus the two Special Awards, is on the IPM website.

The IPM COGS Awards 2016 celebration lunch was held on Friday September 23^rd 2016 at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, Central London. The host for the event was stand up comedian, Lucy Porter.

The COGS Awards were launched by the IPM in 2010 to recognise the huge contribution made by marketing services providers to the success of promotional campaigns.

The post HighCo MRM, Mando win at COGS appeared first on IPM Bitesize.