GAMIFICATION is a new buzzword in the business events industry, and meetings organisers and incentive planners can best leverage this concept to keep meetings audiences engaged and affect behaviour.
Jason Fox, Australian motivation design expert and author of The Game Changer, said gamification, which has been around for three years, has huge potential in the business events industry as a means to keep the audience interested.
He opined that meetings can be as engaging as online games if designed well, delegates would pay for good meeting experiences.
Thus, it falls on the meeting organiser to use “game thinking in non-game context”, he said, adding that gamification features rules, structures, and outcomes.
Fox was speaking as part of Malaysia Business Events Week (TTGmice e-Weekly, July 3, 2014), organised by Malaysia Convention & Exhibition Bureau.
Nigel Gaunt, vice president global business at BI Worldwide, a global engagement agency that uses the principles of behavioral economics to produce measurable results for clients, noted that with the qualifying period for some incentives stretching up to a year, some incentive houses use online games to keep participants engaged and earning additional points towards their final score throughout the period.
He added: “Online games should be relevant to the clients’ business. I would use a game involving cars for clients in the automobile industry.”
Andrea Lee, area director – Kuala Lumpur, Destination Asia, shared: “In the past, clients used to ask us about our background and used that to decide whether we get the business. Increasingly, they want us to give them inexpensive solutions to retain the attention of the audience as pharmaceutical meetings for medical professionals tend to be very scientific and dry.”
Lee gamifies the spelling of new drugs to help the audience and organises quick games to break up long meeting sessions and recharge the audience.
UCSI Communications’ managing director, Gracie Geikie, said the company created a running event with fees going towards the Sarawak Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to build a new shelter. “It would have been much more difficult to raise the same amount through the traditional means of asking the public to donate money for the cause.”
