We talked about it just a few articles ago: by now, assuming it was ever possible, you cannot run events without putting engagement and the participation of speakers, attendees, investors and sponsors at the centre. Better still, all of them together.
Why? You can read the longer argument here, but in short: because without the live, active involvement of everyone taking part in an event the result is poorer and everything becomes harder, more difficult and often more expensive, both in management terms and in financial ones. And also because engagement is an extraordinary marketing lever, a natural amplifier of results that can become very significant indeed.
And what does that have to do with gamification? A great deal, because gamification is one of the main tools available for achieving these results, and above all because it is versatile enough to make it particularly well suited to supporting different types of event and very different objectives. So let us look at the main ones: in-person events, online events, hybrid events and trade fairs.
1. Gamification for in-person events
What is gamification for at in-person events? Since people have already decided to attend and have already travelled to reach the venue, it might seem that the need to run engagement activities with them is weaker. Nothing could be further from the truth, because gamification can be used to encourage attitudes, opinions and even behaviours that are highly productive for the event and for everyone with a stake in its success, quite apart from making it more enjoyable and more useful for those attending. Some examples?
- Audience engagement: gamification is an excellent way to create engaging activities during the event, such as team games, treasure hunts or interactive challenges. And an engaged audience is an audience that not only responds better to prompts and proposals, but also becomes an excellent advocate with others, delivering the best possible form of publicity.
- Networking: play is a formidable tool for breaking down the barriers that sometimes make it hard to meet new people and build a network, which are two of the outcomes event attendees most want. Using every available tool to make these activities easier therefore produces exponential results, not only in audience satisfaction but in the overall return on the event.
- Brand engagement: if the sponsors are the ones creating the games (or if the organisers make them available to them), these can become powerful tools for making products and services known, for making stands and exhibition spaces more attractive and even for influencing routes and movement around the event space.
2. Gamification for online events
When we talk about online events we are talking about experiences mediated by technology which, while on the one hand it makes attending easier by removing the cost of travel and of staying in a physical place, on the other can become an obstacle to genuinely active, involved participation. That is why, with online events, the question of which tools to use to make sure that people — who are following from places where they are often alone, or at most in small groups — feel part of a genuinely shared experience becomes fundamental to the success of the activities and to people’s satisfaction.
But how is it done?
- Active participation: surveys, quick polls and real-time comments can be excellent ways to compensate for the absence of a shared physical place, because through taking part in the same activity at the same time (perhaps seeing the results live, as with our “showtime” mode) the distance shortens and an engagement is created that can sustain continuous participation.
- Interactive learning: through games and challenges attendees can pick up new skills or knowledge without feeling the “weight” of traditional training, which adults often find hard going and difficult to digest, especially at a distance.
- Virtual rewards: badges, scores and recognitions can serve a double purpose: creating a sense of achievement and positive competition among attendees, and offering further openings to start conversations that widen a person’s own network of contacts.
3. Gamification for hybrid events
Hybrid events are a particularly complex thing to manage, and keeping the two types of audience together — the people present in the room and those following online — is both important and difficult. These are in fact two audiences which, precisely because they are divided by the kind of experience they are having, will naturally behave rather like oil and water: they can share the same container (the event) without ever mixing. On the other hand, if as organisers we do not want to end up running two events at once, we have to get these two components to blend, at least now and then, and at least enough. But how?
- Controlled mixing: quizzes, games and competitions can be activities that — even in a very contained way, limited in time, which is probably what whoever set the event up as hybrid wants — create “bubbles of sharing” in which, thanks to shared tools such as a computer or a smartphone, everyone is brought onto the same level, into the “same room”, doing the same thing. What is more, the level of cooperation and shared activity can be dosed so as to make the boundary between the two types of audience exactly as transparent as you want it to be.
- Personalised experience: just as it can bring people together, gamification can also be used to separate the experiences within a hybrid event still further. It can be adapted to attendees’ preferences and behaviour and offer challenges or rewards personalised according to the type and the amount of engagement.
4. Gamification for trade fairs
For trade fairs — and above all for online trade fairs — gamification is a strategic asset exactly as it is for the exhibition areas of any event, but to a far greater degree. If the stands at an event are essentially showcases where you discover products and services, the stands at a trade fair are shops — e-commerce shops in the case of virtual trade fairs — where the minimum result is taking home a qualified lead while, in many cases, the standard is closing the sale. Creating the right environment for these two conversions to happen well and in satisfying numbers therefore becomes THE real KPI of success for an event of this kind. So how can gamification help?
- Interactive exploration: gamification can guide visitors through the fair, creating exploration routes with rewards for those who visit particular stands or take part in certain activities.
- Engagement with exhibitors: stands and exhibitors can use games or quizzes to draw visitors in, encouraging conversations and interaction with the products or services on show.
- Social sharing: earning points or prizes by taking part in games and challenges is a formidable instrument of publicity and promotion, for brands as much as for individual products and services: after all, who does not enjoy boasting about their winnings, or at least showing them off, to friends and acquaintances?
At this point, if we have convinced you that gamification really is an asset for the next event you are organising, a doubt may strike you: but who creates the games?
There is a place where, along with the box, the contents come too. Care to guess which?