Brands that have intro­duced gam­i­fied con­tent are gain­ing impor­tant vis­i­bil­i­ty and dri­ving deep­er cus­tomer engage­ment. Games and con­tests pro­vide a casu­al way for con­sumers to inter­act and learn about a brand. And if the right rewards are there, cus­tomers might just be will­ing to share some valu­able infor­ma­tion that will help inform mar­ket­ing strate­gies, deci­sions, and cam­paigns.

Brands that have intro­duced gam­i­fied con­tent are gain­ing impor­tant vis­i­bil­i­ty and dri­ving deep­er engage­ment. Today’s con­sumers grav­i­tate to games and con­tests, and that gam­i­fied con­tent is pop­u­lar across all age groups.

That’s accord­ing to Dai­ly­break Media, which recent­ly released the results of its brand engage­ment sur­vey of cus­tomers of all ages who engage in online game­play or con­tests.

In par­tic­u­lar, the age demo­graph­ics data yield­ed inter­est­ing results.

Branded Games & Customer Engagement: 6 Key Findings

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Baby Boomers are the age group most like­ly to par­tic­i­pate in a games and con­tests – not mil­len­ni­als. All the demo­graph­ics sur­veyed indi­cat­ed sim­i­lar response rates in shar­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion for a con­test, pro­vid­ing there was a pos­si­bil­i­ty for rewards.

Here are six key find­ings from the sur­vey:

• 40 per­cent of respon­dents played games on their smart­phones.
• Slight­ly few­er, 30 per­cent, played games on the Inter­net.
• 43 per­cent of respon­dents had played a game, took part in a chal­lenge, or entered a con­test spon­sored by a brand.
• Baby Boomers were the demo­graph­ic most like­ly to have played a game or par­tic­i­pat­ed in a con­test, with 49 per­cent of the group say­ing they had done one or more of these.
• Slight­ly few­er, 45 per­cent, of Gen­er­a­tion X respon­dents had played a game or par­tic­i­pat­ed in a con­test.
• 40 per­cent of mil­lenials had played a game or par­tic­i­pat­ed in a con­test.

Why Branded Games Matter

Online gam­ing, chal­lenges, and con­tests are an impor­tant touch­point for many brands. It serves as a casu­al way for con­sumers to inter­act and learn about a brand, in many cas­es with­out even real­iz­ing they are doing so.

Addi­tion­al­ly, it also wins a great deal of social media shares, likes, and engage­ment, which is crit­i­cal for build­ing aware­ness, ful­fill­ing those ear­ly touch­points in con­sumer jour­neys. Con­sumers are often will­ing to share per­son­al info with brands when play­ing games, espe­cial­ly if there is a chance of win­ning a reward, and brands can look to lever­age these by build­ing cus­tomer pro­files that inform mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, deci­sions, and cam­paigns.

In fact, 31 per­cent of all respon­dents said they were “very like­ly” to give per­son­al details while enter­ing online com­pe­ti­tions if there were rewards involved.

Take Mon­ey­Su­per­Mar­kets’ “Car Insur­ance Epic Car Crush­er”. The Face­book game is both rel­e­vant and infor­ma­tive with respect to one of the brand’s most impor­tant ver­ti­cals, and offers users the promise of such com­pelling reward that they will read­i­ly swap their data for a chance to win.

After all, who does­n’t want to smash up cars with a giant robot­ic hand?

How can games dri­ve cru­cial engage­ment for brands? John Fed­er­man, Dai­ly­break Media chair­man and CEO, said:

“It’s no sur­prise that games and con­tests rise to the top of the list in terms of pre­ferred ways that con­sumers – across all age groups – choose to engage with brands. The Dai­ly­break Media Brand Engage­ment Sur­vey con­firms this and under­scores the pow­er of edu­cat­ing a con­sumer to a brand’s mes­sage while that con­sumer is enter­tained and reward­ed with fun con­tent pow­ered by game mechan­ics.”

With smart­phone usage, and sen­ti­ment for new games, apps and prod­ucts, still expe­ri­enc­ing a great deal of momen­tum, brand­ed gam­ing con­tent could be worth a sec­ond look for many brands.

Does your brand offer online gam­ing con­tent, or con­tests?