Branded Games Help Drive Deeper Customer Engagement

Promise of rewards makes con­sumers of all ages more like­ly to share per­son­al infor­ma­tion with brands.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

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?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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