At the 24^th of January,  I visited the last MOAbouts session which was centered around ‘Gamification & Infotainment in the research industry’. The most important word for me of this afternoon is ‘ENGAGEMENT’. Research is about connecting the company with the consumer and vice versa. To successfully do this, you need engagement, from both parties.  And gamification & infotainment are great tools that can increase engagement. 3 experts shared their vision during the session: Jon Puleston (GMI), Peter Harrison (Brainjuicer) and Joëlla Marsman (HJ Heinz BV Netherlands). I’ve selected my three most important takeaways of the day.
#1: Gamification makes you think harder
Jon Puleston from GMI says that gaming experiences have the power to make people do thinking activities, just for the fun of it. Surveys, the research method that is currently under a lot of pressure, can definitely benefit from this concept. By applying rules to the questions, the participant is more challenged to come up with a response. It’s more fun to describe yourself in exactly 7 words than just giving a description of who you are.  Or by personalizing the question and asking for one’s last meal in death row instead of just asking for one’s favorite meal. Changes like these can deliver up to 2-3 fold improvements of feedback and makes participants think harder.
#2: Gamification makes participants think different
The way Peter Harrison’s sees it, the role of games in research is all about creating context. We all know that human behavior is mainly driven by emotional, unconscious decision making. Therefore, Harrison’s major fight in research is to better simulate this emotional decision making. And this is where gamification comes in. Game-like experiences help us to change the context for our participants to trigger more emotional feedback. So, it helps us not only to think harder, but also to think different.
#3: Infotainment helps us to create more impact with consumer insights
In addition to keeping our participants engaged, we also need to think about our internal stakeholders such as marketers, research colleagues, and all other interested parties of the organization. Joëlla Marsman from HJ Heinz BV (NL) showed us the concept of gamification is also valuable for them. We call it infotainment and the goal is to share learnings and information from their MROC internally in a fun way to create more impact. Are you thinking about how to spread research results to create impact? Heinz presented some good advice:

1. Embed consumer connection in way of working. Incorporate the research in daily routines.
2. Embed consumer connection in performance appraisal. Reward those that score high in the research games and show efforts to be in contact with the consumer.
3. Provide continuous stimulation. By means of instant feedback in the research game, you learn more about the consumer in a fun way.
4. Mix online and offline. Don’t do everything online. Offline promotions are key to create awareness and also function as conversation starters.

Ok, that sounds interesting…What can we do with these takeaways?
Value the importance of creating engaging experiences both for consumers as well as for managers. Want to know more about creating engaging research? Check out some cases on researchcommunities at our researchcommunities casepage.