Traditional stereotypes often depict gaming as exclusive to young people, while older demographics (45+) are considered insulated from it. However, this view is not entirely accurate.

The "2022 Gamified Marketing Insights Report" released by Moxi Technology mentions that the flourishing of gamified marketing is backed by the advent of a new consumption era. While games have captivated 364 million young consumers, they have also attracted over 48 million older players.

Today, legendary games are still deeply loved by middle-aged people, even becoming the "goji berry" of middle-aged entertainment. There are countless cases of older players like "I had a three-day cold war with my spouse over fighting for an iPad to play Doudizhu." There was even a widely circulated screenshot on social media of a WeChat Moment showing a "Level 5 Zhao Yun at 3 a.m. belonging to a 60-year-old lady," with netizens jokingly commenting, "My grandma is Changshan Zhao Zilong."

This shows that with the popularization of the Internet, games are no longer attracting only young people. The person who "crits" you in the King's Canyon may not be a third-grade elementary school student, but a retired lady fighting through the night...

02

The Toughest 618: Brands Turn to Games to Win Over Customers

600 million people wake up early and stay up late on Alipay to plant trees together;

Over 50 million people water their plants online in the Baba Farm every day;

Since the launch of Ant Manor, netizens across the country have donated over 15 billion eggs.

Even though the "building construction" game became popular in a somewhat controversial way, and last year's "cat raising" was often criticized, with product managers of several popular games/activities being "scolded badly" online, the data showing millions or even tens of millions of UVs for e-commerce games indicates that mini-games, as a marketing tool, do possess unique value characteristics that traditional marketing cannot match.

1. No worries about acquiring new members, with an average fission of over 5 people per person

Traditional "bargaining" or "helping" to share new products may make people feel like you're taking advantage of small gains, but asking people to water plants won't make you feel embarrassed at all.

The appeal of the game itself drives consumers to spontaneously complete a series of sharing behaviors. By packaging the original interest-related sharing behaviors into fun social interactions such as "I want to revive," "water my tree," or "help me feed the chicken," more new users are attracted to participate, thereby reducing the overall cost of acquiring new customers. This is the magic of game-sharing scenarios.

During Christmas, Moxi Technology created the popular WeChat Moments game "Red Carpet Makeup Party" for high-end beauty brand CT (Charlotte Tilbury). Through strong fission among players, the game successfully launched the brand's first interactive marketing campaign in the domestic market.

2. 30 minutes per day, capturing users' entertainment time

User dwell time has always been a zero-sum game, with major platforms/brands constantly seeking better solutions to attract consumers.

The natural fun of games can occupy more of consumers' time, effectively increasing user stickiness and usage time, thereby bringing more commercial value to brand marketing. The "2022 Gamified Marketing Insights Report" shows that 58% of young people spend 10-30 minutes a day playing marketing games, 67% of consumers are willing to play for more than 10 days, and some even stick with long-term games for more than half a year, such as Ant Forest.

During Double 11 in 2021, Moxi Technology provided Genki Forest with the "Genki Elimination" game, with a total of 150W+ participants and an average daily online time of about 20 minutes per user. User retention, game duration, and membership penetration ranked first among Taobao shopping mini-programs during Double 11, and the order conversion rate increased sixfold!

3. Over 100 million impressions, making the brand "remembered" in the game

Elevator and subway advertisements are often annoying, but their promotional intensity and accuracy are unmatched by other media. Due to space limitations, small numbers, and highly uniform specifications, design, and appearance, consumers are prompted to form a unique visual and cognitive impression.

Gamified marketing builds on this foundation by combining brand IP to create more interesting interactions. It deeply integrates the visual elements of brand products with game scenes, displaying relevant brand words in multiple places, allowing consumers to deepen their brand impression while playing the game, further understand product features, and thus be quietly influenced in their consumption decisions.

During this year's 618, Moxi Technology created a simulation management and synthesis game for Taobao called "Little Mei's Courtyard," where players cultivate various types of magical crops and simulate the management of an old house courtyard, further stimulating consumers' desire to collect, explore, and share. The game accumulated over 5 million active users in two weeks, with a daily ad view rate of up to 80% and over 100 million brand impressions.

4. Replacing physical rewards with virtual benefits, reducing customer acquisition costs to as low as 15 cents

Early subsidy variations helped brands achieve rapid dissemination but still relied heavily on rewards. High subsidies not only burdened platforms and brands but also lost their appeal to consumers. The severely involutionary and homogenized marketing market urgently needed a new approach.

The reason why Baba Farm can drive hundreds of millions of users to voluntarily complete daily check-ins, memberships, and watch ads is not solely due to the reward of "a box of free fruit." The game's setting based on real farms, the fun experience of simulated planting, and the sense of mission to help farmers increase income are the main driving forces for consumers to complete marketing tasks.

Replacing physical rewards with virtual value can further help brands reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Moxi Technology provided Estée Lauder's Tmall flagship store with a multi-person quiz game, where each yuan of prize value directly led to nearly 8 times the GMV amount, with customer acquisition costs as low as 15 cents.

5. Battle records and hot chats: triggering UGC world-of-mouth marketing

As the cost of KOL endorsements continues to rise, the concept of UGC (User Generated Content) has gradually entered the plans of marketing operators. After all, consumers trust content generated by real users more, just like Douban's movie reviews, which are a reference for many people when choosing movies.

In this regard, the challenge and excitement of games can constantly stimulate users' desire to win or lose, thereby encouraging players to share in order to gain opportunities for revival or upgrades. At the same time, games can also create multiple strong sharing points through personal tags or battle record rankings, further stimulating users' desire to share and forming traffic fission, just like the "battle record sharing" of the MVP in Honor of Kings.

In the "Cloud Ranch" game created by Moxi Technology for Adopt A Cow, consumers become dairy farm owners and simulate breeding operations. Through the spontaneous social sharing of Cloud Ranch players, the game achieved rapid growth from 0 to 50,000 participating users within a week.

6. Engaging people with games, creating new consumption experiences

The "Post-95s Data Report" released by Social Talent shows that 71% of post-95s prefer experiential consumption. Gamified marketing, with the inherent entertainment value of games, continuously increases user dwell time and potential transaction opportunities through content mapping and fun social interactions, becoming a new revolution in brand marketing.

Currently, marketing games have become frequent "guests" in key resource positions on many mainstream platforms, serving as important carriers for platforms to attract users.

Alimama's official report shows that the overall deduplicated MAU of marketing games is 260 million, with a year-on-year growth rate of over 40%.

Youzan, as a private domain traffic platform for many brands, has seen its mini-game market GMV grow by over 420% year-on-year.

Currently, marketing games are playing an increasingly crucial role in holiday promotions and private domain operations. As more players enter the field, standing out from similar products will become a new challenge for brands and platforms alike.

Now, Taobao's "Meow Games" has arrived as scheduled, and the "Metaverse Venue" has also made a belated appearance. Perhaps in the near future, we will have our first delivery address in this digital migration. We sincerely wish the product managers of this year's promotional games won't be "scolded badly" again.

Author's note