Gamification helps organizations crowdsource ideas, drive and even train people for improved job performance.

Tech research giant Gartner suggests that these activities are less compelling in their normal settings but more appealing when gamified to engage people in completing a series of tasks.

Gamification, which integrates gaming elements like points, levels and leaderboards into campaigns to encourage engagement and guide specific outcomes, isn’t entirely new. Many of us participate in frequent flyer programs, advancing through gold and platinum mileage levels to earn rewards.

Many people credit McDonald’s as a pre-digital gamification pioneer with its Monopoly game, where customers collect game pieces for food prizes.

In the digital realm, geo-location apps like Foursquare let customers earn badges by visiting various store locations or patronizing a business multiple times.

Communicators can leverage gamification to carry messages, create awareness and affect measureable actions.

Matt Simpson, marketing director for Bulbstorm’s social engagement platform, considers gamification a means to an end.

“Center your objectives around driving endorsements through social channels, building affinity through entertaining user experiences, creating loyalty through reward programs, or providing compelling online experiences for direct-response results,” he says. “Gamification supports all these.”

Bulbstorm developed a Facebook idea contest for World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), where fans shared dream matchups of current vs. former stars. Other fans interacted with this user-generated content by commenting and voting the best of 6,800 matchups submitted to the top of social leaderboards.  The contest yielded 197,000 fan engagements and seven times the average WWE page views, communicating WWE’s legacy and supporting successful pay-per-view events.

Marshall Lager, managing principal of New York-based Third Idea Consulting, believes that the PR function is well-suited to gamification.

“Wherever you have quotas to reach and opportunities for role play, you have the foundation for adding a game-like layer to performance. Imagine an online pin map showing where press releases get read or rebroadcast — just watching it propagate is great motivation,” he says.

Lager suggests that adding a competitive component, where a PR team or individual achieving the broadest reach or landing the most coveted market receives recognition, makes top performance a compelling goal.

Lager adds that since media training is already a roleplaying exercise, why not make it a roleplaying game?

“Bringing challenge, positive feedback and recognition to tasks can increase their impact tenfold,” he says.

This post also appears as the February Digital Dialogue column in the PR Tactics Journal, published by the Public Relations Society of America.

I attended Gartner’s 360 Customer Summit this week as a Sage North America representative. Two sessions lead by Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light – 4th Edition, were among the highlights. Many opportunities for PR  and communicators at large to help advance Social CRM (customer relationship management) surfaced within the sessions. Note that I’m not trying to evoke the “who owns social” debate here, but rather reinforce as many have that this is everyone’s space to engage in and benefit from.

Strategies for Engaging the Social Customer that Actually Work (Session 1)

Paul’s first session included Heidi Tucker of InsideView, Brian Komar of the Center for American Progress and Comcast’s Frank Eliason as panelists.

During a pre-panel hallway chat with Eliason he shared that PR has been one of the biggest advocates for his team’s well known customer support efforts at Comcast. He also gave nods to JetBlue and Southwest within the airline industry as prime examples of PR-lead social networking programs. Frank centered on PR’s concern for brand sentiment and reputation as reasons PR can play a major role in social media management; and he certainly wasn’t dismissing the value marketing colleagues bring to the mix as well.

As the panel progressed Paul cited Gartner’s Ed Thompson who earlier reminded consumer thinking has penetrated the enterprise, therefore we need to recognize at the end of the day we’re always dealing with consumers. At the end of BtoB there is still a C, as Paul put it.

And here we get deeper into Social CRM – Paul’s definition which includes elements he crowdsourced is good reference and grounding. You can find it in Jacob Morgan’s recent presentation (slide 27) for the Public Relations Society of America’s T3 tech communicator’s conference, and elsewhere. Open collaboration is a centerpiece of the definition supported by processes, systems etc.

I like how the “moment of truth” explanation many customer experience experts use fits here. We’re all looking to connect and solve problems through social technologies and the personal relationships they help develop, whether the “problem” is what movie to spend our leisure funds on or a much more complex personal or business issue.

Social CRM: Where is it today and where is it going tomorrow? (Session 2)

During his second session, co-presented with Gartner’s Michael Moaz, Greenberg explained that the social transformation of recent years has not been a business revolution but rather a communications revolution. Clear, concise, and I find this a nice nod to how the PR profession can participate in advancing the social web. PR practitioners, given their history and competencies, are in position to help nurture a good portion of the collaboration we seek, now in a more direct manner with customers and sort of as social glue if you will.

Dr. Natalie Petouhoff, a chief strategist for Weber Shandwick, suggested from the audience that brands need to be wary of becoming fractured if everyone in an organization is off pursuing different social media agendas.

Some orchestration is required and I think PR folks are in a great position to insert value throughout the organization-to-customer communications spectrum. Most of us have heard the saying that everyone’s job (sales, marketing, support etc) includes some PR elements. Social CRM helps emphasize and expand upon this, while presenting a wonderful opportunity to prove it out.

Moaz brought the session in for a nice landing with a well-placed Marshall McLuhan analogy – a fave among PR historians – recalling McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” proclamation. Moaz pointed out that McLuhan was talking about TV then and that we’re now always connected via mobile devices. We’re all the medium. “You’ve gotta be part of the stream,” he noted. “Businesses will go social because that is how you survive today. Resistance is futile!”

The “Socializing Industry Analyst Relations” article I wrote for PRSA Tactics published online today. It also appears in the December print edition which mails to PRSA members and Tactics subscribers.

The piece reviews suggestions for applying social media specifically within the analyst relations (AR) discipline. These can also be broadly considered by all professional communicators.

My thanks to Carter Lusher of SageCircle and Scott Nelson of Gartner for making time to interview and be quoted. Each had good insight to share. More so than space allowed – which is often the case when I have opportunities for interesting conversations like these. I’m hanging on to my notes and their numbers for a potential sequel down the road!

Thanks also go out to John Elsasser, Randi Mason, and the PRSA Tactics/Strategist staff at the Public Relations Society of America for having me contribute to our profession’s body of knowledge. Ok, that may sound a bit formal, but I like how it rings. And in normal speak, I’m having fun writing.

I encourage visitors to check out the article at: http://www.prsa.org/supportfiles/news/viewNews.cfm?pNewsID=842347715

See you next week.