The gamification of marketing and branding is here to stay.  According to M2 Research, in 2010 corporations spent USD$100 million on gamification, with that figure expected to rise to $2.8 billion by 2016. That’s a serious amount of useful fun and entertainment.

If you feel that the time is ripe for you and your brand to jump in and explore this new marketing trend, we have the perfect opportunity for you to pop your toe in the  water and come out with something you can really use!

Gamedojo (in partnership with Idealog and NZ Marketing magazine) present The Gamification Lab – held on two consecutive half-days, 26 June and 3 July.  If you’ve heard the buzzword and feel it’s time for some hands-on expert guidance, it’s the place to be.

To define it briefly, Gamification is the application of successful game design principles to non-game activities such as brands, social media, loyalty campaigns or apps. The results speak for themselves: better sales conversion rates, retention, brand affect, social sharing and engagement with your brand.

Imagine customers spending hours with your brand every week…

G-Lab will be facilitated by Mitch Olson (at left, and full of inspired gamification thoughts after an edifying chat with the labrador), co-founder of New Zealand’s most successful social game Smallworlds, and Stephen Knightly, (below) Chairperson of the NZ Game Developers Association – they both say that the market is right for New Zealand brands to invest in gamification.

“There’s certainly lots of interest in gamification locally.  Many brands have told us that they’ve conducted what they view as nice experiments, but feel unsure about how to take the next steps,” says Olson. “At the end of the Gamification Lab, workshop attendees will have a business case for applying gamification principles to their brand that they’ll be able to take back to their organisation and present to colleagues.”

Olson sees the Gamification Lab as a way to bridge the two disciplines of game experience design and marketing. “We’ve had over 7 million people in SmallWorlds playing our game since we launched. These people voluntarily choose to spend considerable hours with our game each and every week. When was the last time you could say that of an ad campaign?”

Tasty Gamification Strategies to Take-away

G-Lab will go beyond abstract concepts to identify specific strategies that marketers can apply to their own campaigns. The Lab is split over two Tuesday morning sessions, held one week apart. Attendees are encouraged to bring sticky marketing problems or upcoming campaigns – we’ll workshop these so you have some tasty gamification takeaways to share with your colleagues. Yum Yum.

For more information and to register just click here. To maintain an effective, “seriously” cutting edge environment, G-Lab is limited to just 20 places. We could say “register now!! Make sure you don’t miss out!!” – but we’re sure you were thinking that anyway.