How gamification helps promoting Microsoft’s keyboards

If you’re in Canada, perhaps you’ve come across this recent promotion by Microsoft.

Basically, you choose one of the Microsoft keyboards (for promotional purposes), participate in a typing game where you type one paragraph (which is about this guy who really loves using Microsoft products) as fast as possible and you’re entered for a chance to win a Surface product. I consider myself as a fairly fast eagle typer (Korean jargon meaning I mostly only use my index and middle fingers, sometimes ring fingers for typing) and this is what I got (challenge me! feel free to use the discount code if interested below, but you can get your own by playing your own game as well).

Surely, the entire gaming process is full of Microsoft product promotions that talk about keyboard features and a target typing paragraph is full of contents that entice you to use Microsoft products (can’t complain. I just played the game Microsoft made using Microsoft account). Despite being bombarded with Microsoft-specific, explicit marketing, I didn’t feel any unpleasantness at all to be honest because it used keyboard typing game to grab my attention, or also known as gamification. I bring the following definition of ‘gamification’ from Gartner.

“Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.”

Put it simply, remember how you collect Starbucks stars and Second Cup points to get free coffee or something? That’s gamification driven by customers’ desire to accomplish goals and win awards. The same goes for giving your kids treats in return for completing errands or helping parents. It is simply not limited to having physical video game controllers shooting aliens down, but is a part of societies, while not explicitly visible. The only difference is that Candy Crush puts you in a contained, limited space for gaming concentration, while gamification is meant to be implicitly embededd as parts of business strategies. In that sense, #CanadasFastestTypist marketing by Microsoft surely made keyboard promotions a lot more entertaining than simply putting banners and ads that are limited to unidirectional communication.

I am especially a proponent of gamification especially after my experience organizing a youth science class a few years ago.What I simply did was, instead of giving students booklets and making them carry them for references, I put three blank spaces in the back of the booklets.

Then at the end of each class, instructors gave students stickers with cartoons drawn by a famous Korean cartoonist. It was a big hit, meaning kids LOVED THEM and were chasing after the stickers, and while it does not mean much, it was extremely surprising for me to see how a power of accomplishments and milestones designed to be viewed tangibly give such strong motivations to people.

In conclusion, I visualize my post in the following way:

Let me be honest. There’s nothing too much special about this gamification-driven procedure I mentioned. The whole point is, however, the following: have a clear objective on why we need this, and how this particular objective will help the team get to the next goal. Then that task should be able to be measured based on baselines for performance assessments (does SMART sound familiar?). That was some talk about gamification, but most importantly…JUST HOW FAST IS THE #1 typer when I thought I typed so fast already?!