What got you obsessed with Google Pay’s Diwali Stamps Campaign
Four core human drivers that have made this campaign a success
The Diwali parties of 2019 had one more element to it — discussions around the Google Pay stamps and exchange of them, going by the name of the campaign #StampswaliDiwali ( meaning Diwali of Stamps).
While contests of collecting stickers aren’t new for brands, digitally executing it has helped Google execute it at such a scale. Also, the credit for the virality of the campaign has to go to the ease of requesting and gifting stamps.
So what’s driving this behaviour?
There is certainly more to this behaviour than just the reward of Rs. 250 and Rs. 1 lakh. Understanding the game elements that are involved using the ‘Octalysis Framework’ should help us understand this better.
The Octalysis framework for gamification is an amazing tool developed by Yu-kai Chou that helps in determining core drivers that motivate users towards certain activities, both virtually or in real-life. According to the framework, broadly there are eight drivers and all of them motivate differently, some in an inspiring and empowering way, while some in a manipulative and obsessive manner.
While all the 8 drivers can be seen in the Octagon below, the drivers that of Google Pay Stamps campaign include:
Social Influence, Unpredictability, Scarcity and the Ownership

- Unpredictability driver is extremely common in sweepstakes or lottery programs of companies. It is the element of surprise that manipulates users to engage more with a system, without a doubt, this is one of the primary drivers in the stamps campaign. The kind of stamp that might get unlocked is highly unpredictable, that spikes intrigue among users to make more payments to unlock them.
In addition, the high rate of unpredictability when users scan for Diwali items to earn new stamps. This drives users to scan items on a daily basis in a hope to unlocks the missing ones in the set.

Also, whenever a stamp is gifted by a friend, the notification doesn’t say what stamp it is. This trigger forces users to open the app to see the stamp every time, further driving users to engage with the campaign.
Google Pay mastered this unpredictability driver with this ‘Scratch card’ based cash backs.

- Social Influence is a driver that encompasses all social elements such as social acceptance, competition among friends/ peers and social responses. One of the triggers for the Google campaign has been friends gifting and requesting for specific stamps, generating intrigue among others in the network.
Further, it has also been seen that certain stamps especially ‘Flower’ can be earned mostly from the friend’s network. This makes the social influence drive very strong, thereby driving discussions even offline. - Ownership: This is the drive where users are motivated because they feel like they own something. When a player feels ownership, they innately want to make what they own better and own even more.
This driver is so high in the stamp campaign because after earning first 3 stamps users feel that they are almost so close to unlocking the entire set of five stamps. - Scarcity: This is one of the core drivers that has made the campaign most successful i.e. the scarcity of the Rangoli stamp. It is the drive of wanting something because one can’t have it immediately, this is the drive that motivates users to think of it day long.
Thousands of people have tweeted about their frustration and there are many blogs that have surfaced claiming to share useful hacks for unlocking the rangoli stamp.
The search trends between 25th Oct- 2nd Nov shows the impact of scarcity drivers among Google Pay users.


Usually, products balance their core drivers, so that the users don’t get saturated and leave the system. According to Octalysis tool, the experience in Google Pay Stamps campaign is heavily focused on Black Hat Core Drivers, which means that it is great at driving user behaviour, but may leave the system in the long run, which should not be a concern as the campaign ends on 11th November 2019.
The experience is heavily focused on Black Hat Core Drives, which means that it is great at driving user behaviour, but users may not feel good and may leave your system in the long run (think of some Zynga products).

