Social media, a term that didn’t exist 5 years ago, is now one of the key means for brands to connect with the customers, and for people to connect with friends and peers. Now social media is moving beyond the currency of ‘friends’ and ‘followers’ and adding new measures of engagement, new ways of motivating participation, and new ways of rewarding success.

The most obvious way that rewards and motivation are filtering into the social media landscape this is through the introduction of game-like elements, such as points rewards, unlocking achievements and abilities (levelling up), and then measures of success such as high score tables, leaderboards, badges.

A great example of this ‘gamification’ is Nike+ from Nike. This takes the usually solitary pastime of running and turns it into a social experience as well as a motivation tool, by recording data from your runs and then uploading them to the Nike+ site from a range of devices, including iPhone and iPod.

As well as allowing you to track your runs and review your running history, you can set goals for distance or time, and reach levels based on total distance covered. You can also tweet or update your Facebook status with details of your activity, set challenges to your friends and also join public challenges. The iPhone app and new Nike+ SportWatch GPS also allow mapping of your runs using GPS data.

Fans of Nike+ (of which I am one – here’s my profile) find that the positive feedback loop it creates encourages them to run more, set targets, and ultimately perform better. The game-like elements help to make users more proactive and provide a support network for ongoing encouragement as well as celebrating achievements

Another great example that has recently launched is the Heineken Star Player iPhone app This allows users to play live alongside Champions League football matches and try and predict when a goal will be scored, to earn points. There are also other opportunities to score points by guessing the outcome of free kicks and corners, plus quiz questions. It provides a new angle to watching a football match with friends and an added level of interest. There is the inevitable connection with Facebook and Twitter and the opportunity to build mini-leagues of friends, alongside the global league of all users. The Heineken branding is ever-present but fairly low-key. Whilst points don’t represent anything other than your score which can be compared against other users, perhaps future versions will translate points into a virtual currency which can be used to acquire Heineken merchandise.

Gamification

Star Player manages to avoid the biggest problem of adding game elements to social networking, which is that they add the reward mechanisms of games but with no real underlying gameplay, or compelling raison d’etre. In Gamification and It’s Discontents, Steven Poole highlights the problems in adding a thin game layer over real life, in that it can provide a virtual presenteeism rather than any real degree of engagement:

“isn’t the idea of being ‘mayor’ of your local Starbucks or indie equivalent, as is possible in Foursquare, rather strange? You don’t become mayor in real life just by turning up at the town hall more than anyone else.”

Poole also discusses a new social game, Chromaroma, based on users travelling habits around London. By using the journey data from your Oyster card (the contactless ticketing technology used on buses and the Underground in London), and now also your Barclays Cycle Hire (aka Boris-bike) travel data, it aims to add a game-like dimension to commuting around London. Users, once signed up, choose to be on the Blue, Green, Red or Yellow team, with the aim of taking ownership of certain stations or lines, based on where they start or complete their journeys. But does anyone really play Chromaroma?

I joined Chromaroma, and it seems rather pointless, if you’ll excuse the pun. In its current incarnation I can’t see it changing the way users travel across London, nor does it turn London into some kind of consensual game-space the way that, say, Streetwars or NikeGrid did, or PacManhattan does in New York. Earning points for completing a travel journey is unlikely to change anyone’s travel habits or which station they travel too, and so rewarding users for doing what they do anyway is rather meaningless. Perhaps Chromaroma will morph into a more narrative, ARG game route like Perplexcity rather than the check-in based Foursquare model.

Gamification, or ‘pointsification’, as Margaret Robertson of Hide and Seek insists it should be called, does not create a full game experience because there are no meaningful consequences from the choices the player makes on the game itself. In other words, if you don’t go for a run, Nike+ will still be waiting there for you when you do.

“Games give their players meaningful choices that meaningfully impact on the world of the game. Deciding to run two miles today rather than one, or drink two liters of Coke instead of four are just choices of quantity.”

The choices you make don’t affect the game at all; the process is all one way rather than being fully interactive. A game should a series of unfolding series of actions which have consequences, positive and negative.

“Games offer fail conditions as well as win conditions. They are able to deliver the high levels of emotional engagement they’re famed for because they’re also adept at delivering the lows of loss, humiliation and frustration. The world of user experience design from which the concept of gamification has arisen has spent the last twenty years erasing loss, humiliation and frustration from its flows. A world of badges and points only offers upwards escalation, and without the pain of loss and failure, these mean far less. And when this upward escalation is based only on accumulation of points, rather than on expressions of my choices and my skills, then this further strips out the sense of agency and competence, so crucial to the emotional and neurological buzz we get from gaming.”

1-Up or 2-Up

Robertson is rightly critical of such a restrictive view of gaming because it can obscure the deeper potential that games may offer not only social media but also customer loyalty and brand engagement. Games like Heineken Star Player show the way that social games can provide an a interactive side-channel, an approach that I can see becoming increasingly commonplace for brands and for business. There is also massive potential for games to become much more integral to the incentives and motivation market, to move beyond the simple game-like elements of rewards, points and achievements to a more dynamic in-game experience full of choices and consequences. These can be used support not just competitive play based on sales performance or other indicators, but also co-operative play such as team-building, training and knowledge sharing.

An incentive that relies on non-redemption is a risky strategy.

The Guardian’s Capital Letters is a great place to discover tales of investment scams, corporate greed, shameful customer service, and unsustainable business practices.

From a recent edition comes another tale of woe:

“I am struggling to get my cash back from a contract with The Mobile Outlet. I signed up last September for a £35-a-month deal which will provide my money back if I claim cashbacks according to their rules. I sent off bills in January by recorded delivery, and a second lot in April. But despite phone calls and letters, I have got nowhere. Can you help?”

As Tony Levene replies:

“As with many of the other companies operating “free calls by voucher redemption” promotions, The Mobile Outlet is bust. The cashback model failed to work – it needed more than 70% of customers to forget to redeem (these would be thrown off the scheme) to be successful, but most set their phones to send reminders to themselves so it slipped few minds.”

Trying to operate a business on the basis of non-redemption is a risky strategy, and one that puts your objectives at odds with that of your customers.

We have seen that non-redemption is the dark secret of the voucher industry, with non-redemption rates as high as 30% putting money straight into the pockets of retailers and voucher companies. For many voucher companies much of their profits stems from non-redemption. However, requiring 70% is an insane business model that proved unsustainable, especially if the process of redemption is straightforward.

At IncentiveDirect, using our SweepBack technology, any unspent points are recirculated back to the clients, who can then redistribute them to others, or use it to fund other incentive activity such as surveys or product knowledge tests.

Transport for London have announced this week, that London Underground are ready to launch a system to enable passengers to pay for their train journeys with a mobile phone. The system would initially be launched with handset manufacturer Nokia and phone network O2, but would almost certainly extend to other mobile makes and networks.

This inevitable step follows the launch of the Oyster contact card payment system, and last month’s launch of a combined credit card and Oyster card from Barclaycard.

Over 50% of all phones sold in Japan have the embedded RFID chips that enable this technology. Contactless payment by mobile phones is set to become part of everyday life.

At IncentiveDirect, we believe that the future of incentives are mobile and connected, combining the freedom of choice of vouchers, with the communication and reporting features that a mobile, online solution can offer. We continue to monitor developments in this sector, and evaluate tools and technologies.

How much would you value not having to do a 2-hour round-trip commute to work?

Flexible working practices are gaining ground as the means of improving employees work-life balance and improving staff retention. Mobile telecommunications and cheaper laptop computers mean that knowledge workers no longer need to be chained to a desk.

But a study by the UK’s City & Guilds and Institute of Leadership & Management has concluded that many managers are suspicious of employees working from home.

As reported in Management Issues, managers may outwardly support more flexible working patterns:

“but scratch the surface and managers remain deeply unhappy about letting employees out of their sight, much preferring to manage a team that is physically sat there in front of them.

The research has found that, while nine out of 10 managers said they trusted remote workers and three quarters recognised they were more productive, a significant minority admitted they were still unable to break their old-fashioned “presenteeism” management style.

This was despite the fact that new technology was making remote working a much more viable option.”

As we have previously asserted, work is not somewhere you go, it’s something you do. Attempting to enforce mid-20th Century working practices based on Taylorist time-management principles is doomed to fail.

The old image of the ‘helicopter’ boss, hovering demoniacally over his staff, will give way to a more enlightened, assertive boss, using communication technologies positively to monitor performance and productivity, and engage with staff.

Incentives are an essential part of the new work economy, rewarding productivity, encouraging proactive behaviours, and helping staff set their own goals. Online systems such as iD-points can operate seamlessly across a distributed organisation, wherever it’s staff may be.

But these systems can also to build an element of community amongst users. Using the news feature to announce winners of monthly performance awards, for instance, is a good way to highlight the success stories of the company, and to emphasise a shared endeavour.

In 50 years time, the idea of a corporate office building may be as alien as a Victorian workhouse is to us today. The rules of engagement between staff and employers are changing. Heads-up companies will plan to promote self-sufficiency, look to hire self-motivated staff, and inspire them further with well structured, tactical incentive campaigns.

Remember, iD-points can be spent on IT equipment for that tricked out home office!