Games and Play in Ambient Marketing

Games and Play in Ambient Marketing MCMV10006 Game Studies: Serious/Game/Play Gamification is a widespread trend that has also affected advertising, especially ambient marketing. Two case studies are presented to identify how game elements have been purposefully included in marketing executions. Analysis of the gamification elements present in these two examples observes a transformation of ambient marketing to ambient gaming. Keywords: gamification, ambient marketing, outdoor advertising, ambient gaming K.R. Waldbillig - 3924548 11/18/2012

Games and Play in Ambient Marketing

K.R. Waldbillig – 3924548 2

Introduction

The rise of technology has forced marketing to reinvent itself – marketers have had to

become less like artists and more like game designers.1 Dalsace and Markovitch (2009)

predict that the adoption of techno-marketing2, or marketing that utilizes information

communication technology, will determine the evolution of the marketing industry as a whole.

Coupled with technology, the traditional non-game context of marketing can take on design

elements of videogames; ambient marketing is being gamified.3

The challenges to gamifying marketing are that its messages are distributed

simultaneously on multiple channels, are encountered in many forms of interface, and are

processed using a variety of apparati. Effectiveness and return-on-investment are measured

on several scales alone and in confluence. When a gaming perspective is introduced, the

objective of the marketing and the ability to measure it is drawn into question. Gamification

itself has a distinct discourse that divides it from traditional video games, but to date it has not

been applied directly to ambient marketing discourse. The variety between and among specific

instances of this type of marketing warrants a red thread among theoretical claims. To

understand how ambient marketing is gamified, we must also consider the effects of

communication networks and ubiquity of software as well as the effects of pervasive urban

screens.

The main purpose of this study is to reveal how theories about gamification and play

can inform the implementation of ambient marketing. The goal of this research is to stimulate

discussion amongst practicing marketers in order to produce more cost-effective ambient ads.

First, I draw on descriptions from marketing scholars to define what ambient marketing is and

isn’t. Second, I examine the existing gamification discourse to understand how its viewpoints

would affect the design of ambient marketing. Finally, I analyze two specific case studies to

illustrate the marketing theory’s intersections or diversions from gamification theory.

Paraphrasing Jesper Juul – having a clear understanding of how gamification functions in

ambient marketing can show how we can create new kinds of games that try new things.4 I

will argue that we need to extend the definition of ambient marketing to include ambient

games, which will help uncover ways to make the outdoor medium more memorable, make the

1 Jenkins, Henry. (2005) <Games, The New Lively Art> Handbook of Computer Game Studies. MIT Press: Cambridge. Pg 175-189 2 Dalsace, Frédéric and Dmitri G. Markovitch. (2009) <Is Marketing Becoming a Dirty Word? A Longitudinal Study of Public Perceptions of

Marketing> www.hec.fr Groupe HEC, Paris. 3 Deterding, Sebastian et. al.(2011). <From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining ‘Gamification’? MindTrek ’11. Tampere, Finland. ACM. Page1. 4 Juul, Jesper. (2003) <The Game, The Player, The World: Looking for A Heart of Gameness> Half-Real. .



message more impactful, and encourage diffusion past the boundaries of the urban public

space.

What is Ambient Marketing?

Traditionally, ambient marketing (also known as outdoor or guerilla

marketing/advertising) has been considered as advertising in unusual and unexpected places.

Instead of the familiar environment expected when voluntarily deciding to play a game in front

of a screen, these advertisements are encountered unpredictably in an urban public setting.

Hutter and Hoffman (2011) describe guerilla marketing “as an attempt of gaining the attention

of a large number of recipients at relatively low costs by means of a surprise effect and a

diffusion effect”.5 The surprise effect is particularly important, considering the regularity and

volume of advertising messages to which the average human is exposed on a daily basis. The

diffusion effect characterizes ads that evoke emotions and stimulate the consumer to share his

branded experience socially. Wisneski et. al. (1998) confirm that instead of information

competing for relatively limited real estate, ambient displays move information off the screen

into the physical environment.6 Ambient displays are part of a broad ‘umbrella’ term ambient

media, which encompass ambient intelligence, ambient marketing/advertising, and ambient

entertainment.7

Yet marketing and advertising are expected to show up on Facebook, on social games

like Words with Friends, even in meetups in the virtual world of Second Life. The door of a

restroom stall, the sidewalk towards a school, and the grocery store floor are all possible non-

traditional spaces where marketing messages can be conveyed. The audience becomes

habituated to not only the non-traditional location of the ads, but over time becomes indifferent

to their content. That’s not to say that advertising on these channels can’t be partially effective,

but it tends to be quite cost intensive. Luxton and Drummond (2000) confirm: “the ‘unusualty’

raises the level of interest of the consumer and hence their willingness to expend cognitive

effort to process the message”.8 Novelty is regarded as an essential feature of all advertising,

but today’s fragmented and noisy media landscape makes it paradoxically more difficult to

reach consumers, even in spaces that are still considered non-traditional. Thus, marketers 5 Hutter, Katharina and Stefan Hoffman. (2011) <Guerilla Marketing: The Nature of the Concept and Propositions for Further Research> Asian

Journal of Marketing. Volume 5 No 2. Page 1. 6 Wisneski, Craig, et al. (1998) <Ambient displays: Turning architectural space into an interface between people and digital information>

Cooperative buildings: Integrating information, organization, and architecture. Tangible Media Group, Penn State University. 7 Wierzbicki, Robert J., Christian Sommerschuh, and Stefan Bernstein. (2010) <Digital Housepaint – A New Class of Ambient Media>

fachgruppe Ambient Media. University of Applied Sciences Mittweida, Germany. 8 Luxton, Sandra and Lachlan Drummond. (2010) <What is this thing called ‘Ambient Advertising’?> Australian & New Zealand Marketing

Academy Annual Conference. Anzmac.info



have shifted to providing brand ‘experiences’ that engage consumers on several channels

throughout the purchase process in order to build deeper relationships.9 As we will see,

gamification can be considered an expansion of such a branded experience, as it invites the

audience to interact with the brand message in novel ways.

Luxton and Drummond (2000) also include in their definition of ambient marketing that

“it is the first or only ad execution to do so”10 which extends both novelty and quality

thresholds. However, this also creates criteria for gamification, in that some traditional game

mechanics may be considered “blasé” by the audience. Cronin (2006) says this attitude results

because of the audience’s indifference and unwillingness to process the outdoor medium in

general. 11 To confirm Cronin’s research, Tracy Stokes of Forrester Research (2011) states

that today, most digital out-of-home installments still don’t have the creativity necessary to

make a meaningful impact.12 In a 2011 study of brand perception, it was confirmed that target

audiences exhibit little engagement with non-interactive outdoor billboards, as opposed to

other media such as TV (Wilson and Till).13 If the type of engagement that marketers desire to

foster with ambient ads is gameful, game-like, or gamified, then Ben Schouten of TU/e (2011)

guides them “to design for playful activities that are seamlessly integrated within our daily lives

or in such a way that the boundaries between other activities and play disappear or blur”.14

Finally, Eyles and Pinchbeck (2011) present research results which argue that gamification

has altered the way that ambient play is implemented in the real world.15 This calls for an

investigation of which gamification principles morph through ambient marketing and how they

might transform to ambient gaming.

What is Gamification?

The subcultures of hardcore gaming and computer programming defer on whether there

should be an overtly corporate marketing or product placement purpose to games. Game

studies scholar Ian Bogost would contend that anyone trying to sell badges and leaderboards

9 Moor, Elizabeth. (2003) <Branded Space: The scope of ‘new marketing’> Journal of Consumer Culture. Volume 3 No. 1. Sage. 0. 10 (as cited by) Abdul-Razzaq et. al. (2009) <Cutting Though The Clutter: A Field Experiment Measuring Behavior Responses to an Ambient

Form of Advertising>. Australian & New Zealand Marketing Academy Annual Conference. 30 November 2009. Duplication.net.au 11 Cronin, A.M. (2006) <Advertising and the metabolism of the city: urban space, commodity rhythms> Environment and planning D: Society

and Space. Volume 24. Page 626. 12 Stokes, Tracey. (2011) <Digital Remakes Out-Of-Home Advertising> Forrester Research. Access to full report provided by Bentley

University. 13 Wilson, R. T. and B. D. Till (2011) <Effects of outdoor advertising: Does location matter?> Psychology & Marketing. Volume 28, Issue 9.

Wiley. Page 932. 14 Schouten, dr. Ben. (2011) <Role of Play> Inaugural lecture. Department of Industrial Design. alexandria.tue.nl Page 14. 15 Eyles, Mark and dr. Dan Pinchbeck.(2011) <Playful ambiance> DiGRA 2011 Conference: Think Design Play. eyles.co.uk Page 14.



as ways to increase sales is “bullshit”.16 He argues that it’s the emotion and skill development

invested in playing games that yields rewards, not social status gained through arbitrary

achievements. Even with the hype about ambient media and ambient gaming, there are valid

doubts about the ability to measure direct causal increases of customer acquisition rates or

product sales because of gamification. Following Bogost’s logic, marketers who consider an ad

successful just for the sake of metrics, or for the mere usership of its game elements, aren’t

looking deeply enough. Furthermore, measuring the success of a gamified ad cannot take

place in a vacuum with the redemption of rewards, but rather the motivations of the user to

play the game in the first place. Bogost goes so far as to say that gamified marketing that

exists solely for the purpose of capturing customer data and disregards of the material benefit

of the user is ‘exploitationware’ where real rewards are replaced with virtual ones.17

Even Gabe Zichermann himself contends that marketing isn’t just about free stuff.18 At

the core of his take on the topic are pleasure and status, two factors that can sometimes

coincide directly with ambient marketing’s purposes. Yet for Gabe, the bottom line success

measurement of gamification is increase in sales. He even goes so far as to criticize “lazy

marketers who give discounts” and that free stuff “does nothing for your brand long-term”. He

maintains that by borrowing engagement tactics from games, marketing can convince

consumers to take loyalty and purchasing actions.19 As will be indicated in the case study

analysis, actual implementation of ambient marketing conflicts with Zichermann’s discourse in

that marketers wanting to providing positive brand experiences and wanting to increase sales

are two mutually exclusive objectives that call for different types of ambient gaming executions.

Sebastian Deterding’s main argument is that gamification is different from playfulness,

and scholars get hung up on this difference because a game is thought of as a designed

artifact rather than an experience.20 He reviews vendors that sell gamification and considers

most ‘gamified’ applications to share the outline of Foursquare: the gamifier wants the user to

take an action, and when he does he is rewarded by points, which are then displayed as a

status on a leaderboard or by possessing a certain badge. An experience having these

16 Bogost, Ian. (2011) <Gamification is Bullshit, a position statement at the Wharton Gamification symposium> bogost.com 17 Bogost, Ian. (2011) <Persuasive Games: Exploitationware> Gamasutra.com Includes 95 comments. 18Moth, David. (2012) <Gabe Zichermann:gamification isn’t about offering free stuff, its about status> Econsultancy.com cited from TNW

conference. 19 Zichermann, Gabe and Joselin Linder. (2010) <Everyone Wins: Games in Your Business> Game-Based Marketing. New Jersey: John

Wiley & Sons. Page 200. 20 Deterding, Sebastian. (2012). <Moving Outside the Box: From Game-Centered Interventions to Playful Contexts> Gamification Research

Network. Gamification-research.org



features uses gameful design to produce desired actions that are repeatable.21 Like Bogost,

he’s critical about such points and leaderboards being generalized as game elements,

whereas those elements are actually mere feedback loops that encourage further gameplay.

For marketers who want to incentivize product trial, a challenge should be created that goes

beyond earning meaningless badges and provides rewards beyond the product itself.

Deterding et. al. (2011) suggests that gamification shouldn’t be delimited to specific usage

contexts, but admits that “improvement of the user experience” represents its current

predominant use.22

Jane McGonigal is decidedly an advocate of gamification, in that getting rewarded for

doing everyday things should inspire people to do things that are better for themselves and for

the planet. Thus, getting rewarded in some way by an ambient advertisement would fit with her

concept of gamification. Her concept proffers that some games work to create abilities, such as

resilience, that will help ordinary people live longer and more fully.23 It’s unlikely that in this

sense gamification can be connected directly to ambient advertisements, unless the underlying

marketing message can be associated with doing some kind of social or personal good.

McGonigal also discusses immersive entertainment, whereby pervasive game elements, or

ordinary objects or actions that function as game elements, serve to blur the lines between

virtual and reality game environments.24 However, there is very little evidence to suggest that

the game elements themselves survive as ‘gamified’ past the audience’s engagement with

them in the urban context. In fact, Johan Huizinga (1938) argues:”certain play-forms may be

used consciously or unconsciously to cover up some social or political design”.25

Huotari and Hamari (2012) broaden Deterding et. al’s definition of gamification to

include service marketing, “because the majority of gamification implementations aim towards

goals of marketing”.26 They argue that games are actually a service, where the core service is

augmented by gameplay. If we consider marketing in and of itself a service, which follows from

the logic of the brand wanting to provide experiences rather than messages, we can draw the

conclusion that gamification is in fact more deep than just providing simple rewards in the form

21 Deterding, Sebastian. (2010) <Pawned. Gamification and Its Discontents> Slideshare.net Slide 15. 22 Deterding, Sebastian et. al.(2011) <From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining ‘Gamification’?> MindTrek ’11 Tampere,

Finland. ACM. Page 3. 23Siggraph 2012. (2012) <Keynote Speaker Jane McGonigal> Siggraph.org 24 McGongigal, Jane. (2003) <’This is Not a Game’: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play> Digital Arts & Culture Conference

Proceedings. Melboune, Australia. Avantgame.com. 25 Huizinga, Johan. (1938) <Play-Element in Contemporary Civilization> Homo Ludens. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Page 205. 26 Huotari, Kai. (2012) <Defining Gamifcation – A Service Marketing Perspective> MindTrek 2012. Tampere, Finland. ACM. Page 3.



of virtual or material goods. The game’s purpose is providing “hedonic, challenging, and

suspenseful experiences for the players or gameful experiences”.

Now that we have an understanding of the schools of gamification thought, let’s see

how the ambient marketing discourse and the gamification intersect by examining two case

studies. The first is McDonald’s, the second Coke Zero.

Case Study: McDonald’s A large high-resolution LCD billboard is permanently installed on the side of the offices

of TeliaSonera at the corner of Birger Jarlsgatan and Kungsgatan/Suregatan (Stureplan) in

downtown Stockholm, Sweden. Well-reputed DDB Stockholm, the agency of record for

McDonald’s Sweden, decided to harness the billboard at various times of day for a few months

during the spring of 2010. The following screenshots (with letters added) are from a film

compiled at by the agency to evidence and explain the ad’s execution.27

The first panel (A) shows the positioning of the billboard as well as the perceptual size

of the images from eye-level from several hundred meters away. It also evidences the potential

for a relatively large amount of automotive traffic as well as foot traffic. Throughout

predetermined dayparts, the content sequence is displayed on the screen offering passersby 27 DDB Stockholm. (2010) <catch the goodies> Jobb. ddb.se. Copyright 2012.



the opportunity to receive a free McDonald’s sundae, or coffee, or apple pie in exchange for

using a camera to capture a photo of that item as displayed on the billboard. Each prize was

displayed separately with its own textual instructions to ‘catch a photo of a __ and get one for

free’ (i.e. a consumer can not capture a coffee and a pie in the same photo). The second panel

(B) shows that capturing a photo of the item was more difficult than a simple point-and-shoot

because the images of the items move quickly across the screen in conflicting directions and

are surrounded by other non-related images. The third panel (C) shows the relative position of

a user to the billboard when he uses his mobile phone’s camera to capture a photo of the

billboard. The fourth panel (D) shows a participant sharing her phone screen with a

McDonald’s employee, to evidence that she has indeed succeeded to capture a photo of the

free item. The photos were accepted only at the closest McDonalds, about 150 meters away

and within eyeshot from the location of the billboard. There is no information available from the

agency as to how many photos were redeemed for free products, or if there were any

disclaimers or other rules provided to participants or employees involved in the game’s

facilitation.

Case Study: Coke Zero At Antwerp Centraal, an interactive vending machine prompted specific participants to

‘Unlock the 007 in you’ after entering their names for a chance to win tickets to the Skyfall

James Bond movie premiere.



Participants had to navigate through the station within seventy seconds in order to

reach a designated platform. This installation was executed and filmed, then edited into a

highlight scene sequence, by Belgian agency Duval Guillame Modern to showcase the



partnership between Coca-Cola’s coke zero product and the movie.28 The first panel (1)

shows the positioning of the vending machine in the station, as well the high resolution touch

screen still atypical to most other coke zero machines. There is no way to tell if there is

typically a vending machine in this location, or if one was placed there for the first time. The

second panel (2) shows a participant entering his name using the touch screen and noticing

the violinist who happens to be playing the introductory measures to the Bond theme. The third

panel (3) shows the screen on the vending machine that certain participants received after

entering their names. There is no information available that indicates how participants were

chosen to participate in the experience; as evidenced in the edited film sequence all

participants are men. The fourth panel (4) signals to the participant that the time clock has

begun and in order to win the tickets he must navigate from the vending machine and reach a

certain platform before time runs out. Participants then turn from the machine to face the

station before them and rush through a staged obstacle course where there are various forms

of blockades to them reaching the goal.

The fifth panel (5) is the first of such obstacles, where a janitor’s cart blocks the

escalator and his active sweeping activities bar the path to the staircase. Although not pictured

in these sequences, there are a group of beatboxing musicians also offering a rendition of the

Bond theme to the station as participants scale the staircases. The sixth panel (6) shows a

woman in a red dress who approaches and shouts out the name of the running participant as if

she is an acquaintance of his. This and all other activities occur in the ambient space of the

station, where there are other non-participant passersby moving through. The seventh panel

(7) shows another staged obstacle, where two construction workers are carrying a large piece

of what appears to be glass. Onlookers seem to notice the participant’s struggle to pass the

obstacle as he makes his way towards his goal. The eighth panel (8) shows a contest

facilitator holding a tablet displaying the time clock and also serving to guard the running

participant toward the escalator he needs to access to reach the final platform. There are a few

of these facilitators placed at checkpoints through the obstacle course.

The ninth panel (9) shows a participant toppling over oranges which have been

purposely knocked from the nearby staged vending cart. Other non-participants can be seen in

the background expressing alarm that the man has fallen down. The tenth panel (10) is one of

the final obstacle elements; participants are beseeched to accept a silk rose, yet the course’s

end is very near. Participants proceed to a similar-looking vending machine that has a crowd of

28 Duval Guillame Modern. (2012) <Unlock the 007 in you. You have 70 seconds!> News. duvalguillame.com Copyright 2012.



people scattered around it. Upon approaching the machine, a light illuminates inside of the

machine, revealing a suited character inside who is holding a sign which states: “Unlock the

007 in you. Sing the Bond tune to get your exclusive tickets.” The eleventh panel (11) depicts

one of the participant’s renditions of the song, and he seems to be adding a bit of motion to

inflect more emotion into his voice. The film sequence shows a number of individual

performances, and after a certain point the rest of the crowd around the vending machine joins

in to sing along. The twelfth (12) and final panel shows a participant’s reaction after receiving

his tickets from the can removal part of the vending machine while being applauded by both

staged and non-staged onlookers.

Case Study Analysis Adding a gamelike layer (gamification) to the world can be best understood if we move

the definition of ambient marketing to ambient games, which Sturm and Schouten (2011)

define as “games and playful activities that offer context-aware and personalized features”.29

With this definition in mind, there appears a difference between the two case studies. Notice

panels (6) and (10) in coke zero; although the McDonald’s panels (B) and (C) can qualify as a

game [Juul, 2005]30 and a playful activity [Sutton-Smith 2006]31, neither panels (A), (B), (C) nor

(D) offer any context-aware or personalized features. Can the ‘Catch the goodies, get the

goodies’ example for McDonald’s still be considered gamified marketing, or better, ambient

gaming?

CBS Outdoor with Kantar Media (2012) report on Interactive Out-of-Home advertising,

producing the following matrix after a qualitative and quantitative study of the attitudes toward

interactive outdoor out-of-home advertisements of approximately 9,000 Europeans across six

markets. Although this research may have been prompted in-part by stagnation in outdoor

advertising revenues, the findings are useful to focus the gamification investigation. After

analyzing respondent input, CBS Outdoor concludes that the interactive outdoor audience

expects value in exchange for engaging with the ad itself; the two values that are typified are

entertainment incentive and monetary incentive, respectively. The dash-lined circle in the

diagram below has been added for emphasis to highlight that the study found that ‘online and

virtual gaming’ offer an entertainment incentive when the marketing objective is ‘positive brand

29 Sturm, dr. Janienke and dr. Ben Schouten. (2011) <Ambient Gaming and Play: Opportunities and Challenges> Eindhoven University of Technology. Playfitproject.nl Page 1. 30 Juul, Jesper. <Video Games and the Classic Game Model> Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge MA, MIT: MIT Press 31 Sutton-Smith, Brian. (2006) <Play and Ambiguity> The Game Design Reader. Eds Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. London: MIT Press.



experience’ and/or ‘brand immersion’. Conversely, “snap and show in store” is listed under

recommended platforms under the monetary incentive motivation, where the object of the

marketing objective is indeed to drive sales.

Figure 1: Mapping Technologies and Motivations32

There is a distinction between gamification use in ambient marketing – the game

mechanic of offering rewards for achievements can be used to drive sales, but beyond that the

gamified marketing itself offers the reward of an entertainment experience. Overlaying Huotari

and Hamari’s (2011) idea of marketing as a service, we see that although in both case studies

have non-game contexts that are overlaid with game mechanics, only coke zero is designed to

provide a hedonically pleasurable experience as the result of an act of play.

Instead of a habitual marketing interface (such as television, a magazine, or the radio)

the public space and its inherent architecture is harnessed for its marketing potential. Ruud

Koorevar (2012) explains in his thesis on gamification that these advertisements take place in

a space characterized by “mixed duality”, one where mobile devices are assumed as a

technological standard.33 Both cases utilize the participants’ habituation to technology

prevalent in the public space, namely the high-resolution LED screens, i.e. panel (A), panels

(1-2). Multiple senses are called into action in an urban space, and they’re all competing for

primary attention. Because of this mixed duality, advertisers can take advantage of the fact that

consumers have an updated set of conventions for interacting with ambient space. If we follow 32 CBS Outdoor. (2012) <Implementing outdoor out of home: What are the technologies to focus on and the pitfalls to avoid?> Interactive Europe. Kantar Media. Page 27. 33 Koorevaar, Ruud. (2012) <Hybrid Space> Ludified Culture: Gamification. Master Thesis - University of Utrecht. Igitur. Pg 19.



Salen and Zimmerman’s definition of core game mechanics, they are “basic game actions or

set of actions that players repeat over and over as they play”.34 The actions of taking a picture

with a mobile phone (C), or avoiding obstacles while running through a train station (5-11) can

be respectively considered game elements even though they are also everyday behaviors.

However, the context in which these behaviors occur is blended: the game environment and

the non-game environment are relatively inseparable. In the coke zero example, the context of

the game changed how the players perceived the ambient space. The silk rose in (10) could

possibly have been collected by players because they believed it would serve a function later.

We can confirm that Jane McGonigal’s school of thought about gamification as a

welcome distraction also true for gamified ambient marketing. According to CBS Outdoor’s

2012 report, “79% of 18 to 34 year olds feel that out of home advertising offers a welcome

distraction to the mundanities of life – particularly whilst traveling”.35 Regardless of the product

rewards, the coke zero example goes much further in its implementation of gamification than

does McDonald’s, in that coke zero’s ad can train players to develop skills as a result of

gaming. All but one filmed participant appeared to be much more agile in passing obstacles by

the time they reached panel (9) than they had at panel (5).

Panel (D) presumes that the enjoyment of successfully getting something for free is

worth the effort to capture a picture in the first place. What this analysis will miss is the quality

of the McDonald’s basic product reward. It doesn’t take into account if the game participant

had to stand in line to receive his reward, or if the taste of the free coffee was any good.

Following Gabe Zichermann’s gamification definition, the free stuff offered as part of the

gamified McDonald’s brand experience doesn’t do as much for the brand long term. Although

panels (A), (B) and (C) can be considered gamified advertising because an LED screen

installed in ambient space has been made challenging and offers a reward, the lack of control

over the redemption of the reward and inability to repeat the game are longitudinally limiting.

Thus, it seems that Deterding et. al’s classification of temporal regulation is a more useful

game mechanic in the coke zero ambient game than badges and leaderboards would be.36

Each of these ambient games ideally will only capture target audience’s attention for as long

as it takes to deliver the monetary or entertainment value exchange (seventy seconds) and no

longer. Arguably, because the coke zero participants have to invest more physical effort and

34 Salen, Katie and Ben Zimmerman. (2003) <Real-World Interaction>. Chapter 33: Games as Cultural Environment. Rules of Play.

Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Page 9. 35 CBS Outdoor. (2012) <The Outdoor Media Landscape is Changing> Interactive Europe. Kantar Media. 36 Deterding, Sebastian et. al.(2011) <From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness: Defining ‘Gamification’?> MindTrek ’11 Tampere,

Finland. ACM. Page 4.



mental energy in order to obtain the free tickets, they not only place more value on the free

goods, but on the entire experience leading up to the achievement.

Hamari (2011) also describes a continuum where free-to-play games have a marketing

component that entices the user to make additional purchase. This logic can be applied

specially to McDonalds because the reward winner has to enter the physical McDonald’s in

order to redeem the reward. Thus, the acquisition and retention of users is built into the game

design to progress business goals.37 To exclude Bogost’s idea of exploitationware as being a

gamified way to reach such business goals, neither of these two case studies evidences a

primary purpose of capturing customer data. Marketers should note that it is important to

consider whether participants should need to download an app and exchange personal data in

order to participate in an ambient gaming experience. This is an interesting point because

although ambient marketing is a platform for adding a gamelike layer to the world, not every

rewarding element of the ad is gameful or necessarily conducive to play. In MMORPG games

for example, Lewis and Porter (2010) cite that advertisements have to be congruently

contextualized in the game world in order to avoid having the audience perceive it as annoying

or obtrusive; i.e. a Smuller’s logo has no place in World of Warcraft.38 Yet, this finding doesn’t

carry over to the world of ambient public space, because of the nature of noticing ambient ads.

The incongruence of the ad with the surrounding environment is precisely what prompts the

consumer to become aware and engage. The engagement with the ad is what prompts the

player with the crux of the decision to engage in gameplay. Hewett (1975) explains the mental

state that prompts consumers to engage with the ambient ad: “the condition of discomfort, due

to an inadequacy of information, that motivates specific exploration”.39 Because these

advertisements have been gamified, the pull to engage and expend effort interaction with the

ad is highly evident in both examples.

Although gamification of ambient marketing can seem to suggest limitless possibilities in

terms of gameful interaction or play within an urban context, there are limitiations to marketing

executions to which marketers need to pay attention. In the coke zero case, some players

might have considered their real game abilities to be just like those of Bond, where they would

go so far as to injure other non-players in the space in order to accomplish their goals.

37 Hamari, J., & Järvinen, A. (2011) <Building Customer Relationship through Game Mechanics in Social Games> In M. Cruz-Cunha, V.

Carvalho & P. Tavares (Eds.), Business, Technological and Social Dimensions of Computer Games: Multidisciplinary Developments. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. .

38 Lewis, Ben and Lance Porter. (2010) <In-game advertising effects: examining player perceptions of advertising schema congruity in a MMORPG> Journal of Interactive Advertising. Volume 10 No. 2.

39 (as cited in) Hewett, Wendell C. (1975). “The Significance of Human Curiosity in an Outdoor Advertising Experiment”. The Journal of Business. Volume 48, Issue 1. JStor. Page 108.



Montola et. al. indicate that although overcoming real obstacles can be extremely rewarding,

those games that that rely on indexicality face problems with restricting players to certain areas

or activities, which might be necessary for legal or safety reasons”.40 In the McDonald’s

execution specifically, the game needed to be limited to a defined geolocation because of the

possibility that players would send photos to their friends to cheat the system. This stresses

the importance of making the game experience easy to consume, despite the implicit rules that

must govern the gamification execution. He furthers the idea: “when games transform the city

into a playground, this can result in friction with regular users of the space”.41 There was

certainly evidence of friction in the coke zero example, as non-players were also restricted in

movement by the staged stunts, some even tripping over game obstacles. Therefore, although

gamification in ambient marketing attempts to create pleasurable experiences by adding game

mechanics to a non-game context, there are limitations of reality that govern the ad’s design.

Järvinen (2009) defines five factors of interaction design for playfulness that are useful

in considering how ambient ads can be transformed into ambient games, even though his

suggestions are for gaming on social networks.42 He cites Ian Bogost’s (2004) concept of

asynchronous multiplay where players play in sequence, rather than in tandem. Per Bogost

himself, player obligations outside the game often engender breaks in gameplay, where the

playing of the game orients itself to the world outside the game.43 For example, if coke zero

participants had stopped to answer their own personal cell phones, or if McDonalds

participants were forced forward by a crowd behind to cross the traffic intersection, this would

engender breaks in gameplay. Not to say that these actions wouldn’t impact the final outcome

of the game, but that they would change the nature of the gameplay such that the gamified

experience is one of single-player experience rather than of multiplayer interaction. It is clear

that the traditional ideas of gamification that pit players against each other in terms of badges,

status, and leaderboards are transformed when gamification is applied to a single player

experience of free play. Sturm and Schouten (2011) assert that in free-play environments the

experience of playing and social interaction are rewarding in and of itself.44 Unlike the

40 Montola, Markus et al. (2009) <Chapter Four: Designing Spatial Expansion> Pervasive Games. Elsevier: Science Direct. Page 85. 41 Ibid. Page 84. 42 Järvinen, Aki. (2009) <Game design for social networks: interaction design for playful dispositions> Sandbox ’09 Proceedings of the 2009

ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games. ACM Portal. Page 14. 43 Bogost, Ian. (2004) <Asynchronous Multiplay: Futures for Casual Multiplayer Experience> Other Players conference 6-8 December 2004.

IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Encore-consortium.org. Page 3. 44 Sturm, dr. Janienke and dr. Ben Schouten. (2011) <Ambient Gaming and Play: Opportunities and Challenges> Eindhoven University of

Technology. Playfitproject.nl Page 3.



McDonald’s ad, the coke zero ad allows the consumer to break the fourth wall of the ad by

becoming part of the production of the advertising message.

Conclusions

As evidenced by Steven Kline in Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture,

and Marketing, “the game industry’s synergistic ventures are not limited to film and television.

They also include the creation of new game-based urban amusement sites”.45 Although Kline

goes onto explain in detail the mega-arcades built around the country, the point of the story

was that Sega as a brand was on tough times, and it needed a way to reinvent itself.

Thus, in order to be more effective, marketing needs to reinvent itself, and a solution

that will lead to novel innovation is gamification. By adding gamification elements to ambient

marketing, we can observe a transformation. When marketers offer intrinsic rewards in

exchange for using everyday behaviors in new ways, ambient marketing executions can be

transformed into ambient gaming experiences. The McDonald’s and the coke zero case

studies both evidence that the spirit of play is a powerful motivational reason to engage in

games. Although both case studies offered rewards in the form of free products, the

experience of gaming is in and of itself rewarding. The gamified advertisement is a service that

has both temporal and spatial elements that overlay a game environment on the urban context.

Thus, advertisements that employ game elements increase the willingness of the participant to

exert effort in spending time with the brand. There is limited proof that gamification can

increase sales, but these case studies have proven that to call gamified ambient marketing

ambient gaming, the purpose must be foremost to create pleasurable gaming experiences.

45 Kline, Steven, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Greig de Peuter. <Sega City @ Playdium: Re-Branding The Arcade> Digital Play. Page 231.



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