How Tinder Gamed Engagement

October 29, 2019 by Taylor Wiegert in Engagement, Gaming

Interacting with brands is not at the top of anyone’s to-do list, which means the bar for engagement is getting higher each and every day. That’s why I love what Tinder has done with Swipe Night.

Tinder launched an interactive, choose-your-own-adventure gaming experience to give users yet another reason to open Tinder and engage with the app. The experience is called Swipe Night, and it invites users the chance to choose how a story unfolds, and the ultimate payoff is the choices they make in this story are factored into their profiles. Interacting with this game helps the app give users better dating recommendations.

Becoming a Culture Geek in the Name of Relevance

October 02, 2015 by Taylor Wiegert in Consumer Behavior, Engagement, Messaging, Optimization, Real-Time Marketing

In an era of tech proliferation, we have a lot, but one thing becoming increasingly scarce is attention to spare. For marketers, reach is one thing, but getting people to pay attention when they tell their stories is an entirely different ball game where relevance is everything.

Relevance is a loaded term. It conjures up eye rolls and is easy to dismiss, but when it comes down to it, it’s about what advertising has always been about, making a message relevant to a consumer’s life and current mindset. The challenge now is lifestyles are more diverse and mindsets shift on a minute-by-minute basis. But understanding what is on a large segment of the population’s mind is easier than ever if we pay attention.

How Video Games Create an Experience Ecosystem and What Marketers Can Learn

August 28, 2014 by Taylor Wiegert in Engagement, User-Generated Content, Gaming

Amazon shocked everyone (well, me at least) this week when it announced that it acquired video streaming service Twitch. The sale wasn't the surprise so much as it was the buyer. It was almost a given that YouTube would be the one to make the acquisition.

Still, the buyer isn't as much of a big deal as what the acquisition symbolizes. Gaming is huge and attractive to large online companies because it is made up of special kinds of products that consumers build ecosystems around.

Gaming and Extending the Brand Experience

June 17, 2014 by Taylor Wiegert in YouTube, Strategic Planning, Engagement, Consumer Behavior

I'm a gamer. Sure, I don't get to play video games as much as I would like to, but I love being part of that world, staying in-the-know with what's been released, what just got announced and what I should be playing but am not. Very little of my gaming hobby actually involves playing the game. Frankly, I don't have time, but perhaps, the biggest reason is because there are so many other ways to enjoy video games. The game, the product publishers invest millions in creating and even more in marketing, is only the beginning of an ecosystem created by its users that extends far beyond the console.

Influencing the Relationship from All Angles

January 09, 2014 by Taylor Wiegert in Engagement, Integration

The customer relationship has become one of the most critical assets a brand can have. It's difficult to gain, and easy to lose. But it's also fickle, one that comes and goes as a consumer pleases. The promise of social media was the ability to have a more consistent relationship with consumers in Facebook news feeds and Twitter timelines, but even that has become a challenge as overly-promotional messages caused consumers to ignore us and algorithm updates made it harder for us to get their attention.

This environment means thinking about our relationship with customers from all angles. Our focus is too often focused on what we control: the content we're creating, the look/feel of our platforms, the promotions we're running and so on. Those are all critical aspects to have buttoned-up, but there is greater opportunity when you expand the lens through which you view customer relationships.