April 2010
6 posts
23 tags
Game mechanics for society, culture and people...
In part 1 of this series I highlighted a major force in game mechanics that exist today, stock markets.
It’s hard to look at this in isolation and to dream up other mechanisms and incentives that could be created to deliver more than just financial value.
Here are some inspirational examples of incentives and mechanics that are already used or could be used to create new types of value;
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16 tags
Game mechanics for society, culture and people...
There’s been a growing level of discussion about the use of game mechanics to make products more fun, using them in social software, and the obsession of gaming on facebook.
I’m not going to contribute to this debate, and whether or not social gaming is ultimately evil. I fundamentally believe that gameplay can be applied in meaningful ways in many different applications.
However, I...
9 tags
New Principles of Marketing
I had a dig at why marketing needs meaning and talked about the importance of having principles. That was very conceptual, so here are my suggestions for some tangible principles on which a great marketing business should be built. There are almost certainly better ones but here goes;
People and feedback not outdated audience research. Web sites use traditional audience research to segment...
6 tags
Marketing needs meaning
I’ve been inspired by many people who stress the importance of meaning, purpose and doing stuff that matters.
One of my favourites, the economist Umair Haque, doesn’t hold back with his refreshing contempt of Capitalism and the Zombieconomy.
Ultimately at the root of capitalism today is a focus on shareholder value over principles and ideals that matter to people, communities and...
9 tags
People can make marketing meaningful
Every time I touch the advertising industry, it makes me furious.
Every time I think of it, I see an opportunity for change. Not only is there a lack of innovation (i.e, see yet another gimmicky ad format that serves to interrupt my experience), but the industry is built on surreptitiousness and deception (e.g., cross-site profile tracking and behavioural targetting) for the sake of...
1 tag
Starting from scratch
The economic architecture of advertising, and in fact all marketing, has not fundamentally changed for 50 years.
The internet has a track record of disintermediating all types of agencies to create new ones; from new record labels connecting artists directly with listeners, to new retailers connecting designers with buyers, to new matchmakers connecting entrepreneurs with investors.
However...