The Social Media Takeaway - Louise McDonnell

Gamification for Customer Growth and Engagement

• Louise McDonnell • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Discover the world of gamification in this episode of the Social Media Takeaway! We'll explore how playful elements are changing business strategies, boosting employee engagement, and enhancing marketing efforts. Gamification isn't just for games anymore; it's improving engagement, learning, and productivity across different industries.

In this episode of the Social Media Takeaway, I had the pleasure of interviewing An Coppens, a gamification expert with over 20 years of experience in creating behavioral change through games and play. An shares her journey from aspiring game designer to founder of Gamification Nation and Playearance.com. 

She discusses the power of gamification in change management, inclusivity in game design, and the psychology behind gamification.  An Coppens also highlights the importance of understanding the player's psychology for successful gamification and shares insights into designing games that are appealing and inclusive for diverse audiences. 

If you're interested in utilising gamification to enhance customer engagement, check out Playerence to subscribe to annual or monthly subscription and use my code Louise20 for 20% off! 

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Louise McDonnell:

You're very welcome to the social media takeaway. I'm your host Louise McDonnell today I'm speaking with An Coppens. An is a gamification expert and an award-winning speaker with over 20 years experience in creating behavioral change through games and play. She's the founder of gamificationnation.com and playerence.com. You're very welcome to the show, An.

An Coppens:

Thank you. Thanks, Louise. Thanks for having me.

Louise McDonnell:

It's my pleasure to have you here. All the way from Stockholm. An Coppens: Yes. Isn't the internet great? An Coppens: It's fantastic. It's fantastic. It's as if we're next door. I know it's great. It really has facilitated so many relationships and work, isn't it? It's really, it is wonderful. So An, tell us a little bit about your backstory. Tell us about how you got into gaming and all of that.

An Coppens:

Yeah. Long story. I'll try and keep it short though. I've always loved games. So as an eight year old, I actually declared to my dad I was going to be a game designer. I loved making games even then. And my dad was a teacher at the time. He converted into being a journalist after that. But he said, there's no money in games. You've got to get a real career. So I did that too. I listened to my dad and in a roundabout way found my way back into games and gamification. So I studied marketing, I studied change management, ended up in a career in change management in the consulting field and I always used games and gamification before it was even a word or a thing. And I always took a game angle to everything I was doing. So I made people play games in workshops to get change messages across. I would start things like a rumor game. And I got tapped for that in, in one of my consulting jobs. So basically, In change management acceptance is, is really a big thing and getting users to accept a new way of working a new system, a new something. So what I used to do was start a rumor to some of the people on the project and say, wouldn't it be great if the system did that. And then I would know if it came back within two weeks in terms of a question. that the change management was working. And typically it did, I would pick the right people, pick the sort of the game changers in the company and find out, okay, who are they talking to, who are they influencing. And basically using that to our advantage and often the change or the message I sent out was about a beneficial about a platform. So did you hear it's going to do this and it's going to make your life so much easier. And then a couple of weeks later, I would get the question from somebody in that department. And they say, is it true that the system is going to do this? Well, actually it worked. I suppose in some way gamification is how my mind works. So I would set myself up with, you know, a reward or games. All of my birthday parties through the years, they were all games. I remember my confirmation. We had this huge life size board and everybody had to throw like a dice that was nearly as big as, a big barrel. So, and you had to throw it, you landed on a number and then you had to run into the forest and find the number and there you have to do a task. So we had the whole family all over the place and it was a bit fixed because the, the person, the confirmation person always won.

Louise McDonnell:

Did you come up with that game? Did you design it?

An Coppens:

No, I think it was my parents or, you know, they were really creative. So I do blame them a little bit for that. But it was, it was huge fun. And all of my parties though were full of games. So it was, yeah, it was something I was passionate about. And then in change management, it actually worked in my advantage. And then, so I studied, I had a degree in marketing, an MBA with change management as the main topic. And then in my forties, I was basically looking at a career change because I was fed up with consulting and doing internal training. I did it really well. I was really good at it, but I sort of felt, no, I want to really try follow through on my passion and that was games. And I studied game design then and in 2012 decided to take the plunge and start Gamification Nation with a bit of a mission of upsetting the, the then, you know, young boys group of people that were involved in gamification because in 2012 it was, you know, mainly young white boys. and one Asian, also boy, and no women. And some of the gamification that was on the market was hyper competitive, really tailored to that peer group of young people being super competitive. But I felt as a 40 something woman that, you know what, I love games, but not those. So I wanted games that were more appealing to a wider market, more collaborative, more inclusive, and that was my, my intention is I entered the gamification space to bring the feminine voice and make it a bit more inclusive. And I got absolutely slaughtered for that.

Louise McDonnell:

No way.

An Coppens:

I upset the apple cart. I did actually speak on the topic a bit and all that. So, yeah.

Louise McDonnell:

Before we go any further. I know there's plenty of people listening in that won't know what gamification is. And. Even though I've been doing my research on you, I'm still not that sure either. Cause even when you were talking about games, like I just assumed they were all computer games. It didn't occur to me. Absolutely. So when you're saying there, Oh, you know, you play, you roll the dice and you run into the process. Like it never occurred to me that the games weren't looking at a screen.

An Coppens:

Absolutely right to ask is I think that's the very first question I get asked pretty much everywhere when I'm networking is what is gamification? Gami what? Now people have heard about gamification and some pretend to know, as a definition, we call it, it's adding game elements and game mechanics and game psychology to non game situations. So that could be recruitment, that could be marketing, that could be employee engagement, customer engagement, etc. So it's using games for other objectives. Like if you break down games, they are things that have a goal. So typically gamification has a goal. And you add game elements. So game elements can be a leaderboard. For example, it's the most commonly known way of gaming, but you can have a leaderboard for many things. It's been in sales like Since forever. So people have heard about these things. Now, the game mechanic called leaderboard brings with it the game dynamic of competition straight away. If you look at a lot of social media, a lot of marketing, you have a lot of data, a lot of tracking, a lot of that is used in games also, because you need to do to give people feedback as to how they're doing. People are attracted by the emojis or the likes on a post in social media. So that's a gamified way of tracking your performance. It's also appealing to that psychology of I want to be liked by other people. Which is a really strong motivator for a lot of people so, so gamification is sort of applying game elements to non game situations, but it can be online, it can be offline, it can be digital, it can be totally like we design card games, board games. In fact, the first thing I did when I was going to to workshops with people that wanted to make a gamified solution is I created my own game card deck, because I was dealing with people who said, Well, I don't play games. I don't like games. And you have to convince me and I said let's okay, let's play a game. So I have a game card deck, which basically breaks down everything we need in order to build a gamified solution. So we need a player, and everything we do in gamification is about understanding your player, which is not actually that vastly different from marketing, because you need to know who you're marketing to, you need to know what motivates them, what drives them. Gamification is very much, in my view, 80 percent psychology, 20% elements, dynamics, you know, the technical stuff. And, you know, I'll give you a good example of a gamified thing that was not actually a digital solution. We were approached by an insurance company and they said, look, we have a sales kickoff coming up. We want something to help people understand cybersecurity more. And I said, Great. And they said, we were thinking about this board game and everybody competes against each other. And I asked them, is that really what you want? Because I said, you're talking salespeople, they're super competitive, they already deal with leaderboards every day of the week, you know, want to earn more, do more, etc. And I said, wouldn't it be better that if everyone played together, etc. around the table in a collaborative game so that people would still be talking to each other at the end of the kickoff. So they went with that. So we built some a board game that basically simulated a cyber attack. You were representing one of their companies, so they were selling to manufacturing, health, finance, and a few other company types. So you picked what company type you, you had. Everybody around the board had a role. So some of them were hr, some were marketing, some were the CEO, the COO, the CTO, whatever c-suite you have. And then the marketing intern, you know, some random players. So, and everybody had influence on the board. So depending on what attack card you picked. The severity would basically mean that some of the things were harder to fix than others. And if you had still money left at the end of round three five, you won the game. After round three, it became a game where you actually had to negotiate. Okay, what do we leave vulnerable and what's really mission critical?

Louise McDonnell:

Okay.

An Coppens:

And it's those things. that actually the salespeople remembered. And when we asked the clients, so what was the outcome of all of this? They said, well, actually we had already given them training. We had already done e learning on it as well as classroom training, but they said they remembered more of how they experienced it and what impact cyber attacks can have on a business, which I thought for me was amazing because that's how I experienced games and gamification. I know it works.

Louise McDonnell:

It's just like a narrative transportation so they put themselves in the position, in the story, in the game and they could feel the impact and they were living it as opposed to learning.

An Coppens:

Exactly. And then when they went back on, on calls with clients, they could say, Oh, well, that happened to us in this game where, you know, we had and All of the examples that we use in the game were the most typical things that they had to ensure for. So it could be the CEO that left his briefcase on the train. In the briefcase was the laptop, the laptop got hacked, therefore got into sensitive information. We had, you know people showing their password or had really bad passwords. You know, so we had really simple things that everybody could relate to, and at least had done. We kept strictly away from everything super technical because we said, No, we don't want to go down that rabbit hole. We want to stay at the human level. Very much engaging people in what they know. And actually, the thing that brought home the impact of gamification for me was working on a TV show, actually, or for RT. many, many moons ago. I was invited to be a business coach on the show."How long will you live?" And I remember this one of the, the people on the, on the program was a lady. She had six children, two from her current marriage. There were two and three year olds, two from his marriage. They were nine and 13 and two from her previous marriage. And they were 15 and going on 18. Anyway, they're all now grown up because it's a while ago. But I remember being asked, you need to put a time management and system in place so that mom gets a bit more time off. And I remember coming up with this emoji kind of smiley faces system and sort of designing tasks for each child relevant to their level. So for the little ones, it was, you know, put your toys back in the toy box at the end of the day before you go sleeping. And for one of the filmings, the three year old was acting out, he was kicking, he was pulling hair, he was annoying the other kids like crazy. So, and he kept on doing it all the way through the filming for the show. When it came to me presenting this, I suppose a leaderboard to the family he pleaded. Like it was heartbreaking. He pleaded, Mom, can I please have a happy face because I will be good for the rest of the week and I will do everything right. And I was like, it broke my heart, but mom had to be tough because that was how the game was set up to work is like you got a happy face if you did your jobs and you were good. But you got an unhappy face if you didn't, you know, so it was all about collecting all happy faces and then you could decide at the end of the week, what the family would do as a family get together a family outing. And that was what drove home, the impact of simple game mechanics on what we do day to day so the inner child lives in all of us. So my expectation is that no matter who no matter where. Play can have an impact. We just need to design it in such a way that you don't go, That's not for me.

Louise McDonnell:

My mind is buzzing with ideas now because I just assumed it was all online and now, and I think, God, a game can be so simple, you know, wow, that's really, really impactful. So tell us a little bit more about the psychology behind it all.

An Coppens:

Yeah, it's, it's all about the psychology of motivation. So it's, it's really understanding what drives people to do something in a certain situation. And you know, this is something we put in as part of our design process. If we cannot interview your target audience, we cannot design an amazing custom made game. It's as simple as that. We can design for a process, but we cannot guarantee that it will work. So what we tend to do is we tend to spend time with our target audience or our clients target audience and get to understand them first. And then we break it down into, okay, what are the kinds of game dynamics that would motivate that person forward or not. So, typically there are four big sort of categories in gamification design. There's some great authors that have written on it. One I'll mention, Andrzej Manczewski It's a long name but he's done a lot of research which has been backed up with PhD research, etc. He says there's Six different types but four main differentiators. Some people are socially motivated. So if there is a gang going if there is a group happening there in effectively, so they'll play because everybody else is playing or it's fun to do it together. You have the people that want to win at all costs, so you have those, they exist in every line of business and in every, probably in every function, and they will play if they can win, and their level of entry is more "okay. Do I have the skills? Do I have a good shot? Okay, I'm in." So they will play. And they will play hard, so they will also cheat if they got away with it. So, those are ones to watch for. Then, then you have the ones who play for a cause. So they need to buy into it, they might not be that. You know, gave me in the first instance, but if it's for a good cause, they will get involved. And if I can then be close to the person who's important, I'll earn the right to be close to them. That means I'm one of the good ones in that cause and helping the cause. They're also in.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay.

An Coppens:

Then you have the ones who want to do they play, but they'll play their way. So they want to like, Ooh, this shiny object. What does that do? Oh, that didn't do what I expected. Can I change it? So they want to control the game. They want to be able to sort of make it look their way. So for every player you have different game mechanics that will drive them forward. So what we try and do is look at, okay, the majority of players in your target audience are one or two profiles. Typically it's two major ones, and then maybe some sub ones. We're working a lot with engineers and scientists, for some reason, I don't think we've sort of landed in that category I'm not sure if that's because they already know they play games or not. But we've often been asked, how can we appeal to more engineers or more scientists to be recruited into specific roles. And we know from research we've done with with a few engineering organizations that they like games. But they don't need them to be easy, they need them to be tough, they need them to be respectful of their skills, they need them to show, okay, I've made good progress here, but I've got a bit more challenge to go. So, to design for them means you need to get really close to their subject matter, otherwise they won't appeal. We also did a game not so long ago for a pharmaceutical company where we effectively designed an endless runner game. So it's where you, you run and avoid things and jump over, slide on very bad type of thing. It was an online game, but it was aimed at people to want to join the manufacturing environment. So people that would work in shifts in a factory. So they wanted people that were agile that were happy to to do that kind of ducking diving jumping. So, and through that, they basically collected all sorts of vaccines medicines boxes. And at the end, you got an impact score because that was a brand message for the company to say, Hey, you've made X amount of great impact on the world, on health, on animal welfare, human welfare. So, so it was all tied into to their brand messaging. So the psychology is super important. If you don't get that right, people don't play.

Louise McDonnell:

That's amazing. My next question you have here and I'm so tempted just to ask it for my own myself. I have a social media agency and I have an academy. And obviously I'm always using social media. And my, my goal is that I help businesses use social media to grow their business. So how could I use gamification? How could you see me using that?

An Coppens:

Cheeky, cheeky, cheeky question. I'm happy.

Louise McDonnell:

I'm actually so intrigued because I finally get it.

An Coppens:

Awesome. Awesome. That's good. There's many ways I guess social media as a system is already very gamified.. So if you have people that are using social media, you have an inkling that they probably are open to gamification. So you're on a winner there. So that's the first thing I would say. So, and play to, to what works for their business, because that's still important. So, because social media is also a form of marketing, I would say. always know the profile of the players that they're trying to appeal to and make the challenges appropriate to them. We have a platform called Playerins, which is our gamified quiz platform. A lot of our clients use that for social media to attract more people into their funnels. So it's effectively a gamified quiz. So you think of it like a game show. We have the game show music, it starts, you, which means that people have to, I click because the music has started, gotta do something here and the countdown timer starts so you get your scores counting or your time counting. And the score comes down as well. So, so there is a psychological pressure. Oh, I've got to do something. I'd rather do something quick. When you answer correctly, you lock in the score of that time. So you learn in the first question. Oh, this is good. This is helpful. And then you, you know that you've got to do either better or as good as the previous question in order to get the maximum score. see and our clients are often retailers and in the e commerce world, what we see is that they get great conversion. So once a person starts to play, 80 percent of players finish the game, finish the quiz. If there is a reward attached, Something that they really want like a gift voucher or points because some of the clients we have a point systems. It based or it unlocks a special goodie that's exclusive to the quiz, for example, we see the actual conversion rate of people playing and leaving their details will go up to 40 percent and in some cases. 80%. The 80 percent are those from companies with loyalty schemes. So if they have a points bonus attached, I can guarantee you they're on the 60, 70, 80 percent mark depending on how well targeted the quiz is. And the prizes to the target audience that they releasing it on so, so that's one example of, I would say, quizzes are fun. Most of us have played them in our Facebook feed. You know what Disney character are you. What's, you know, and in reality, it gives you a lot of marketing data. Because in the platform we can see exactly what people answer, what they get right, what they get wrong and where they leave, if they leave before they finish.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay.

An Coppens:

So, you know, so you collect data as well. So from your perspective, I would say it's rich data. It's fun to, to bring people along the line, but you need to make the game appropriate to your customer. So so if you have, let's say reluctant people that don't want to do. or not sure or not sold on, on social I would say a personality type quiz could work really well. It's like, what kind of social media should you be using? And then based on the questions, you design a profile. And I think the more hilarious the profile, the more fun people have in completing it. So I did one recently for a gamification conference where we had six different kind of gamification types. And they were like the mage, the storyteller, the imagineer, you know, so I made different personas. Based on what I thought would relate to that type of person based on the kind of questions I was leading up to so you know, have fun with it. I think that's that's always the key, the key. And I suppose the other thing I would say, game designers build all of their strategies on the fun the player is going to receive. So design it so that your person, your buyer has fun.

Louise McDonnell:

Okay. And so that player, and can people like log onto that and just create their own? They can play their own quizzes and

An Coppens:

Exactly they create their own quizzes. So it's exactly, it's a quiz platform, a creator platform. We have a number of quiz types. We're looking to add more game types in, but right now it's just gamified quizzes, like little game shows. I would say five, six questions, happy days. People play. Very good. Very good. So yes. And actually I want to make a deal for your listeners also is if they listen to your podcast and they use the code Louise20, they get a discount

Louise McDonnell:

Very good! 20 percent off. Very nice. Very nice. I'm going to have to check that out myself. My, my head is just intrigued. So, so can you share, like, I know you mentioned about like a a shopping what are Shopping mall. Shopping mall. I was going to say shopping conference. A shopping mall. So yeah, so the shopping mall, tell us exactly how it works. And then maybe we'll look, talk through a few more examples like cause a lot of the people tuning in here will be coaches and consultants. Yeah. So if you have even success stories that you can share so they can, maybe it can give them some ideas of how they could use this.

An Coppens:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, I can give you an example of the shopping mall. So the shopping center, main object of a shopping center is to get people in the shopping center shopping. So obvious to some, but you know so their marketing is targeted to that. They then choose peak marketing times or off peak marketing times to drive people into the shop or into the shopping center. So for example, for Valentine's day, they basically did a campaign with all of the stores in the shopping center. Where if you came in with the code that you unlocked from playing the quiz you got your money off. Now, typically the buyer in the Valentine's Day is not the lady. So, it was a bit of an effort to get a gentleman to come in, so they wanted something that was meaningful and that they were going to show it. That quiz off the top of my mind, had something like 70, 000 players and they're in a small town in Sweden. Out of the 70, 000 about 40 percent left their details. So there was a lot of people looking for the money off so they could go and buy the gift. So that's, that's one example. I can't tell you if they then reimbursed it, but you know, that's for them to say, but we can see that anytime they had targeted campaigns. Sometimes it's one store, sometimes it's all of the stores. It worked really well.

Louise McDonnell:

So I presume that, that you designed the quiz and then they pushed that through social media, is it?

An Coppens:

They designed it themselves, even we don't even get involved. We just provide a platform, they designed the quiz and then it's shared through QR codes on posters in the shopping center, but also in their advertising campaigns on their social media. So they would have been really heavy on Instagram they would have been really heavy on their Facebook feed. And basically, you know, people scan it and then the quiz starts. So it's, it's as simple as that. So that's, that's how they work it. The thing we did at the conference we met at for PAX lottery. We had a conference to make it happen conference. And basically we had a quiz beforehand. So what type of conference participant are you? To sort of get the conversation started, people didn't all know each other when they arrived. So it's, it was definitely a conversation started when in the group I was in the bar, maybe because I influenced it, but you know, it was definitely something. And then people was like, have you not done it? Here is the link. You got to go and do this. Cause it's, it's really interesting. But what comes out of it is that Pat and Donna, who organized the conference got some really amazing data out of it. They learned that people like to attend events in person that they like them to be business, but it's a little bit casual. They like networking sessions. So they, they got some really good information out of it because we had questions in the questionnaire. To say, you know, what are the topics you want to learn more about what do you like in terms of setup. And, you know, people came out with. the majority, one of two profiles. So one was a business learner and the other, more of a social learner. So the both were highly rated. And thankfully I had also, I always created, I created that quiz. I also created a, a Muppets. I always think you need a Muppet on the balcony that gives you that. Oh, I wouldn't do that. No, that won't work. So I always liked those in it. So I had one profile that would work out like that and only one person landed on that. So I assumed they were trying it out.

Louise McDonnell:

They were testing it. Very good. Very good. I was reading one of your blogs about the whole notion of using gamification to attract employees. I thought it was really clever.

An Coppens:

I mean, it's harder and harder to get the right people. And I think that's where gamification comes in. So, for the manufacturing example, that's Endless Runner game we created. It was really about getting to know who's the right profile, where do they live, what do they do, what do they already enjoy. So, it's really about getting to know who's the right profile, where do they live, what do they already enjoy. and then getting more of the same. So we try and build as much of that into the game as possible. We're currently working on some cyber security games for recruitment also for the UK, for one of the UK agencies. And, there we are really targeting people that have an engineering mindset a really technological researchy mindset. So but they don't have to have a degree in it or a degree in engineering or robotics or anything like that. They just want people that are attracted to the challenges. So what we're doing is we're setting up puzzle based challenges to see how do they think around this. What do they do? Do they get through it? Or do they quit? If they quit, then obviously it's not a good fit. If they continue, then the chances are they do okay. And then we have, let's say a pass mark. So we say, you know, for the manufacturing game, the pass mark was 40%. So you completed 40 percent of the challenges. You were basically entered into the next rounds of, you know, you basically got an invite at the end to say, hey, come and talk to us because we really want to talk to you. The ones that ended up below the 40% they got still sent to the careers page, but not with the invite. And she will be doing something similar for the the agency there is that will drive them to to a page that's relevant to where they landed in the game.

Louise McDonnell:

I think that's really clever. And I could even see it at a very simplistic level. Like I was even thinking, gosh, next time I go to recruit, maybe I'll just integrate some kind of a question or something that people need to respond to, which will help because you know, when you get, when you're looking through CVS and after a while, like It's so hard to see the wood from the trees because they all start looking the same, you know, so I think it's a really, really clever way to attract people who will, you know, will like that approach, but also that will help you to to kind of to find people who have the, The skills that you want, not just the people who say that they have the skill.

An Coppens:

Exactly. Exactly. And I mean, you know, in, in your case, I would say is also set them a little social media challenge and say, you know, what would you do here? This is my problem. How do you fix it? And, you know, you will get to see very quickly, okay, do I like that approach or not? You know, if, if for example, they, they take someone on TikTok that shouldn't be there, you want to question that, but maybe for another person, that's totally right. So, so yeah, I mean, I think it works. We do it obviously all the time. I mean, we practice what we preach as much as we can. We set challenges and one of the challenges I have for, for pretty much anyone that applies for a job is pick your favorite game and now apply it to a business process of your choice. whether that's development, if you're a developer, whether that's recruitment or marketing, and I get them to talk me through it and I get some amazingly creative answers. I mean, we hired someone and they played FIFA, the football game online, there were developers, so they're related is how, you know, development is a team sport and everybody needed to play together. And, you know, you want to score how good your code is and, you know, what do you want to peer review? It's, it was like, yeah, I dig that. Thanks. You come talk to me.

Louise McDonnell:

And it's so cool.

An Coppens:

It's not overthinking it. It's it, that's not even a digital necessity. You know, you don't need extra hardware.

Louise McDonnell:

And tell me, so where do you see the future going with this?

An Coppens:

I think more of it will be AI based. It's, you know, it's going to go there. And actually I think what's exciting. So if you see a lot of the game technology that's out there, right. The moment is being made available to more and more people at affordable rates. So there's a lot of no code tools and tools that make it easy. Like our player as platform is one example, but there are many on the market that allow you to create a really decent, well branded game. Without having to invest in wash some of our custom clients, invest in like tons of money to come up with something that's totally relevant for you. So, so I think that's the exciting part. There are some amazing platforms out there, but I think game technology is becoming more accessible. Add on that a layer of AI and it makes it for you. I think there are people and we're one of those people working on how can we train the AI so it comes up with a solution that is a okay. Now, what we find at the moment is that it's not perfect. By no means that it still needs good human intervention and somebody with good knowledge of psychology to intervene and say, well, actually don't want to do that. Cause that for the person doesn't make sense, but from a game design perspective and a game mechanic perspective, AI can do pretty much anything that a computer can do. So that's, you know, that's trainable. It just means that companies have to train it. What I love about where it's going. So NVIDIA, which most people might have heard of because of stocks and, you know, they get a bit of news lately, but they're basically the hardware that powers a lot of the servers that do AI, but also traditionally did gaming. They started out with gaming tools and driving computers that could handle big games. Because as soon as you have a big game where lots of people sign on at the same time, play together that's where you need lots of computer power. So they built that and they then transferred that knowledge to how AI is being powered and actually are bringing the two together. So in my view, you'll see lots more digital twins. Which means that it's a digital replica of what you see in the real world. So if we in the future need to make a game for a manufacturing company, we can replicate their company or some of their design based on just pictures.

Louise McDonnell:

Wow.

An Coppens:

At the moment, we still do that, but we have to design it from scratch. So we do take pictures and I do have an amazing graphic design team that basically then builds it up into a 3D model and we put as much detail as we can on it, but that can be done these days with AI pretty accurately. And yeah, some of the tools out there are really exciting, really amazing.

Louise McDonnell:

At the beginning, An, you were telling us a little bit about how you disrupted the whole industry by being not the typical profile. So you weren't male, you weren't, well, I weren't, you weren't old, but you certainly weren't the same age profile as the people who were driving the industry. Just, you might finish by just telling us a little bit about that.

An Coppens:

Yes. So I, I intended to ruffle the feathers of the industry and I did, so you know, I think that was, was essential as well. I, I think it was back 2014. But I spoke at an event in Barcelona, the Gamification World Conference. I think that's what it was called. And I talked about designing for inclusion and for feminine inclusion and not designing just for the young boys that want to be hyper competitive. And. I remember afterwards. A line of hundreds of people wanting to talk to me, like some confirming totally yes and I totally agree I buy this, this explains why my game is not working. And then a whole bunch of others who basically said that. That's not right. That doesn't work. And I actually got a lot of backlash afterwards and people trying to prove with studies that it didn't work. The thing was, though, I came into it from the perspective of, I'm a woman, I need to back up my data. Because, typically as a woman, we get asked more about these things anyway, and we have to prove ourselves. So I had already backed it up with data, but from anthropology. ironically of where there are, there are very few, but there are some tribes still in the world who have a maternalistic structure. So where the woman is at the top, most of us live in a paternalistic structure where the men rule. So, and actually the roles are completely flipped and reversed. In a maternalistic scenario as to when you're dealing with a paternalistic scenario so, so I knew there had to be a psychological reason. It was interesting. I mean, the statistics I found were staggering and quite depressing in some ways, because I mean if we looked at gameplay, and how it affects ladies. But also recruitment and how it affects ladies. I, I was actually stunned. So women will be just as competitive as guys, but we will only play if we tick 80 percent of the boxes and have 80 percent in our head confirmed, yeah, I have a good shot. Whereas the average guy would say, well, 20%. Yeah, sure. I'll give it a go. And you're kind of going like, I'm What on earth made you think you could win this? And, you know, for a woman that logic doesn't hold for a man that does. If you stack, basically stack that into recruitment. If a woman doesn't have more than 80 often 90 percent of the skill she won't apply, even though she's probably better than half of the other crew that applies. A man will apply when they have 45 percent fit. Women need more. So that's the same for games, that's the same for recruitment. So when I saw that, that to me made, yeah, was, was really, hard hitting. Together with Andrzej Marzewski, who, who did have the profiling questionnaires around games and game profiles, I asked him to, to correlate gender and age onto that as well. And actually what was interesting is that the earlier in life we are, the more competitive we are. So if you're aiming for teenager age groups, We are still quite competitive and I believe that's probably to do with how we're brought up in school that there's competition and there's competition for places etc so more open to that, the older we get in the workplace but also in in games. The more we appeal for the cause we need to buy into the reason for play, we need to find a benefit in it for us, but a benefit for the greater good also so it's interesting that it evolves over time. And it was fascinating. It diversified across across the different gender, but also ages.

Louise McDonnell:

And I do recommend to check out Playurance after this and use your code Louise20. That's with a capital L all lowercase and then 20 to get you 20 percent off. But like, if you design in for a client base, it's predominantly female. You're going to have a different approach then, aren't you? Because just as you said,

An Coppens:

absolutely. Largely female. You want to make it social. That's one. Social media is a lady's sport, I have to say, you know, so you want to make it social, you want to make it friendly so that it's not I kill you, you kill me. It's more like you made of social fun, you know, and you can compare notes. Well, what did you get? Oh, I got this, you know, that's the kind of game outcome you want to have. So that it is social and you want the language to be different. So the language to invite them in needs to be inviting, needs to be not you, you want to win, but more a case, Hey, come and check out, this could be you. And, you know, or, Hey, this goodie bag's waiting at the end. Lots of ladies play to, to get goods.

Louise McDonnell:

Very good.

An Coppens:

We know that from the shopping experiences.

Louise McDonnell:

Thank you so much for coming on the show. I have found it really, really interesting. You've totally opened my eyes. And yeah, so there's a whole world of games out there that don't have to be online, that, that you can use in every part of your business to attract clients, to attract employees, to retain employees, to, to train employees. And even within your family if you want them to put the their toys back in their box before they go to bed. So it can be used in every aspect of life. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much for sharing your story and all your experience. I've really enjoyed it. So if people want to find you, just do you want to remind them where you're hanging out?

An Coppens:

Yeah, I'm pretty much all over the internet, so it's not easy to find. But LinkedIn is probably the easiest one. You just find me by An Coppens. If you Google An Coppens, you'll find me.

Louise McDonnell:

Fantastic. Well, thanks so much, An, and I look forward to checking out playerins. com.

An Coppens:

Super. Thanks for having me, Louise. I much appreciate it.

Louise McDonnell:

You're welcome. You're welcome. Thanks for listening to the social media takeaway podcast. If you loved this episode and want deeper support with your marketing, head over to sellonsocialmedia.academy/hello.