As background, it’s noteworthy to say that Dachis Group has since 2008 viewed the world through its framework of Social Business Design, which is the intentional creation of dynamic and socially calibrated systems, process, and culture. The goal: improving value exchange among constituents. In other words, we reengineer the inner-workings and outward-reaching facets of organizations to transform said organizations into effectively and efficiently functioning social businesses that deliver better business results.

Now back to Social Design, which I’ll reinterpret and extend under the framework of Social Business Design to the intentional creation of brand marketing programs rooted in social. Why am I doing this? Because social needs to be Incorporated into the foundation of brand marketing programs. This is easy for me to say as I’ve built a business that is social from the ground up that has been focusing specifically on the design of social experiences. However, it’s not so easy for brand marketers and their agencies. We’ve worked with countless amazing brands and agencies that have great intentions and creative concepts, but don’t quite hit the spot when it comes to the creation of brand marketing programs that are social at the core. Provided below is a three-pronged framework for the development of brand marketing programs that are social by design:

1) Define the Business Requirements

• Business Objective
• Business Metrics
• Social Metrics

It all starts with a business objective that leads to the development of specific business metrics and social metrics/KPIs to frame the development of a concept and measure the success of the program. No program concept, digital or otherwise, should ever see the light of day without this step being completed first.

2) Incorporate Interaction Drivers

• Emotion
• Fame & Fortune
• Fun & Entertainment
• Utility

Through the development of literally hundreds of program concepts we’ve come to realize that all successful social programs share some common threads–from creating a strong emotional connection, to providing the consumer with a once in a lifetime opportunity at fame and fortune, to providing unmatched utility. Whether one likes it or not, these are the drivers that get consumers to take action and engage. And I can’t stress the importance of ensuring that programs are framed through this lens enough. We’ve seen countless fully fleshed out brand-centric programs come through our doors that look polished at first glance, but don’t really take into account the real wants and needs of the consumer.

3) Focus on the Building Blocks

• Identity
• Conversation
• Community

Once the business objectives and program frames have been set, then one can move onto focusing on the building blocks of the program. These are the core elements of Social Design according to Facebook and they play a key role in the development of brand marketing programs that are social at the core. As Facebook puts it: Community refers to the people we know and trust and who help us make decisions; Conversation refers to the various interactions we have with our communities, and Identity refers to our own sense of self and how we are seen by our communities. Facebook is viewing these central elements through a product development lens, but they can and should be applied in the development of every brand marketing program.

Developing a successful brand marketing program is really as easy as 1, 2, 3 if you take the time to focus on systematizing the process and applying the necessary amount of rigor to getting them right. In addition to the foundational points outlined above, a couple of other items that are worth mentioning are game mechanics and the development of a systemic learning process that fosters continuous improvement in results.

Let the Game Mechanics Flow
With the proliferation of digital experience gamification, one would think that game mechanics can only be applied to digital programs; this is a misconception. Game mechanics can, and should, be incorporated into most types of large-scale brand marketing programs. It is not always going to be the standard levels, points, challenges, and badges that make sense. It is the point of deliberately taking into account how game mechanics effect user psychology and behavior and incorporating the appropriate game mechanics to drive the behavior deemed valuable by the brand that delivers the business and social metrics outlined in the initial step.

Learn and Systematize Continuous Improvement
Learning from experience is something that sounds so basic and simple, but when it comes to the development of brand marketing programs, it is something that is overlooked the majority of the time. As organizations deploy more resources towards social business efforts and social technologies harden, it is going to get easier to develop and tap into closed-loop learning systems that deliver actionable insights to enable continuous learning and improvement. Consider being able to leverage a big data analytics platform that has hundreds of measures and metrics built in to correlate the effectiveness of your brand marketing efforts. This is the future that we’re heading towards and the future will be here very soon.

To sum up, I’d like to encourage everyone that is involved in any facet of the creation, design, development, management, or measurement of brand marketing programs to follow and use the above steps as checks against their day-to-day work activities. Whether you’re a planner, a creative director, a brand manager, a social media director, an art director, a TV commercial producer, UX engineer, etc., executing within the above framework will make you more effective. It will enable you to deliver brand marketing programs that are created to be social by design, and in the end deliver better results.

Everyone likes games – your preference might be for the simple, like Solitare, or complex, like World of Warcraft.  If you think games are frivolous, think again – they help us accomplish the simple, like getting an infant to eat, and the complex, like warming up surgeons or disaster response.  But as in all things, moderation is key and some people have died when taking games too far.

Here’s how game mechanics work.  My friend Max Kalehoff blogged about five keys of successful game design as communicated by expert Amy Jo Kim (no relation).  Applying her framework:

1. Collecting things. Humans have a primal instinct to collect and display.  Offline, think about boy scout badges or Olympic pins. My old housemate used to collect commemorative Coca-Cola bottles.  Online, we have our Twitter widgets, Facebook fan pages, and Flickr photo albums.
2. Earning points. These define achievement and translate into social standing.  Offline, it’s how NASCAR champions are crowned and how you earn a free airplane flight.  Online, it’s the number of fans, friends, followers, or subscribers to your content.  World-leading PR firms advise their clients to pay attention to individuals with “influence” and “authority” based on points.  We reinforce the credibility of points by watching lists of top blogs, top tweeters, even top egos.
3. System feedback. Offline, it’s the experience of shopping at an Apple store or your car accelerating when you press the gas.  Online, it’s not comments, replies, or trackbacks (those feed into points & exchanges), but response from the system itself.  How complete is your LinkedIn profile?  How much Plurk karma do you have?  Do you have Facebook for Blackberry installed yet?
4. Value exchanges. Successful interactions.  Offline, it’s us inviting each other’s kids to their birthday parties, or paying it forward to strangers.  Online, it’s the process of interactions:  Posting wall-to-wall. Sending a mini-ninja or martini glass.  People “liking” your FriendFeed items. Twitter’s @ messages.
5. Customization and personalization. User-created barriers to exit.  Offline, it’s the color you chose to paint your house, the case for your iPhone, the stickers on your laptop.  Online, it’s the extensive profile information you entered, the photos you uploaded, or the background picture that says something about your interests.

People fall into ego traps when they take social media games too far, focusing on the tactics instead of the greater purpose of their activities. This becomes fairly apparent regarding points – when a user is blindly amassing points, their collections become spammy.  Feedback overwhelms.  Exchanges aren’t worth participation.

From a business, i.e. the application owner’s, perspective – these are all good.  They pave the way to monetization – display ads, sponsorships, brand participation, and more. From a participant’s perspective, these are only good up to a certain point after which there are only diminishing returns.

Focus is the key to steering clear of the ego trap.  Play the game with an end goal in mind.

(Originally posted on July 31, 2008.)

Taking tacit game mechanics already at play and providing deliberate structure and reward schedules gives companies a potentially powerful social business design tool. Enterprise gamification’s power lies in its ability to influence individual behavior and create hivemind, an often elusive enterprise dynamic. While the right game makes this dynamic more achievable, the complexity of influencing human behavior necessitates planning and design. Taking time to understand game mechanics and the psychology of rewards will lead to more effective games, engaged employees and better business results.

The Email Game

To explore these concepts let’s outline a simple game that helps Company X promote its low cost provider strategy. The goal of the game is to lower network storage costs by reducing the amount of email employees store in their inbox. Company X decides to reward employees with one point whenever they delete an email.

Rewards

A well designed game aligns individual rewards with the strategic objectives of the business. Properly incentivized employees will then repeat behavior beneficial to company goals. Two types of rewards exist:

Intrinsic Rewards

Intrinsic rewards come from the enjoyment of the activity itself, reducing email storage in Company X’s case. The best games, often the most addicting, create enjoyment by fulfilling basic human needs:

Autonomy is the feeling that your activities are self-chosen. Company X can incorporate this feeling into their game by giving employees additional ways to earn points.  Besides deleting emails, archiving emails locally can also result in a point. Now employees have choice.

Competence is the feeling of confidence and effectiveness in one’s activities. The accumulation of points gives employees direct and frequent feedback.  The Email Game can provide additional feedback by creating dashboards that track saved space and individual contribution to company cost savings.

Connectedness comes from a sense of closeness to others. The Email Game can create connectedness by allowing org-chart based groups to compete. Individuals will be rewarded for working together to reduce their organization’s email footprint.

Extrinsic Rewards

These rewards come from outside the individual: the Email Game’s points. While not as personally meaningful as intrinsic rewards, extrinsic rewards set the basis for competition, standard measures by which players compare performance. To increase their value Company X can tie their extrinsic rewards (points) achievement to real world benefits, e.g. paid-time-off, gift certificates to the company store, a meeting with the CIO.

Game Mechanics

Rewards explain why people participate, Game Mechanics dictate the who, what, when and where. A well designed game’s incentives harmonize with its mechanics.  SCVNGR, Priebatsch’s company, defines 47 game mechanics. Let’s review four in the context of the Email Game:

Appointment is a mechanic that involves returning at a predefined time to perform a predetermined action. Company X might make the lunch hour more productive by offering a double-point bonus.

Influence & Status uses social pressure to modify behavior. By implementing leader-boards across geographical, organizational and individual levels Company X can create a sense of status and competition.  This mechanic also feeds an employee’s sense of Competence.

Progression is a mechanic by which progress is displayed and measured through the process of completing itemized tasks. A simple daily progression in the Email Game could include two steps:  clicking through all mailbox folders to check for deletion candidates and archiving your entire inbox to a local directory. Successful completion of these activities results in a point.

Communal Discovery is when a community must come together to complete a challenge. The previously suggested idea of group based incentives is an example of Communal Discovery.  This mechanic also directly ties in to an individual sense of Connectedness.

By no means an exhaustive guide, this post introduces fundamental concepts to Game Layer creation. Turning work into a game involves more than bribing employees with points. Developing effective games for your company will be an evolutionary process.  Even the simplest games engage complex behavioral dynamics. Be sure to plan, measure your progress and iterate as new behaviors emerge.

Game on. (Game on)

Step in the Social Reward Program – a Reward program that is developed from the ground up to be a fun and engaging experience for consumers.  Basic asks of social marketing programs such as Liking, Sharing and Friending should be core components of every Reward program.  Moreover, Reward programs are a natural fit for game mechanics – points, levels, rewards, and leaderboards – which, when combined with the social graph and social actions, can be turned into a fun experience that consumers want to engage with.  Add to the mix standard Reward program purchase asks and mobile actions such as check-ins and you have yourself a powerful Social Reward Program.  Just as Facebook is prevalently becoming the hub and is outperforming as a channel for digital marketing campaigns, so should Facebook become the hub of Social Reward Programs.

For organizations such as Coca-Cola that have a legacy Rewards program–My Coke Rewards–making the move to a Social Reward Program presents challenges and benefits similar to moving legacy IT infrastructure into the cloud.  For companies that are considering developing a Reward program from the ground up, a Social Reward Program with Facebook serving as the hub of the program is the way to go.  Like sugar adds sweetness to strawberries, the social graph and game mechanics add goodness to Reward programs.

The Rearview Mirror

Many companies have built their livelihood on dealing with consumers and the past. Bazaarvoice has built a nice business based on rating and reviewing past purchases. Amazon and NetFlix use previous behavior to attempt to predict future interests and purchase probabilities. This is all great, but it’s barely actionable. Informative, yes, but highly actionable, no.

Today

Some of the hot consumer websites these days work with geolocation, including Foursquare, Twitter, and Gowalla. They are all about the present, and the immediate. The present is actually a really great business, and there is disruption going on. If I want to search for anything in the world, I use Google. If I want to know how long the line is at the SXSW Facebook party, I use Twitter search (which must really piss off Google).

All this is great, but it’s still not terribly actionable. If I just checked in at a restaurant on Foursquare, it’s pretty useless to try an instant coupon to lure you to another restaurant.

The Future

The intention of consumers (planned future consumption) is incredibly valuable. If I could somehow broadcast to the interwebs that I intend to go downtown with my wife, have a nice dinner somewhere, catch a movie, and I’d like to meet up with friends for drinks after that — that is like gold for a savvy marketer. This is when it all starts to have shades of Net Worth.

Suddenly, instant coupons are really interesting to me, as are packaged deals, or additional discounts if I can convince my friends to make it a table for 8 instead of a table for 2. Combine this information with a little past behavior, like a bunch of check-ins at another upscale restaurant, and you’ve got the makings of some persuasive social marketing. Intention Economics are powerful, and one of the few companies I see going after this market is Plancast.

The Enterprise

We’ve written a little bit about Foursquare in the enterprise, but we’re probably 18-24 months away from seeing larger adoption of game mechanics to drive the hivemind in larger organizations. Which means we are probably 48 months away from seeing the beginnings of intention in the leading companies. The idea, however, is powerful.

How could you be more impactful and proactive in your organization if you knew what people were doing this upcoming week (the future), rather than reading their status report (the past)? How could you help close more business if you knew who the sales organization was pitching this week, rather than reading the monthly sales report?

What ideas does the power of intention spark for your organization?

Judging from the number of invites I’m getting for FourSquare these days, its slope of new users must be getting more vertical every day. (If you’re not familiar with the service, read their overview.) After using FourSquare for a while, I’ve been thinking about its implications for business – and they’re deeper than you might think, extending far beyond happy hours and local advertising opportunities.

At initial consideration, this may seem ridiculous. I’m not going to tell you that FourSquare is the next Twitter – it’s not. It’s different. But just like so many people were initially dismissive of Twitter, the same can be said for FourSquare. After all, the driving concept behind the application is “a leaderboard for Saturday night.” The second time I heard about FourSquare, I was told that it was popular among New York moms and nannies for setting up impromptu playdates. Not exactly the FriendFeed crowd…I signed up immediately.

To understand FourSquare’s emergent business value, you’ve got to think of it as a social business application, the backbone of which is measurement. Even more than other social apps, game mechanics drive the FourSquare experience. Based on the single activity of “checking in,” all five elements exist:

1. Collecting badges and mayorships.
2. Earning points throughout the week.
3. Feedback though the leaderboard and a personal stats page.
4. Value exchanges from keeping tabs on your connections.
5. Customization of your profile and check-in messages. Anyone who uses the app knows all this.

When I consider FourSquare through the lens of Social Business Design, the value jumps off the page. The service:

• Relies on content generated by personal profiles and places, which come together in time-sensitive relationships. It also utilizes emerging technologies reaching critical mass. We call this an ecosystem.
• Motivates participants to broadcast their whereabouts with an implicit invitation to meet up. You become part of a relevant community based on geographic check-ins. This is hivemindedness.
• Allows users to send implicit messages about their status – on multiple levels – based on time and location. Others can respond in kind. These are dynamic signals.
• Permits control of messaging to personal preferences. Where and when a person checks in has meaning; some people check in “off the grid”/in private, whereas users can mute pings from others who are found to be irrelevant. This is a metafilter.

Think about these characteristics applied as a white-labeled enterprise application. Twitter : Yammer :: FourSquare : [a new "GrandCentral"?]

• Connects employees of distributed organizations when in geographic proximity.
• Lowers cost of coordination, handled today by many fragmented applications.
• Increases content production. Game mechanics spur participation and encourage collaboration.
• Allows colleagues to vet locations and set alerts for one another.

Applying these ideas in a marketing context address three hot B2C interests: mobile, social, and local. However, I think brands will find that scalability ends quickly. There are much bigger opportunities in the B2B context.

Are you seeing it? Or do you still think FourSquare just a waste of time?