Marketers want customer engagement. Digital Marketers want customers to have an engagement with their digital properties. Frequently they turn to gee-whiz graphics and cutting edge technology to deliver this engagement.
In my current workplace as well as in my previous job it was common practice to label anything in 3D as an “immersive environment”.
When compared to Flash websites or games that operate in the 2D realm or 2.5D at best, a 3D virtual world or game appears clearly more immersive. The spatial, interactive and ambient effects combine to draw you into the world.
But should we look at immersion only from a physical perspective? Is there another secret ingredient to immersion?
Let’s do a small comparison of two 3D environments. Second Life – the celebrated Virtual World has 20 odd million registered users of which around 800 thousand are considered active. Then there is the famed MMORPG World of Warcraft with 12 million subscribers.
Second Life was supposed to have reached a high of $80 million odd in revenues. World of Warcraft is estimated to earn publisher Blizzard $1 billion a year.
That’s more than 10 times Second Life’s revenues.
Is there something to the fact that WoW is a game which contributes to higher user engagement? Is there an emotional and intellectual dimension of immersion that is worth considering?
Let’s ask the good doctor, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (real easy to pronounce the last name… No? ) .
Now, he is no Sid Meier or Will Wright, In fact, he is not even a gamer.
However Dr. Csikszentmihalyi ‘s development of Flow Theory in my view is one of the most seminal pieces of research that has a direct and profound learning for anyone interested in using games for advertising and marketing communication.
Becoming hard to keep your head over the water with me splashing Immersion and Flow Theory at you?
Distilled, Flow Theory defines Flow as the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.
Games are a fantastic way to create a state of “Flow” as others have written about and can also be seen below:
So what do you think? Have you ever blown huge money on digital communication and seen poor results? Has your organization ever conducted consumer research on their digital engagements? What did the research reveal? Comments are open!
Next week, let’s talk about a hypothetical advergaming solution at a strategic level. Enough of opinion, time for some applications!
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