We’re still busy getting the hang of the ever-changing face of Instagram, but now gaming is on the scene, do we need to get on the bandwagon?
According to the well informed and well connected food tech people at YFood, you can buy yourself a little corner of say ‘Minecraft’, brand the bejesus out of it, and sell the gamers items of highly sought-after sportswear for their avatars via an ‘NFT’. NFT stands for a ‘non-fungibel token’. For us oldies, it’s basically a cyber token that can be traded within the platform.
There are, however, other ways to infiltrate this type of tech. You can create simple games and competitions from your site or app that generate digital tokens that can be redeemed for actual products. For example: “Click on the QR code to spin the wheel and win a free meal to claim next time you visit us”.
In short, the message is that gaming engages your customers for far longer than reels or a static advertising. It keeps them on your website for longer and generates long term loyalty to the brand, guaranteeing return visits. The average age of a ‘gamer’ is 32 and half of gamers are female.
Apparently, Shopify are building gaming features into its platform for developers. Soon this form of customer engagement will be available to all of us at an affordable price no matter the size of our brand or budget.
All said and done, there is the question of the morality of gluing us to the screen even more.
Still, we can’t stop progress (if this is what it is) and who can afford to be left behind?