By Aimee Chanthadavong

AMP Capital Shopping Centre has launched an interactive web-based game, Game-2-Win, to engage and reward customers in a different way.

The ‘amazing race’ style game is taking place in 15 centres across Australia and New Zealand with expectations more than 30,000 shoppers expected to participate. Shoppers have been invited to register via each centre’s website and to sign into the game on their smartphone, tablet or PC to attempt each challenge.

Until 26 January 24, shoppers will be able to complete a mixture of daily in-and-out-of-centre challenges, including answering questions, snapping photos and guessing games for the chance to win daily prizes as well as a share in a national prize pool valued at over $84,000.

Kylie McIntyre, AMP Capital Shopping Centre head of shopping centre marketing, told RetailBiz the competition draws on the concept of gamification — a creative way to surprise, delight, engage and reward customers both in the online and offline environment.

“The idea of gamification came from a body of research conducted by AMP Capital Shopping Centres into The Future of Retail which identified that gamification was a key marketing trend which provides the opportunity for brands to engage with customers in a fun and interactive way, and hence was adopted as a part of our marketing strategy for 2013,” she said.

“Gamification was workshopped with our centre marketing teams early this year, then the input from this session was utilised in a workshop with our key agency partners during which the concept was fleshed out. Our National Marketing team then further developed the actual Game-2-Win campaign in conjunction with our digital agency.”

Another trend that was identified in the AMP Capital Shopping Centres 2013 Recommended Retail Practice Report was that consumers — particularly digitally savvy ones — are looking to increase their status: status 2.0.

So as shoppers advance through the challenges, they will be rewarded with badges to recognise their achievements, which will be shareable on social media. They will also be able to track their progress against other competitors through their centre’s leaderboard.

Bonus points are also up for grabs as shoppers engage with different posts on specific AMP Capital Shopping Centres’ social media profiles.

McIntyre said it’s important for companies like AMP to meet the demands of its customers, which includes creating an environment not just purely for transactions to take place but a personalised experience.

“In the past, status used to be about keeping up with the Joneses. Status now goes well beyond this – it’s about demonstrating skills, uniqueness and how connected and influential you are. We know we can differentiate ourselves by helping consumers build their status,” she said.

“Game-2-Win is the perfect campaign to assist our consumers to increase their status 2.0. We have designed challenges around consumers demonstrating their skills to others. We have also developed a leaderboard to encourage the competitive spirit and to help consumers boost their status.

“We have also developed a number of in-centre challenges to drive traffic into our centres as well as create opportunities for our customers to complete these challenges in front of other customers.

“Rewarding our customers is key to building customer loyalty which has many benefits to our business including creating top of mind awareness when customers are choosing where to make their next purchase and helping to build brand advocates, as research shows us that consumers now more than ever are looking to other consumers for insights and recommendations.”