Cause Marketing Gamification Targeted to Casual Online Game-Players

In another case of cause marketing mashed up with games, GoodGames offers a fraction of a cent to charity every time you play a game like Mahjongg Dimensions or Pyramid Solitaire on their website. Play three games and the cause of your choice…from a list of nearly 110,000 registered charities…gets one penny.

These aren't hard-core games, just versions of familiar favorites for casual online game-players.

The games come from Arkadium and the donation comes from advertising revenue on the site. Each game played generates about a penny in advertising revenue, which is split between your charity, Arkadium and GoodGames.

In the past we’ve talked about gamified cause marketing, which can take several approaches.

GoodGames is from the same company that brought us GoodSearch, GoodShop, and GoodDining, which together have generated a little bit less than $10 million for affiliated causes. The GoodSearch search engine generates a penny for your cause when use it. GoodSearch’s search results are generated by Yahoo.

Fractions of pennies doesn’t sound like much, but they add up when you consider the size of the numerator. Scott Garell, CEO of Goodsearch, told Forbes that online gaming is “a huge market — 113 million Americans play casual online games to the tune of 50 million hours a DAY according to research firm NewZoo. Our model gives back to one’s favorite cause as they play online games. In fact, if all of these hours switched to Goodgames.org, we’d donate about a $1 billion a year to America’s nonprofits and schools.”

In other words, GoodGames isn’t just a play on the games market it’s a play on the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid.

But isn’t online gaming likely to decline with the increase of tablets and other mobile devices running apps? “The initial product is optimized for online games at the moment,” Garell told Forbes. “We have plans in place for HTML 5 games in the future that will be optimal for smartphone and tablet gameplay.”

In short, GoodGames has positioned itself to harvest donations for causes no matter which way casual gaming goes.

Comments

Part 2: How Chili's Used Cause-Related Marketing to Raise $8.2 million for St. Jude

[Bloggers Note: In this second half of this post I discuss the nuts and bolts of how Chili's motivates support from its employees and managers and how St. Jude 'activates' support from Chili's. Read the first half here.] How does St. Jude motivate support from Chili’s front line employees and management alike? They call it ‘activation’ and they do so by the following: They share stories of St. Jude patients who were sick and got better thanks to the services they received at the hospital. Two stories in particular are personal for Chili’s staff. A Chili’s bartender in El Dorado Hills, California named Jeff Eagles has a younger brother who was treated at St. Jude. In both 2005 and 2006 Eagles was the campaign’s biggest individual fundraiser. John Griffin, a manager at the Chili’s in Conway, Arkansas had an infant daughter who was treated for retinoblastoma at St. Jude. They drew on the support Doug Brooks… the president and CEO of Brinker International, Chili’s parent co...

Cause-Related Marketing with Customer Receipts

Walgreens and JDRF Right now at Walgreens…the giant pharmacy and retail store chain with more than 5,800 stores in the United States and Puerto Rico… they’re selling $1 paper icons for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). This is an annual campaign and I bought one to gauge how it’s changed over the years. (Short list… they don’t do the shoe as a die cut anymore; the paper icon is now an 8¾ x 4¼ rectangle. Another interesting change; one side is now in Spanish). The icon has a bar code and Jacob, the clerk, scanned it and handed me a receipt as we finished the transaction. At the bottom was an 800-number keyed to a customer satisfaction survey. Dial the number, answer some questions and you’re entered into a drawing for $10,000 between now and the end of September 2007. I don’t know what their response rate is, but the $10,000 amount suggests that it’s pretty low. Taco Bell’s survey gives out $1,000 per week. At a regional seafood restaurant they give me a code that garner...

An Interview with Cause-Related Marketing Pioneer Jerry Welsh

Jerry Welsh is the closest thing cause marketing has to a father. In 1983 after a number of regional cause-related marketing efforts, Welsh, who was then executive vice president of worldwide marketing and communications at American Express looked out his window in lower Manhattan at the Statue of Liberty. The Statue was then undergoing a major refurnishing, and in a flash Welsh determined to undertake the first modern national cause marketing campaign. I say modern because almost 100 years before in January 1885, the Statue of Liberty was sitting around in crates in New York warehouses because the organization building the pedestal ran out of money. And so Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the newspaper called The World , proposed a very grassroots solution reminiscent in its own way to Welsh’s cause-related marketing. Pulitzer ran an editorial promising he would print the name of everyone who donated even a penny. Sure enough pennies, along with dimes and nickels, quarters a...

Cause Marketing

Search This Blog