Contagious Why Things Catch On

Building a Good Game
Leveraging game mechanics requires quantifying performance. Some domains like golf handicaps and
SAT scores have built-in metrics. People can easily see how they are doing and compare themselves
with others without needing any help. But if a product or idea doesn’t automatically do that, it needs
to be “gamified.” Metrics need to be created or recorded that let people see where they stand—for
example, icons for how much they have contributed to a community message board or different
colored tickets for season ticket holders.
Airlines have done this nicely. Frequent flier programs didn’t always exist. True, people have
flown commercially for more than half a century. But flying was gamified relatively recently, with
airlines recording miles flown and awarding status levels. And because this provides social
currency, people love to talk about it.
Leveraging game mechanics also involves helping people publicize their achievements. Sure,
someone can talk about how well she did, but it’s even better if there is a tangible, visible symbol
that she can display to others. Foursquare, the location-based social networking website, lets users
check in at bars, restaurants, and other locations using their mobile devices. Checking in helps people
find their friends, but Foursquare also awards special badges to users based on their check-in history.
Check in to the same venue more than anyone else in a sixty-day period and you’ll be crowned the
mayor of that location. Check in to five different airports and get a Jetsetter badge. Not only are these
badges posted on users’ Foursquare accounts, but because they provide social currency, users also
prominently display them on their Facebook pages.
Just like my Platinum Medallion friend, people display their badges to show off or because they’re
proud of themselves. But along the way they are also spreading the Foursquare brand.
Great game mechanics can even create achievement out of nothing. Airlines turned loyalty into a
status symbol. Foursquare made it a mark of distinction to be a fixture at the corner bar. And by
encouraging players to post their achievements on Facebook, online game makers have managed to
convince people to proclaim loudly—even boast—that they spend hours playing computer games
every day.
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Effective status systems are easy to understand, even by people who aren’t familiar with the
domain. Being the mayor sounds good, but if you asked most people on the street, I bet they couldn’t
tell you whether that is better or worse than having a School Night badge, a Super User badge, or any
one of the more than one hundred other badges Foursquare offers.
Credit card companies struggled with the same issue. Gold cards used to be restricted to people
who spent heavily and had a stellar credit history. But as companies started offering them to people
with all types of credit, the gold card lost its meaning. So companies came up with new options for
their truly wealthy customers: the platinum card, the sapphire card, and the diamond card, among
others. But which has more status, a diamond or a sapphire card? Is platinum better or worse than
sapphire? This bewildering mix of colors, minerals, and exclusive words creates a chaos of
consumer confusion such that people don’t know how well they are doing—much less how they
compare with anyone else.

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Contrast that with medals given out at the Olympics or your local track meet. If entrants tell you
they won silver, you know exactly how well they did. Even someone who knows almost nothing about
track can tell right away whether an entrant is a star or just doing okay.
Many British supermarkets use a similarly intuitive labeling system. Just as with stoplights, they
use red, yellow, or green circles to denote how much sugar, fat, and salt are in different products.
Low-sodium sandwiches are marked with a green circle for salt while salty soups get a red circle.
Anyone can immediately pick up on the system and understand how to behave as a result.
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Many contests also involve game mechanics. Burberry created a website called “Art of the
Trench” that is a montage of Burberry and all the people who wear it. Some photos were taken by the
world’s leading photographers, but people can also send in photos of themselves or their friends
wearing the iconic Burberry trench coat. If you’re lucky, Burberry posts your image on its website.
Your photo then becomes part of a set of images reflecting personal style from across the globe.
Imagine if your photo was picked for the site. What would be your first impulse? You’d tell
someone else! And not just one person. Lots of people.
As apparently everyone did. The Burberry site garnered millions of views from more than a
hundred different countries. And the contest helped drive sales up 50 percent.
Recipe websites encourage people to post photos of their finished meals. Weight loss or fitness
programs encourage before-and-after photos so people can show others how much better they look. A
new bar in D.C. even named a drink, the Kentucky Irby, after my best friend (his last name is Irby).
He felt so special he told everyone he knows about the drink and along the way helped spread the
word about this new establishment.
Giving awards works on a similar principle. Recipients of awards love boasting about them—it
gives them the opportunity to tell others how great they are. But along the way they have to mention
who gave them the award.
Word of mouth can also come from the voting process itself. Deciding the winner by popular vote
encourages contestants to drum up support. But in telling people to vote for them, contestants also
spread awareness about the product, brand, or initiative sponsoring the contest. Instead of marketing
itself directly, the company uses the contest to get people who want to win to do the marketing
themselves.
And this brings us to the third way to generate social currency: making people feel like insiders.
MAKE PEOPLE FEEL LIKE INSIDERS
In 2005, Ben Fischman became CEO of SmartBargains.com. The discount shopping website sold
everything from apparel and bedding to home decor and luggage. The business model was
straightforward: companies wanting to offload clearance items or extra merchandise would sell them
cheap to SmartBargains, and SmartBargains would pass the deals on to the consumer. There was a
broad variety of merchandise, and prices were often up to 75 percent lower than retail.
But by 2007 the website was floundering. Margins had always been low, but excitement about the
brand had dissipated, and momentum was slowing. A number of related websites had also sprung up,
and SmartBargains was struggling to differentiate itself from similar competitors.
A year later Fischman started a new website called Rue La La. It carried high-end designer goods
but focused on “flash sales” in which the deals were available for only a limited time—twenty-four

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hours or a couple of days at most. And the site followed the same model as sample sales in the
fashion industry. Access was by invitation only. You had to be invited by an existing member.
Sales took off, and the site did extremely well. So well, in fact, that in 2009 Ben sold both
websites for $350 million.
Rue La La’s success is particularly noteworthy, given one tiny detail.
It sold the same products as SmartBargains. The exact same dresses, skirts, and suits. The same
shoes, shirts, and slacks.
So what transformed what could have been a ho-hum website into one people were clamoring to
get access to? How come Rue La La was so much more successful?
Because it made people feel like insiders.
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When trying to figure out how to save SmartBargains, Fischman noticed that one part of the
business was doing incredibly well. Its Smart Shopper loyalty club allowed people who signed up to
get reduced shipping fees and access to a private shopping area. Deals that no one else could see. It
was a small part of the site, but growth was through the roof.
At the same time, Fischman learned about a concept in France called