Exploring consumer purchase journeys with a game hack
The events and choices that lead people to buying something is a broad area being investigated by both marketing researchers and practitioners.
From frameworks like AIDA (Awareness > Interest > Desire > Action ) and the purchase funnel that are over 100 years old now, to more recent convoluted flow charts mapping consumer decision journeys and user journeys, the objective is to understand all the key points between a moment one find out about something and the moment they act upon it.
Microscope is a tabletop roleplaying and storytelling game designed author Ben Robbins.
I describe it as a collaborative methodology to create a fictional world and a history of events, shifting from macro scale, like a huge galactic timeline, to micro scale, like one specific conversation between two made characters.
It is played jotting notes down on index cards or pieces of paper.
There are no dice or random elements, or victory conditions, no winners or losers.
After a couple of hours or so, the group playing will feel they have reached a satisfying point to conclude, or maybe they simply decide to stop. The world and history created can be picked up later, or left as is, created for the fun of it.
When I tested it the first time, it struck me as a fascinating structure and very close to what I already did mapping customer or user journeys for work, so I kept a note to myself to should try and see if I could hack it and use some of the ideas for a workshop exercise.
A few years ago, I a great opportunity for that exactly came up. I was living in Chicago, working on a project with an advertising agency and a global trading firm in financial services.
It was the first time these professional traders felt the need to invest in something new and different in terms of branding and communications. They had identified a problem, and I was hired as an external brand strategy consultant to help solve it.
To illustrate their problem with an anecdote they shared at the time: Mark Zuckerberg invited the best possible graduates he was interested in for pizza at his mansion and asked them directly if they wanted to join him in changing the world (plus one would imagine an attractive salary and employment package). Banking, financial services, and trading had become less attractive.
Compared to Facebook and other big tech companies, they weren't known in the first place, so that was a challenge. However, they clearly had something working: a particularly high employee retention rate in an industry where people tend to move a lot.
It wasn't for everyone; some employees left or were let go in the first three months, but those were made it past that time stayed for many years.
I always begin with researching and understanding the situation, people, motivations, etc. In this case I conducted one-on-one interviews first, then spent time doing research online (and social media), and then organised a workshop with employees and interns.
Inspired by the game of Microscope, I facilitated a session in which participants came to populate a timeline of events, imagining an ideal job candidate going through their studies, from their first year to them interviewing for internships, jobs, and finally accepting their first career job after graduation.
Participants were asked to add more index cards, one at a time, beginning with the most obvious steps that nearly everyone in this situation would take, and discussed it. In this case, we began with marking every college year, splitting the timeline in four parts for the four years of college in the US, and adding a couple of internships - to be detailed later.
I had a series of questions and categories of events participants could add, and every time I would also check in and ask how our fictional ideal candidate felt about events, highs and low, challenges and drawbacks we were creating for them. I asked them to think of what had happened to them, and others like them they'd known from college (university).
A photo from the workshop exercise.
It is one the core aspects of a roleplaying game: stepping in someone else's shoes, to try and see how the world looks like from their perspective.
Honestly, the exercise was a little strange for the participants, who were more used to calculate probabilities of a given combination coming up in a game of Poker than they were with this kind of free-form exercise. I appreciated that they graciously got into it because I ended up genuinely learning new information that they hadn't thought of telling me during the previous one-on-one interviews I had with them and other colleagues.
There are some events they either didn't have in mind, or that seemed so obvious to them that they hadn't thought about mentioning them, including the fact many of them were in Poker clubs or played Poker online.
I learned more about personal challenges, motivations, and thoughts driving them, what had happened to them or others they knew, and so by extension, more about future candidates and their motivations too.
It is a good example of the way in which I draw inspiration from games, taking bits and pieces of their design and mechanisms, and then mix them with marketing and brand strategy knowledge.
In this case it allowed me, and so the client, to learn more about the challenges and opportunities at hand in the minds of the people they were trying to attract to come and work for them, which in turn was used to inform the corporation's brand strategy and recruitment communication messages and media touch points.
Please keep in touch if I can help you better understand your audience, or if you're interested in finding out more about testing other exercises inspired by game mechanics.
What else have I been up to?
I attended The Annual French Wargaming Studies Conference, and began working on another 'serious' game design since, I wrote a post about it here.
I attended several talks about generative AI, and posted about them on Linkedin. One at Essec Business School, at La Sorbonne, and at l'ADN Data.
I attended the Kantar BrandZ event at Théâtre Mogador in Paris – where they show The Lion King (and funny enough ISCOM students worked on a challenge with the theatre, so we are due to go visit The Lion King production soon)
The April Creative Mornings in Paris hosted Professor Christophe Stalla-Bourdillon who gave a pretty fascinating talk about economic intelligence. The next one is next week on Friday 23rd May with the artist Jessie Kanelos Weiner, at the offices of My Little Paris, you can sign up here.
There are just a few more days to visit the Dennis Morris exhibit at La Maison Européenne de la Photographie! I wrote about the fantastic expo here on my blog.
Friends were reading texts and playing music at a cooperative bar for the launch of their new creative works association: Bodies of Work Paris.
I went to the Disco expo at the Paris Philharmonic, it's on until August 17th, and it was good fun, I recommend it.
I've been playing board games, both in real life, a couple of games of Root, and with friends online on Board Game Arena. I discovered Heat: Pedal to the Metal and Orléans - both excellent games.
I went in with no expectations and was pleasantly surprised with the latest Marvel at the cinema, Thunderbolts* was actually good. I never thought I'd say this about a superheroes movie but it deals with trauma, depression, and mental health pretty well.
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