User adoption through gamification

A gamified shopping centre experience that taught the public how iBeacons worked, before most people knew the technology existed.

When Apple released iBeacon technology, British Land saw an opportunity. Small Bluetooth beacons placed around a shopping centre could detect when a shopper walked past, recognise return visits, push relevant offers and give retailers a direct line to people already in their store. The potential was real; the problem was that almost no one outside the team building the technology understood it.

Our first job was internal. We produced an animated 3D explainer video so that senior stakeholders at British Land could see clearly how iBeacons worked and what the technology could do for them.

Once that was understood, the harder question came next: how do you get an average shopper to download an app and engage with a technology they haven’t heard of and don’t yet trust? Behaviour change, in other words, before behaviour benefit.

We chose to gamify the experience. This was before Pokémon Go, so the idea of walking around a public space collecting digital characters on your phone was still a novelty. We designed Monster Hunt… as shoppers passed each iBeacon, they collected a digital card for the monster linked to that location. After finding them all, they would head to the information desk to claim a small prize.

Behind the scenes we built a custom backend that let British Land set the rules of engagement. Frequency caps stopped shoppers being spammed. Smart logic recognised loyalty (three Starbucks visits in a week, for example, could earn a loyalty offer). And a clean structure let retailers plug in their own offers and product information.

Once a shopper had completed the hunt, the experience evolved into something more useful day to day: offers, retailer info and return-visit rewards, with the option to relaunch the monster hunt.