Fun is the easiest way of changing behaviour. To prove that – Volkswagen came up with an exciting marketing program and set up a contest called The Fun theory. In this program, people were encouraged to submit great ideas to solve real-world problems. So, this initiative was created to illustrate the idea that humans prefer to do fun things more, and that is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour. Here are some of the great ideas which were implemented during this marketing program-

Piano stairs

In Sweden, Piano stairs were created to challenge the people to take the stairs by making it a fun experience. Stairs located next to the escalators were transformed into a working piano, with every step playing a musical note. This concept spread on YouTube and recorded millions of views in just a few days.

World’s deepest bin

We know that people carelessly throw rubbish on the floor. How can we change that behaviour? Volkswagen did some experimentation by creating the World’s Deepest Bin, allowing people to throw their garbage in the bin while enjoying the experience. There was a ‘falling’ sound every time a worker dropped the trash in the bin. Engineers had used motion detectors and speakers in the lid of the regular bin to create exciting sounds, the sounds which created a feeling as if things are falling from a height of hundreds of yards. The day on which the experiment was implemented, 72 kg of rubbish was collected from that bin, which was much higher than what a regular bin would have collected. It was a great experiment to validate that even a mundane activity like throwing trash into a container can be made into a fun experience. This experience reinforced the concept of engaging people and activities in a fun way to improve transformation results.

Speed Camera Lottery

In Sweden, the National Society for Road Safety implemented the Speed Camera Lottery idea to capture the speed levels of vehicles. The citizens who followed speed limits got a chance to enter the lottery and win rewards. And those rewards were sponsored by the money which was collected from people who had violated the speed. This carrot-stick policy of recognizing safe drivers resulted in a decrease in the average speed from 32 to 25 km/hr. in Stockholm trials. The traditional way of putting a cop who is watching vigilantly or monitoring with cameras to catch speeding drivers does not work as this is not economically feasible, so one could try to use a fun mechanism to get people to drive within safety limits. Voice feedback from the vehicle which speeds above the ceiling, and then shared with the road safety authority would have added the compliance impact. So, now you see how real-time feedback causes people to respond favorably.

I am bringing these ideas here also to emphasize that under brand awareness & corporate social responsibility programs, companies can co-create innovative experiments like Piano Stairs, World’s deepest bin and Speed Camera Lottery with the community. By doing this, they can get millions of affirming impressions about these initiatives on social media channels like YouTube.

But why does fun have a positive impact on changing people’s behaviour & attitude? Research and self-experience demonstrate that a Playful experience creates a strong emotional connection with the user and positive user engagement. Now we have seen some examples of how the element of fun motivates people towards intended behavioral actions. Fun looks easier but challenging to create when you want to drive different types of people. According to Nicole Lazzaro, there are four types of fun interactions required to design a great playful experience. 

1. People Fun (Friendship) – people are addictive to competition and cooperation as when you build a social bond & teamwork mechanics into the game, it certainly brings amusement to motivate people to perform a specific action
2. Easy Fun (Novelty) – When you embed easy fun & creativity into the play, it generates curiosity and inspires people to explore things.
3. Hard Fun (Challenge) – Achieving a challenging goal generate a feeling of accomplishment
4. Serious Fun (Meaning) – Players feel fun when they believe that their actions are making a difference. In such cases, winning is more meaningful and creates a lasting impact on the player.

In various sections of this book, you will find real examples on a more contextual basis, like for getting people to adopt specific productive behaviour in an enterprise, engaging them to serve customers well and sell more profitable products & services. Fun ways can also be used to solve complex problems like getting insights for AIDS curing drug discovery. Now in the upcoming part, let’s talk about the role digital playground can play for transforming customer and employee experience and also for strategy, innovation, culture & change management.