I enjoy casually playing the games that Starbucks builds into their digital experience. Every December they have the Starbucks for Life game. Based on your purchasing activity you get plays that could reward you with a free Starbucks. The big winner in the Starbucks for Life game is ? you guessed it a free Starbucks every day for the rest of your life.
In addition to Starbucks for Life, they also have a summer game called Boardwalk and they recently introduced a game called Hopscotch. I just recently completed Hopscotch. Here?s a screenshot of my completed Hopscotch board:
My completed Hopscotch game.
While I find this merger of physical interactions with digital very intriguing and sure to drive sales, this year with Hopscotch the game mechanics and platform caught my attention.
Starbucks has turned its gift card program and point-of-sale into an interaction eventing machine. This means all their digital games can perform behavioral logic in real-time. When I first started tracking my Starbucks stars many years ago, my star count took 24 hours to update. Today, with both stars and digital games, Starbucks is able to echo back to its customers their activity in real-time.
I expect to see more gamification across the retail sector. In addition to enjoying Starbucks, I also use my Chick-fil-A One app to track my points. The Chick-fil-A app isn?t as speedy as Starbucks, but it?s very generous. I?m 2,977 points away from Red status and seem to receive redeemable rewards all the time.
Keep it up retail brands. Turning transactions into interactions is the future.
