How Shopping Malls like 313@somerset and Vivocity Attracted Crowds through a Cash Hunt

TLDR

  • Problem: Stellar Ace wanted to increase usage of the WINK+ app, while shopping malls like Vivocity and 313@somerset wanted to boost traffic.
  • Gamification Solution: In #HuntTheMouse, players followed hints to locate a physical gold coin worth S$100,000. Players could gain extra hints by downloading the WINK+ app. Additionally, a digital event map highlighted possible locations physical silver coins worth S$1,000 each, which players could search for at participating venues.
  • Game Mechanics: The silver coin mechanic offered players clearer direction and more chances to obtain rewards. Additionally, it engineered unusual offline searching behaviours and drove crowds to gather, amplifying publicity efforts organically.
  • Results: Players downloaded and viewed more than 53,000 hints through the WINK+ app. Moreover, over 200,000 players flocked to 5 participating venues to find the silver coins.

Featured Statistics

  • Doubled participation as compared to 2017’s edition, with over 402,000 people hunting for the gold coin
  • Over 200,000 players flocked to 5 participating venues to find the hidden silver coins
  • Featured on various media outlets including AsiaOneMothershipWeekender, etc.
  • Generated more than 40,000,000 impressions, 2,000,000 engagements, and 50,000 organic IG stories
  • Nominated for Most Effective — Digital at MARKies Awards 2019

Our Clients

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<aside> 💡 Stellar Ace is the retail and media subsidiary of the SMRT Experience, which is in turn a division of Singapore’s public transport operator the SMRT Corporation.

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<aside> 💡 Singapore Sports Hub is a sports and recreation district boasting world-class facilities such as the National Stadium, Sports Centre, and so on.

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<aside> 💡 Vivocity is Singapore’s largest shopping mall, developed by Mapletree Investments, a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings.

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<aside> 💡 Sentosa is Singapore’s premier island resort getaway, overseen by Sentosa Development Corporation.

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Clients’ Challenges

<aside> 💡 How can Stellar Ace promote WINK+ app downloads to everyday commuters in Singapore?

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Stellar Ace wanted to increase WINK+ app downloads with an impactful and creative marketing campaign.The WINK+ app allowed those taking public transport to collect points which could be exchanged for valuable deals, with their target demographic being commuters who were not yet on the app.

<aside> 💡 How can shopping malls and attractions such as Vivocity, 313@somerset, and Singapore Sports Hub attract more people to visit and spend?

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Other clients such as Vivocity, 313@somerset, and Singapore Sports Hub wanted to drive traffic to their shopping malls and landmarks, generating sales as consumers spent more time there.


#HuntTheMouse

Due to popular demand, #HuntTheMouse was brought back for a second run and took Singapore by storm with a participation count of almost half a million. This 2018 edition retained similar mechanics to its first run, with three hints being released every day on social media pages to guide participants to the location of the gold coin.

This time, the grand prize was doubled to a gold coin worth S$100,000 cash, along with multiple silver coins worth S$1,000 each.

Solution 1: Extra Hints for App Downloads

In exchange for performing brand actions like downloading the WINK+ app, we rewarded players with valuable extra hints that helped them on their quest to find the hidden gold coin.

QR codes were scattered in the form of MRT station ads across the island. Through publicity efforts, players were prompted to download the WINK+ app to scan these QR codes, where each QR code rewarded them with an extra hint as well as WINK+ points.

Given the immense appeal of getting S$100,000 cash, we predicted that the majority of players would be driven to complete the simple action of downloading the WINK+ app so as to obtain these extra hints.

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Solution 2: Dropping Silver Coins

In addition to the single gold coin worth S$100,000, multiple silver coins worth S$1,000 each were periodically dropped around Singapore. Some coins were planted within the premises of participating malls to drive foot traffic to these spots.

Additionally, the digital event map featured icons that represented different landmarks and served as visual cues to draw players’ attention to these spots. The icons also doubled as safety prompts, where players who tapped on these icons would see reminders on hunting guidelines.

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During the game, players were alerted in advance that a new silver coin would be hidden in Vivocity at a specific date and time, upon which enthusiastic players even made plans to arrive early in anticipation of the coin drop. This new feature of dropping silver coins went on to successfully attract sizeable crowds to visit the different participating venues.

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While waiting for the coin to drop or during the search, players were also very likely to purchase goods and services. One particular player visited VivoCity with the intention to find the coin and ended up spending more than S$550 during his visit.

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Solution 3: Launching Viral Publicity

The combination of viral content on social media, transit advertising, and media mentions generated 40,800,000 impressions throughout the campaign. We also garnered a total of 2,500,000 engagements on Sqkii’s Facebook and Instagram pages, with hundreds of user-generated videos and thousands of messages received from participants on a daily basis.

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Moreover, visuals for the silver coin drops were curated and customised with the intention to drive speculation among participants on the featured landmark’s involvement as a potential venue. These posts featured Sqkii characters visiting places such as Vivocity, Singapore Sports Hub, 313@somerset, Sentosa, and SCAPE, generating buzz for our partners.

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An In-Depth Look: Unique Game mechanics and Psychology

Besides considering the frequency and accessibility of hints (check out #HuntTheMouse 2017 for a detailed breakdown!), this edition of #HuntTheMouse also utilised unique crowd behaviour to amplify existing publicity efforts.

The following mechanics were designed to maximise the virality of our cash hunt:

Engineering Unique Crowd Behaviour

In the gold coin hunt, we observed that players tended to gather in large groups to search, especially during the weekends or when the general location was confirmed towards the end of the campaign. Given that Singaporeans are susceptible to the crowd effect and love joining long queues, seeing crowds gathering motivated those with no knowledge of Sqkii’s cash hunt to find out more.

In particular, we consistently instructed players that the coin was “hidden under something in Singapore” through our social media posts.

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This instruction prompted players to perform the unnatural action of bending down and looking under objects, or lifting everyday objects. Rather than have our players quietly go about Singapore searching for the coin, we leveraged on the online-to-offline aspect of the game to allow even non-players to observe, comment on, and share about this out-of-the-norm behaviour.

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Re-Engaging Players with Frequent Rewards

Our new feature of hiding silver coins was designed to create more buzz and interest around the cash hunt. With the increased frequency and quantity of rewards given out, more players had a chance of finding a coin for themselves.

Beyond just motivating players to keep a constant lookout for more coin drops, these silver coins also created more opportunities for players to gather and search every time a silver coin was hidden, and sparked organic word-of-mouth and user-generated content on social media each time a new silver coin was found.

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Giving Players The Option of a More Guided Gameplay

In the silver coins mechanic, players were given clearer directions as compared to the gold coin. The gold coin involved daily hints that they needed to interpret and solve. For silver coins, on the other hand, circles on the digital event map directly showed areas in which the coins could be found, offering players — in particular casual ones — the option of a simpler gameplay for a smaller, but still sizeable reward of S$1,000. Players could choose to pursue both the gold and silver coins or simply focus on one type, with this iteration of the hunt being optimised for players across a range of playing styles and commitment levels.

Moreover, the silver coin circles on the map would shrink hourly, reducing the search area for a silver coin. This motivated players to keep track of the map, where players could decide for themselves if it was worth travelling to Woodlands to potentially win S$1,000. With the players deciding their own effort to rewards ratio, expectations were managed.

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Lastly, the map mechanic was able to strategically drive huge crowds to gather at specific areas, including Tampines, Jurong East, and so on. This was more effective in terms of drawing attention for the cash hunt and driving footfall for partner brands, compared to players being spread all over the island searching for the single gold coin.

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What went well for our clients

“Complementing their out-of-home advertising buy with our app allows them to engage the everyday Singaporean through online-offline integration and positions XCO to be at the forefront of delivering campaigns with maximum impact.” — XCO Media+’s Senior General Manager of Media and Digital Business, Jeslyn Tan

With enticing extra hints made exclusive to those who scanned QR codes using the WINK+ app, more than 53,000 hints were obtained by players through the WINK+ app. This achieved XCO Media+’s objective of driving mass adoption of the WINK+ app and contributed towards its sustained usage throughout the campaign.

As a result of the new silver coin mechanic, over 200,000 players flocked to 5 participating venues to find the hidden coins worth S$1,000 each. While the additional sales generated by the crowds were not measured, we can expect that it was a significant amount considering the volume of additional footfall and the amount of time each player would have spent at the venue.

What went well for the campaign

#HuntTheMouse proved to be more than just a one-time wonder when it came to engaging players from all walks of life. Notably, the new silver coins feature resulted in a tremendous amount of user-generated videos on social media and player participation, a vast improvement from the previous year.

Lessons Learnt

  • #HuntTheMouse is versatile enough to achieve a wide range of brand objectives, from driving app downloads to increasing F&B purchases and driving footfall
  • Other than the large reward of S$100,000, players are also significantly motivated and engaged by several smaller amounts of S$1,000
  • Unusual behaviours such as bending down to search for the coins can generate additional publicity and interest organically
  • The digital event map featuring silver coin circles is effective in guiding players and driving immense crowds to specific locations

<aside> 💡 CTA – Interested in #HuntTheMouse but find building your own game troublesome?

Enjoy end-to-end solutions and additional insights when you build a viral game with us!

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<aside> 💡 CTA – Interested in building your own viral game like #HuntTheMouse? Contact us today! [insert contact form]

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