The Power of Gaming in Business
Melina Palmer: Welcome to episode 555 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy.
Melina Palmer: In today’s episode, I’m excited to introduce you to Bastian Bergman, author of Press Play: Why Every Company Needs a Gaming Strategy.
Melina Palmer: Ready? Let’s get started.
Announcer: You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your your business, making it more brain friendly.
Announcer: Now, here’s your host, Melina Palmer.
🎮 Designing for Curiosity, Immersion, and Engagement
Melina Palmer: Hello.
Melina Palmer: Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business podcast.
Melina Palmer: What would change if your brand or your team approached engagement the way a game designer does?
Melina Palmer: Game designers don’t just hope people will show up and stick around.
Melina Palmer: They study motivation, design for curiosity, and create experiences that people actually want to return to.
Melina Palmer: They understand what makes us feel immersed, challenged, and rewarded and achieve a level of connection most organizations can only dream about.
Melina Palmer: And that’s what today’s conversation is all about, how understanding the psychology of play can help you create deeper, more meaningful engagement, no matter what your industry or business type.
Melina Palmer: Trust me. We’re going to get into some really cool stuff today with my guest.
Melina Palmer: His name is Bastian Bergman and he’s the co founder and COO of Solsten, a company that helps brands like Activision Blizzard, Peloton, Zynga and Sony design experiences that resonate at a psychological level.
Melina Palmer: His new book, Press Play explores how companies across every sector, from luxury, fashion to healthcare, are using the power of gaming to build loyalty and connection.
Melina Palmer: As you listen, I recommend you keep this in mind.
Melina Palmer: How might your experience change if you focused less on compliance and instead designed for curiosity really quickly.
Melina Palmer: Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know there are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch and more.
Melina Palmer: It’s all within the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com 555.
🧠 Play, Psychology, and the Power of Immersion
Melina Palmer: Now let’s jump right in. Bastian Bergman, welcome to the Brainy Business Podcast.
Bastian Bergman: Thanks for having me, Melina. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, we are, of course going to have so, so much fun today.
Melina Palmer: Nature of, the beast, as they would say. But, before we get into all that, and I’m sure your background is super fun too, but for everyone who doesn’t yet know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, sure. Happy to. yeah, my name is Bastian.
Bastian Bergman: I’m a co Founder of a company called Solsten. I’m COO there. Been doing this for almost eight years now.
Bastian Bergman: We basically use or we’ve built our own psychological AI to help companies understand what I like to say, the human being behind the consumer a little more, a little more deeply and intimately.
Bastian Bergman: So really getting to what drives consumers, what drives us as people, what motivates us. yeah.
Bastian Bergman: And in any, spare time that I, that I sometimes have, I do write a lot.
Bastian Bergman: And, I’m the author of a book called Press Play: Why Every Company Needs a Gaming Strategy that just came out and hit your local bookstore.
Melina Palmer: Yay.
Melina Palmer: And I am so excited to talk about the game aspect.
Melina Palmer: As I was telling you, kind of leading into our conversation here, we don’t talk about, we talk about having fun, incorporating fun into things and how important that is for humans and human nature.
Melina Palmer: but even gamification haven’t had too many conversations about. Because it’s one of those things that became a buzzword and then people did it really badly.
Melina Palmer: And so now it’s like the that doesn’t work deal and like it feels like something that is, you know, underrated or whatever, I don’t know, but overrated. Right. So that people think it’s not a thing. It’s not going to work for me.
Melina Palmer: but gamification is not the same as games. While there’s some overlap and whatnot.
Melina Palmer: Can you share a little bit about, kind of how you got into the gaming space and why it’s so important for people?
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, I mean, you, you nailed it, by the way.
Bastian Bergman: you know, there’s a, there’s this book from, Yukai Chow called Gamification, which was like the landmark book 15 years ago.
Bastian Bergman: And it’s such an abused term and people thought if you throw confetti on a screen when a user checks out and makes a purchase, you’re done and you just did a great deed.
Bastian Bergman: And you can check the gamification box and yeah, it’s obviously more than that.
Bastian Bergman: But, yeah, how I got into gaming is actually through my co founder, Joe, of the company, because he was working at one of the top, mobile gaming publishers back in the day, called Big Fish Games.
Bastian Bergman: And he went specifically into gaming because of the overlap with psychology and the ability through games to actually just learn a lot about people because they’re so rich in engagement, they’re so rich in data.
Bastian Bergman: Games are next to none. If you look at all of the different consumer touchpoints that exist, and that includes Social media that are able to create a level of engagement and a level of immersion that are just completely unparalleled.
Bastian Bergman: I always say to people, when someone says, well, I feel pretty immersed on my couch in the evening when I’m doom scrolling on Instagram for three hours, I’m like, that’s not the same level of doing this. Just flicking up your phone screen is not the same level of immersion.
Bastian Bergman: Than Henry Cavill for example, the Superman actor, he almost missed his call from the director that he got cast as Superman because he was playing World of Warcraft with his friends.
Bastian Bergman: So it’s like that level of immersion. And there’s something about games that connect with us on a very fundamental human level and they connect to our brains and how we’re wired as people.
Bastian Bergman: And it has to do with the fundamental principle of play, because to play is human.
Bastian Bergman: I’ve got two young girls. If you’ve ever watched a toddler learn about the world and experience the world, they do that through unstructured play.
Bastian Bergman: And even us as adults, or even as you get older and you look at my parents or grandparents, if they’re still around, the best way for adults to learn new things and rewire our brains is through play.
Bastian Bergman: And effectively what video games are, it’s a digital manifestation of play.
Bastian Bergman: And that’s what makes them so engaging and that’s what makes them so powerful because they’re by nature human.
Melina Palmer: Absolutely. And I too, I have a newly four year old and so we get to play lots of games and things like that and it’s just like laughing all the time and so fun as your, you know, rhymes and whatever, it grows up different for the most part.
Melina Palmer: But these days, so much of what, you know, you get to.
Melina Palmer: I love watching and seeing how he learns how my 9 year old, my 12 year old like seeing the things that they’re learning in school and also thinking about just human behavior in general.
Melina Palmer: I think it’s so fascinating to see what’s happened through schools and what games they like to play and all these different aspects and knowing that there are adults that play so many of these games too.
🌍 The Global Reality: 3.5 Billion Gamers
Melina Palmer: And so for any of the people who are listening, whether it’s when they think about from their business angle or just from them and they say, well, I’m not a gamer, there aren’t that many gamers.
Melina Palmer: So like, why would we want to be targeting this small demographic? What do you have to say?
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, I think that’s one of the, you know, very common misconceptions.
Bastian Bergman: Around the stereotype of what makes a gamer. You know, it’s this idea of whatever the 20 year old young dude in the basement with the monster energy drink, you know, the can in their hand and the neon lights in the, in the background and they’re playing a shooter game on their PC or something like that.
Bastian Bergman: Those people exist, absolutely, but they’re actually an absolute minority.
Bastian Bergman: And it’s been, it’s been the stereotype that stuck with us.
Bastian Bergman: Whenever we think about people that game or people that play games or people that would consider themselves gamers, which is also not the whole population, not, not everyone that plays sports considers themselves to be an athlete for, you know, good reasons, sometimes for wrong reasons.
Bastian Bergman: And it’s the same with gamers. So a lot of it also just has to do with a, complete lack of self awareness.
Bastian Bergman: If I act, ask my, my wife who’s very self aware, it’s like, are you a gamer?
Bastian Bergman: No, she would completely, you know, deny that. And then you look at her phone and you go, well there’s Wordle, there’s 2048, there’s strands, there’s, I’m doing like marketing for the New York Times right now.
Bastian Bergman: But it’s, there’s all those different games and apps, or that you would consider apps that are games.
Bastian Bergman: And I think that’s the, that’s the key thing. So you know, the first starting point, whether it’s people looking into this space, people thinking about the opportunity, if you’re a company, if you’re a brand, you have to shift your mindset and you have to shift the perception away from the stereotype.
Bastian Bergman: And you have to realize that at this point close to three and a half billion people play video games almost daily.
Bastian Bergman: Like to put that into context, that’s more than the populations of China and India combined.
Bastian Bergman: That’s also bigger than any religion we’ve ever had on earth as humanity.
Bastian Bergman: So it’s a completely different magnitude than people make it out to be.
🎯 Finding Your Hook: Audience, Authenticity, and Habit
Melina Palmer: Right.
Melina Palmer: I’m glad that you brought up the New York Times and of course this was on the list of ones to want to talk about anyway.
Melina Palmer: But I talk with my clients a lot. Where, so a lot of my clients, let’s say if it’s in like a fast moving consumer goods type category, people talk a lot about habits, right.
Melina Palmer: And how do we get into someone’s habit and we want them into our app or something, let’s say, or to use our product regularly.
Melina Palmer: And I end up talking about the New York Times a lot because like the way that the game goes away, like you have to play it in that day.
Melina Palmer: They’ve like now different things. It’s like you can go back and play last week’s or something, but for a time you have to log in at the right time to play the thing and know everyone else is playing.
Melina Palmer: And if you missed Wordle, it’s gone. Right. You have to do it.
Melina Palmer: And you only get the one time there’s this little bit of activity and you’re going in and just reusing it and you think about that pull that people have to come back, right.
Melina Palmer: Where it’s like, oh my gosh, and how often where it’s like, I just need to login, to get the, the one thing before this goes away, like, oh no, it’s 11:55 and I didn’t play Wordle or whatever your other, you know, game is.
Melina Palmer: People don’t have that about. They will not. They’ll stay in bed and not get up to go brush their teeth.
Melina Palmer: Even if they realize or they forgot to floss. It’s like, well, that’s a bummer. But, oh, well, right.
Melina Palmer: So like, what’s the pull of the game that would make you want to go do it and maybe floss or brush your teeth.
Melina Palmer: Right. Or whatever the other product, might be, when you think about it, that pulls someone in and I think the New York Times, many others, but they’ve done such an interesting and amazing job of getting people to where it becomes that like, cultural phenomenon.
Bastian Bergman: Absolutely. And, what they’ve done well is it fits their audience really well because what works for them is not necessarily going to work for, you know, I don’t know, maybe the Washington Post or, you know, someone else’s audience, whether it’s maybe Red Bull or Monster.
Bastian Bergman: Back to that.
Bastian Bergman: So I think what’s paramount for any of those gaming strategies or efforts, or honestly consumer engagement strategies in general, is if you’re a brand or a company embarking on this journey, step one has to be to get a very clear understanding of who your audience actually is.
Bastian Bergman: And what I mean by that is you have to move beyond the type of, typically the superficial data that companies have access to that we use to describe audiences.
Bastian Bergman: It’s like, well, you know, our audience is, I don’t know, I’m making this up 35 to 45 year old women in the Sunbelt states of the US which is like saying they all drink the same iced tea, they all like the same color and they all eat the same food and they all have the same daily routine, which is obviously not true.
Bastian Bergman: So how do you move beyond superficial data that’s actually not really descriptive of who people really are to get to people’s underlying drivers, their needs, their motivations, to then be able to embed yourself in. Well, if those are the daily habits, if those are the routines, what is my pull, what is my hook that I could latch onto to become a part of that daily habit?
Bastian Bergman: Because it’s more than embedding yourself in the context, right?
Bastian Bergman: If you mentioned brushing your teeth and if you’re a company in that space and you have this really cool toothbrush or you want to be part of that activity, whatever it is someone’s brushing their teeth, that’s contextual, you know that that’s going to happen.
Bastian Bergman: Just because that’s going to happen and you position yourself in that context doesn mean that people are going to adopt your solution.
Bastian Bergman: It’s about how do you embed yourself, how do you show up in that moment?
Bastian Bergman: And what’s important is that understanding, and the how has to be authentic to who you are as a company.
Bastian Bergman: And that’s typically the second extremely important step to lay the foundation is companies and brands have to do soul searching.
Bastian Bergman: Who am I and what do I stand for and what are the values that my brand represents?
Bastian Bergman: And don’t try to be something that you’re not. There’s a reason why the New York Times is so successful with the example that you gave.
Bastian Bergman: You know, notice all the different games that they have in their app are word games and puzzle games because that’s authentic to who they are.
Bastian Bergman: That’s the New York Times crossword puzzle from the 19, whatever, 40s, whatever it was, it’s authentic to who they are.
Bastian Bergman: If they were starting to show, like home renovation games or interior design or, or shooter games, be like, the poll would go away.
Bastian Bergman: People wouldn’t really be adopting it because it’s all of a sudden completely inauthentic.
Bastian Bergman: So understanding your audience, soul searching around who you are, those two things, have them meet, align them as much as you can to give yourself the ability to show up authentically in those spaces.
Bastian Bergman: And that’s the baseline to become part of people’s daily habits in the first place.
Bastian Bergman: Because that allows you to define the hook that is right for whichever given audience that you want to, interact with and engage.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, absolutely. And like you were saying, it’s the, when you think about the age, demographic, basic info, it just has so little to do.
Melina Palmer: I always kind of go back to as Being something like a parent, right?
Melina Palmer: So like drop off at my kids school, where I will potentially have more in common with, with someone who is 25 that has a kid the same age as me, then someone who is my same age that has teenagers that are like when I’m thinking about my four year old, right like, or that has, you know, had their kids early or whatever else.
Melina Palmer: And so it’s not. And in that context of like if you’re trying to target me as a mom or a parent or whatever that happens to be thinking about stuff that you’re aiming toward my children or whatever and what it means getting them to practice and all that, then like those aspects, I’m going to relate more to this person who is 15 years younger than I am, than I would the other, you know, spoiler alert.
Melina Palmer: I’m 40 now but the other 40 year old, you know, who potentially has older kids.
Melina Palmer: And so with that, you know, you’re able to see that like those moments of decision, understanding, identity and, and like when I’m playing something, when you think about New York Times and the crossword, right.
Melina Palmer: There’s also that status of like playing the crossword with pen, right.
Melina Palmer: That people would talk about and it’s hard and that’s a lot of the point, right?
Melina Palmer: Because there’s the status of being able to do it and being kind of smarter than everybody else if you can do that.
Melina Palmer: New York Times especially I think Sunday, right In Penn. Big deal, right.
Melina Palmer: And so getting your percentage on Wordle and seeing how you compete against everyone else and how many moves you can get it in or how different combinations you can get, on the other games, if they were super easy and everyone’s going to win, then that’s not going to fit and nobody’s going to be coming back.
Melina Palmer: but yeah, it’s interesting to, you have to know those things about who you’re targeting, why it matters for them.
Melina Palmer: And like you said, if you are the Washington Post or local paper, you don’t need your just like version of Wordle because that might not fit your audience and demographic.
Melina Palmer: There may be something else.
🌮 Case Study: Chipotle’s Integrated Gaming Strategy
Melina Palmer: So if we can take a step to one that I feel like is a brand that people would associate with gaming gamers in general, that feels like an obvious fit.
Melina Palmer: First, the one that comes to mind for me is Chipotle.
Melina Palmer: I think there were some interesting stories in the book and where you’d say like sure, like gamer types eat burritos.
Melina Palmer: So like easy thing that makes sense. But I Love the way that they’ve applied everything there.
Melina Palmer: And then I think we can, after that, you know, break into some other brands that you would say would never fit into gaming type culture that have done very well in the space.
Melina Palmer: So, what can you share about the Chipotle and their, approach to games?
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, Chipotle started with exactly that foundation that we just, that we just talked about.
Bastian Bergman: So they did a lot of upfront work in being really clear on who are we as a brand and then, well, who are we really trying to engage, interact with and resonate with?
Bastian Bergman: And it was more than, okay, gamers. So they gravitated very much to, we want to make sure we get in front of younger people.
Bastian Bergman: So it was all about younger audiences. They looked at all of the different touch points where younger audiences were.
Bastian Bergman: They did a lot of deeper research to supplement that.
Bastian Bergman: So they didn’t leave it at the high level, you know, demographic.
Bastian Bergman: Oh, these, are young people because there’s always different types of young people. So they really solidified that.
Bastian Bergman: And what they took as a baseline for their, was really kind of like their breakout foray into gaming.
Bastian Bergman: Because they first started with sponsoring. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this. There was a Fortnite House.
Bastian Bergman: It was like Twitch streamers. It was like three of the top global Fortnite players that were all living together in this house, the Fortnite House.
Bastian Bergman: And they were eating Chipotle all day while streaming themselves.
Bastian Bergman: So Chipotle partnered with them because the idea was, well, let’s go where the product and the people and the affinity for who we are as a brand already naturally is.
Bastian Bergman: So they started with sponsoring streamers. That was kind of like the baseline.
Bastian Bergman: But then when they, when they wanted to take it, you know, step further, per what we just started talking about and really thinking about, okay, what are some, game integrations that we can do?
Bastian Bergman: They quickly looked at Roblox just because the fit with the audience was there and they got to integrate with some other games pretty, pretty quickly and efficiently.
Bastian Bergman: So after having completed step one, that audience understanding step two was, okay, where is the place where our audience shows up?
Bastian Bergman: They landed on Rob Blocks. And then step three was, okay, well, what is something that is so uniquely Chipotle in the real world that we could transport to the physical world?
Bastian Bergman: Because that’s a, that’s a special thing when it happens in the, in the physical world.
Bastian Bergman: How do we, how do we transport it into the digital realm? And they landed on Halloween.
Bastian Bergman: Not only is it Obviously it’s a very special holiday for all of us.
Bastian Bergman: But secondly, it’s a very big event for Chipotle every single year.
Bastian Bergman: So they have, you know, you know, the, it’s called Burrito.
Bastian Bergman: they have all these special characters like Walkenstein and there’s a bunch of other ones.
Bastian Bergman: And it’s actually this like fan holiday where people come dressed up to Chipotle stores to enjoy special menu items.
Bastian Bergman: So it’s this whole thing. And they said, well, why not take that into the digital world?
Bastian Bergman: That was where they felt they had the strongest overlap between being able to engage that younger, audience that they were targeting, being, you know, authentically and Chipotle very true to that.
Bastian Bergman: While doing something that the Roblox platform and the gaming environments would allow them to do.
Bastian Bergman: So it was that trifecta that they orchestrated really, really effectively.
Bastian Bergman: And the outcome of that was a couple of different things.
Bastian Bergman: It was a very simple maze game called Burrito Maze.
Bastian Bergman: So you could run through the maze, collect different items, unlock different clothing pieces and special items for your Guatenstein character and other menu items.
Bastian Bergman: And then there was also a virtual Chipotle store restaurant that you could go into.
Bastian Bergman: And they were handing out, I think it was $1 million in free burritos while people were playing it until they were up.
Bastian Bergman: That event, that gaming activation, there’s a fun fact if you Google it, there’s headlines where Chipotle crashed Roblox.
Bastian Bergman: Because when they launched it, Roblox actually went dark for like four hours.
Bastian Bergman: And everyone thought it was like, because there’s such a craze around Chipotle. And it actually helped boost visibility.
Bastian Bergman: They weren’t the cause, but they were, you know, they were, they were being perceived as a reason.
Bastian Bergman: So it actually gave them an additional boost. But what it led to was a top 10 digital sales day in the history of the company because people would redeem their free burritos and then buy additional items either ordering online or going to their direct store.
Bastian Bergman: And the second thing that it led to was one of their top, I think it was also top 10 enrollment days for their rewards program, which is even more valuable than the initial money that they made in one off sales.
Bastian Bergman: Because now you have our loyalty member that signs up on the back end.
Bastian Bergman: They know how valuable these people are over the course of their, you know, their lifetime.
Bastian Bergman: And I asked the CMO, Chris Brand, I said, $1 million in free giveaway. That’s a good chunk of change.
Bastian Bergman: And I said, did you guys make that back? And he just smiled at me and he said yeah, it took minutes because we knew based on basically the lifetime value of those rewards members it was extremely profitable, it was extremely lucrative.
Bastian Bergman: So but yeah, they, they followed those steps pretty much, pretty much by the book.
Bastian Bergman: And what it did was it really set the tone and it set the stage internally to make gaming a core part of their consumer engagement strategy.
Bastian Bergman: So they’re treating it like a dedicated platform. Like you have social media teams.
Bastian Bergman: They have, they have teams and people dedicated to those gaming initiatives. And it’s not a one off campaign.
Bastian Bergman: It’s a continuous effort year round where they’re working on different things in different gaming platforms and different activations.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I love that example and just showing kind of the evolution for one, right.
Melina Palmer: To see in their case they were fortunate to be able to see like okay, so people are, they’re already eating Chipotle.
Melina Palmer: So we can very quickly just sort of layer in and sponsor someone or do something. Right.
Melina Palmer: and then you can kind of dip your toe in there and then you go to this next space, into Roblox and setting that up which is just such a fun story and also like good to know.
Melina Palmer: I guess I’m not cool enough to be dressing up and going to Chipotle however that, yeah, but so cool that they’re able to then find something that people are already passionate about that are the Chipotle people, right.
Melina Palmer: That get it. They’re going to go find it. And I think they had maybe it was like some of the different like skins or costumes or things you could get in the game as well.
Melina Palmer: Right. And they’re limited edition type thing and they you know, those, you know, went away very quickly too.
Melina Palmer: and people love that scarcity aspect, right. So it’s one thing to say and we’re here all the time and like now we’re, we’re here and you can always get whatever you want and nothing ever changes and there’s no stopping point, that’s not super compelling for humans to go do anything.
Melina Palmer: So that scarcity that comes with that virtual space is really key too.
Melina Palmer: and I know you talk about this in the book about how you can track that better now and things like that, with blockchain and whatnot.
Melina Palmer: So we can get into that example potentially if it makes sense like layering that in of the value.
Melina Palmer: But then if we look at something that’s even like where someone say okay but like Chipotle is obvious but when you look at maybe high fashion Brands or things like that, like they’re, they have no space, there’s no, no need to go there.
Melina Palmer: And they’re not going to make that money back because they’re not selling something like a burrito that’s really easy to go redeem no matter what.
Melina Palmer: Like not everyone’s going to go buy you know, Balenciaga or Louis Vuitton and so there’s just no point.
🛍️ High Fashion in the Virtual World: Burberry and Adidas
Bastian Bergman: But yeah, but I think that’s the, that’s the, it’s a, it’s a big all caps but I put there.
Bastian Bergman: you know one of my favorite examples in the book and as a part of this whole universe is actually what Burberry did because they fit that description of like you know, high fashion luxury, perfectly.
Bastian Bergman: And I mean they use scarcity too . they effectively integrate it with a Blockchain based game, Web3 based game called Blankos, which is like a sandbox open environment game where you can build, you know, a lot of different things.
Bastian Bergman: And they launched a limited edition character set, 750 of them at a very high price point.
Bastian Bergman: So it was like 300 bucks, which you know, typical for, for those of you who are not as familiar with that, like typical items or characters if, especially in mobile free to play games, you’re more looking at like a $2, maybe five if it’s expensive.
Bastian Bergman: So for someone to launch a $300 character in a free to play game.
Bastian Bergman: I remember the mythical CEO John Linden told me this story and he says I laughed at them when they said this.
Bastian Bergman: He’s like there’s no way this is going to work.
Bastian Bergman: But why it was important is because to your point, the exclusivity, it was important to signal that because that’s what Burberry is about.
Bastian Bergman: Not everyone has the means to purchase that trench coat or the scarf or the, you know, the famous, you know, plate pattern and all that.
Bastian Bergman: So it, it had to signal that again to stay true to that specific brand and the values.
Bastian Bergman: But that that character edition, the 750 was accompanied by a full virtual clothing line.
Bastian Bergman: It was like the summer collection of that year. It was like 2023 I believe when it launched the characters, all 750 of them sold out in 22 seconds.
Bastian Bergman: So that’s like $225,000 in revenue which that’s already impressive in its own right.
Bastian Bergman: So there’s absolutely a place for luxury in this because games are kind of like the place where culture lives, engagement exists.
Bastian Bergman: People use it to express themselves. So self expression is huge and the money is real.
Bastian Bergman: There was players in Counter Strike literally that spend a million dollars on a limited edition.
Bastian Bergman: It was like AK47 or something like a million dollars.
Bastian Bergman: So there’s real money in these environments where people are spending serious cash on certain, you know, certain items.
Bastian Bergman: So all of that’s, all of that’s real. But I think the more important part for Burberry, you know, revenue aside, was the fact that now they were actually engaging and continuously engaging with an audience who has completely different shopping behaviors than their current core customer that wears a Burberry trench coat, which is, you know, maybe people like you and me, maybe even a little bit older, who are, what’s their shopping behavior?
Bastian Bergman: They’re going to go into a store. They don’t shop online first or digitally.
Bastian Bergman: They’re old school, so they’re going to go into a store. The young audience don’t. They don’t do that.
Bastian Bergman: Their initial starting point is digital and predominantly gaming. So how I look at it is they, in addition to the revenue, they actually secured access and interaction to, you know, their audience of the future who now has exposure to the brand, who can work their way up to, ooh, I want to check out that trench coat.
Bastian Bergman: Maybe they go to the store, maybe they buy it online.
Bastian Bergman: But otherwise you would have had a massive gap just driven by radically different shopping behaviors between different demographic cohorts and generations of consumers.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I know you shared stats in the book and like no pressure to have exact stats on anything, but, there was something also about when someone buys a thing in a game like for their avatar, they’re much more likely to then buy it for their physical self out in the real world as well.
Melina Palmer: Right?
Bastian Bergman: It’s 86%. Yeah, it’s the conversion rate from virtual to physical.
Bastian Bergman: So people that have purchased a virtual item, like In a gaming environment, 86% of them proceed to buy the corresponding physical item.
Bastian Bergman: And I think that’s just, that’s crazy from both an activation perspective, but also if you.
Bastian Bergman: This is where I love how Adidas thinks about games because they’re actually thinking about it as it’s a business model.
Bastian Bergman: It’s their new business model where, you know, I think as long as brands are looking at gaming just like another advertising or marketing channel, you’re missing the whole point.
Bastian Bergman: You know, you can’t just go copy paste the old Playbooks, you know, look at it like social media.
Bastian Bergman: Let’s throw a banner ad in here. Let’s just do product placement in one other game.
Bastian Bergman: Those are interesting starting points, but if that’s your idea and your strategy for this touch point, you’re leaving way too much potential on the table.
Bastian Bergman: Where Adidas actually went as far. And I mean, yes, this took them a few years, but they went through those motions.
Bastian Bergman: They now have an entire business unit for virtual goods. Virtual goods only.
Bastian Bergman: It’s a dedicated business unit and it’s profitable. And it’s.
Bastian Bergman: I think, I don’t want to misspeak, but I think it’s the most profitable business unit internally, with like 40% profit margins.
Bastian Bergman: It’s insane. And now if you go back to the statistics of 86% conversion from virtual to physical, you have the ability to effectively monetize a consumer twice.
Bastian Bergman: Because. And I think that’s the mindset shift that has to happen.
Bastian Bergman: A lot of people in those virtual environments, it’s the second place for them, it’s the second life.
Bastian Bergman: It’s the virtual representation. They’re going to go through the motions of, yeah, I’m going to buy sneakers for 100 bucks because I want to wear those when I go to my Fortnite concert.
Bastian Bergman: I know that can still sound crazy, but the numbers, the numbers don’t lie.
Bastian Bergman: And if you as a brand think about connecting virtual to physical and what that could mean, that type of thinking for your business, that’s when you’re starting to really get to, the golden opportunity that gaming can be.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. I mean, fascinating with all of that, for sure.
Melina Palmer: And like you said, building a totally new division around it, which is, like, you don’t have to actually make any real clothes or sew things together.
Melina Palmer: Of course, you’re, you know, sewing together the ones and zeros or what have you. Right.
Melina Palmer: But, like, it’s the worst analogy or metaphor I think I’ve ever used, but I accept it. It’s fine.
Melina Palmer: It happened. We’re moving beyond. It’s okay. but I’d like to see.
Bastian Bergman: Someone saw, you know, the Earls together.
Melina Palmer: It’ll happen now.
Melina Palmer: We’re just gonna make it. but with that, too. It feels like a really great testing space, too. Right?
Melina Palmer: Because you can see. See if you’re thinking about making a, new type of shoe or a new color combination or whatever it is, you can go put it in your store in that virtual space and you can see.
Melina Palmer: Let’s like, for a B testing purposes, right. Before you go create the actual physical product, you could have it, be there and see.
Melina Palmer: Oh, yeah, actually, the red one did way better than the blue.
Melina Palmer: and then you’re able to go create the one. But also this like camaraderie that comes from the people that would be in that blue group if it did come around, they might be really passionate about those blue shoes and you can market directly to them.
Melina Palmer: Right? Like you have them here, the way that you know, you’re able to use that information to help people to see, hey, this now exists as a real thing and you can go get it.
Melina Palmer: Super. Ah, cool.
🗺️ Pathways and Organizational Strategy for Gaming
Melina Palmer: As we consider now for people that are, I’m hoping, you know, excited about what some of those possibilities are.
Melina Palmer: You do a really great job in the book of kind of listing out, you know, where we start.
Melina Palmer: Do I have to make my own games? Do I, or do I have to go into someone else’s game?
Melina Palmer: Do I have to hire someone to do this internally?
Melina Palmer: Do I need a whole department for virtual goods when I get started?
Melina Palmer: You know, what are the paths that people can take as they consider this?
Melina Palmer: Like, and what should they be thinking about as they figure out what’s going to be a good fit for them and their brand?
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, it’s a great question, Melina.
Bastian Bergman: I would separate it into, well there’s the actual strategies around how do you enter the gaming space and then what do you do organizationally?
Bastian Bergman: Because both of those are really, really important and they’re not necessarily going to be or they’re not necessarily related depending on what you do.
Bastian Bergman: But there’s some good high level learnings that apply across all spaces, all companies, all types of organizations.
Bastian Bergman: So in terms of entering video gaming as a space and using that for your own company, I lay out honestly four fairly simple strategic pathways.
Bastian Bergman: The first one is, and they all build on each other, with increasing complexity.
Bastian Bergman: And the first one is enter and integrate with a video game that already exists.
Bastian Bergman: So that could be product placement. You could do maybe a themed event inside of a game.
Bastian Bergman: Henkel, the big German consumer goods companies, like one of the top 10 consumer goods companies globally, they have this hair care brand called Schwarzkopf which they did an integration with, Final Fantasy 14 where now you could color the avatars in the game in different types of colors with hair dyes that are branded.
Bastian Bergman: It’s. I’m not saying that that’s a good example. I looked into that like they could have got a lot of other places, but it’s that type of example where you can integrate with a game that’s already there.
Bastian Bergman: Big benefits are there’s a live audience, you don’t have to worry about attracting people. They’re already there.
Bastian Bergman: Your technical lift is much, much lighter. You can do something that’s contained in a contained environment, lower lift, learn, iterate, and then scale from there.
Bastian Bergman: The second pathway is you build your own game, obviously a lot more, complex, bigger lift, you need different resources.
Bastian Bergman: The big benefit is you get to build and shape and control the environment from scratch and literally build it around who you are as a brand and what you want to accomplish.
Bastian Bergman: Which is one of the fundamental differences compared to social media channels.
Bastian Bergman: Because you can’t shape your Instagram channel as a brand.
Bastian Bergman: You can shape the content, you can’t shape the experience on the channel or in your meta newsfeed or TikTok.
Bastian Bergman: You’re confined to what the platform gives you. It’s a very different story, with brands, with games.
Bastian Bergman: The third one is basically either of those two first ones, but you layer a Web3 technology element into kind of like the Burberry example.
Bastian Bergman: That’s this the third strategy with the difference being blockchain technology just offers you additional opportunities around monetization, tracking data, ownership of assets, and basically a long tail engagement because typically in after sales, in a marketplace where you have continuous engagement with the audience and your brand.
Bastian Bergman: And the fourth one is how do you make games a part of your own product?
Bastian Bergman: Which is, that’s the one that gets closest, but actually does gamification. Right.
Bastian Bergman: So we’re kind of coming full circle to how we started the conversation.
Bastian Bergman: So rather than again slapping confetti on a screen, how do you do what peloton did, which is an example that I cover in depth in the book, where they actually build workout content in form of a full fledged standalone video game.
Bastian Bergman: So you’re cycling on your peloton bike and you’re going through the motions of you’re actually riding your peloton bike and the game is simulating that now?
Bastian Bergman: Just over half, more than half of all peloton workouts on a peloton bike are conducted in a video game and not through instructor LED content.
Bastian Bergman: So rather than having a person yell at you while you’re biking, you’re actually playing a video game while you’re biking.
Bastian Bergman: People come back for more workouts on a weekly basis.
Bastian Bergman: The workouts are longer, so it has lasting effects on engagement and retention as well.
Bastian Bergman: That’s the closest to quote unquote gamification, but you’re actually taking it a step, a step further.
Bastian Bergman: Duolingo is another great one in that quadrant where they had a standalone language learning app.
Bastian Bergman: They gradually shifted that through Gamification towards the thing literally feels like a mobile game.
Bastian Bergman: Not when you’re learning your language, it’s like you’re playing a game, you know.
Bastian Bergman: To take it another step further, they just acquired a mobile game studio with a music mobile game to start offering musical classes and classes for learning music and different instruments through playing a video game.
Bastian Bergman: So that’s that fourth quadrant, obviously a lot more complex and you can work your way through those different quadrants.
Bastian Bergman: You could start, you know, at any point in time.
Bastian Bergman: But they do connect in terms of the challenge and the complexity to go through them.
Bastian Bergman: And that brings me to the organizational setup and what do you have to put in place internally?
Bastian Bergman: And there’s a lot of different learnings in the book that are really important that I lay out.
Bastian Bergman: But if I had to just pick maybe two, I would say the first one is don’t, don’t go with your knee jerk reaction and make this a, marketing initiative that might be the right home internally to have your marketing team lead this.
Bastian Bergman: It might not be. So instead make it a cross functional initiative.
Bastian Bergman: If you’re starting out, get people from product, from marketing, from insights, legal, finance, get them all on board from day one so that everyone has skin in the game and everyone is involved and knows what to expect and what this can be so that there are no surprises down the road.
Bastian Bergman: And then the second one is related to that. I would say when you’re starting, don’t go with titles, don’t go with the obvious fit of this is the person that should do this per their job description.
Bastian Bergman: Recruit the willing and the curious. That’s what I’d like to say.
Bastian Bergman: Because people that are passionate about this topic, they’re going to go the extra mile, they’re going to get, dig deeper, they’re going to go into the culture, they’re going to spend time in Reddit threads, on Reddit forums, they’re going to spend time in Discord and they’re going to come back with the actual insights and the actual things from a cultural perspective that matter to help shape you how you best show up in, in these places.
Bastian Bergman: so those would be my definitely number one. Number two, maybe a third one for bonus is if you’re just starting out, it’s your first one.
Bastian Bergman: Don’t go it alone. Get a partner. Get someone you don’t have to.
Bastian Bergman: Hire a full team and build a team internally. Hire a really good partner.
Bastian Bergman: There’s tons of great parties out there that can help with this type of work.
Bastian Bergman: Find a good Partner, find a good consultant who’s been in gaming in the past to have an outside partner that can help spar with you on this to help with the educational ramp up.
Bastian Bergman: Because there will be a ramp up in terms of just learning about the space and what it means to go into it.
Melina Palmer: Absolutely. of course, so many directions I could go from as you were talking.
Melina Palmer: It’s like thoughts here, thoughts there. But I think one is, I’m guessing the big fear.
Melina Palmer: What should be a fear for people that’s maybe holding them back a little bit is this idea of if you you go in there being yourself and you do the thing and you think you’re going to land and everybody like eye rolls you and walks away because you’re so obviously in your own world.
Melina Palmer: You don’t get us. Ah, right. And so I think that there’s the identity of the way that we in Fortnite, the language we use or the way we act is different than in Roblox, which is different than in whatever other games that would exist.
Melina Palmer: And so knowing how those people talk, what they’re looking for, what they’re interested in, those, the social norms that exist in the game you really want and need to understand before you go fit yourself in. And so potentially even like as you were saying, someone who’s curious and passionate and interested.
Melina Palmer: I would think if you had someone on your team who was really into, into a game, enough that could say, can see the vision of I could I get how we could bring Burberry or like Balenciaga in here.
Melina Palmer: It’d be like really cool. I think people would like it.
Melina Palmer: You can kind of go maybe with a hunch of somebody who really gets it, doesn’t have to be the perfect game, but like that right person that fit, that gets it, that sees it and can help bring it together versus like nobody’s ever heard of this game at our company.
Melina Palmer: But we’re going to try and just like drop a shop in there and see what happens.
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
💡 Finding the Right Game for Your Business Goals
Melina Palmer: so I’m, I know there are so, so many questions.
Melina Palmer: I’ll say do you have any favorite games, what do you like to play and, or do you have a, another example that you think is helpful for companies as they’re thinking about how they might be moving forward with, with this idea of games and their organizations?
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, I have a lot of favorite games . and I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer.
Bastian Bergman: Back to the early first part of this conversation. I grew up on I’ve always played more on console than anything else.
Bastian Bergman: I grew up on all the different sports franchises. I remember like, you know, playing FIFA and NHL with my dad back in the day.
Bastian Bergman: Favorite, current ones that I’m playing right now, is an RPG game, Ghost of Tsushima.
Bastian Bergman: they actually have the follow up, the sequels coming out, in October I think.
Bastian Bergman: Ghosts of Yotei, which looks really cool if you’re into Japanese culture and Japanese history. Definitely check it out.
Bastian Bergman: and then my oldest, daughter, she’s six and a half, she is allowed to play Nintendo Switch now and we play Mario World.
Bastian Bergman: So we play Super Mario Kart together and race around the racetracks, which is an insane amount of fun.
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, those are the ones that I play. I think in terms of examples, there’s so many different ones in the book.
Bastian Bergman: What I will say is this really applies to any company in any industry.
Bastian Bergman: I was giving a talk a couple of weeks ago, ah, at Gamescom, which is the world’s largest video gaming conference on this topic.
Bastian Bergman: And I had two partners from a law firm come up to me afterwards, a multinational law firm saying, well, we didn’t know what to expect from this, but this is even relevant for our line of business.
Bastian Bergman: Which is true. I started my career at the Boston Consulting Group back in the day.
Bastian Bergman: One of the first projects that I worked on was we actually built a video game for both internal education and then also for clients to help people think about business strategy differently.
Bastian Bergman: So yes, it is for fast moving consumer goods, yes it is for luxury fashion houses and it could be for some of the most seemingly boring or mundane or traditional, you know, even B2B businesses that could, that could leverage this.
Bastian Bergman: So I think, you know, I gave Henkel and their, their, their hair dye brand as one example with the Final Fantasy one.
Bastian Bergman: I really want to stress this point again, like use tools that are out there to get a quick valid understanding of where the audience is.
Bastian Bergman: So for example, I used a tool called Alaris . and when you actually look up the Schwarzkopf brand audience for that particular tool, there’s no Final Fantasy to be found in the top 200 games that this audience plays.
Bastian Bergman: globally. It’s just not there. There’s no affinity, there’s no overlap.
Bastian Bergman: But the top fifth game is a game called Design Home, which is a pretty popular mobile game.
Bastian Bergman: See, there you go.
Melina Palmer: I was gonna say it’s one of my favorite games.
Bastian Bergman: There you go. And the overlap between that audience and the shampoo and the hair care brand’s audience is significant and they align from visual perspective, a value perspective.
Bastian Bergman: And it took me five minutes to get to those conclusions and to find that information and then go to okay, let me take some next steps and what could a marketing brief be?
Bastian Bergman: How would we do an integration? What are some of the ideas?
Bastian Bergman: So I just want to stress that point for anyone that’s listening is don’t just go off of gut feel, don’t go off of high level assumptions.
Bastian Bergman: Don’t go off of what is a game that you would like to see the brand and what is a game that you like to play.
Bastian Bergman: That’s not necessarily the best starting point. And also don’t start this conversation internally with we need a gaming strategy.
Bastian Bergman: That’s the outcome. You’re going to get a lot more buy in internally if you start with well what is our business, what are our business objectives was our company need to do?
Bastian Bergman: Who’s our consumer, who’s our audience and how do we achieve our business goals with our audience? Okay, great.
Bastian Bergman: Gaming is one important piece to that puzzle.
Bastian Bergman: Now let’s talk about what could a strategy for going into that space look like.
Bastian Bergman: So don’t start at the end, start at the beginning.
Bastian Bergman: And you’re going to get a lot more buy in internally from especially the finance and the CFO function because they’re going to have to sign off on something that nine out of ten of them have probably never signed off budget for in their career.
Bastian Bergman: So that’s going to be new to them as well.
Melina Palmer: Awesome.
Melina Palmer: Well, I am intrigued to see how the hair care brand is going to make its way into Design Home because they should.
Bastian Bergman: Yes.
Melina Palmer: I love. I have been fascinated with this game for years as I’ve played it and I find myself, I’m always you know, begging my husband to buy me diamonds but it’s just in the game that I can use to buy it new wall art or rugs or things.
Melina Palmer: But the way that and my mom’s an interior designer and so seen actually we have some, some furniture that I have. I’ve seen the pattern and thing in the game. Right.
Melina Palmer: But it’s actual brands and actual things at the real price points that it would be the way that it normalizes it.
Melina Palmer: And if you buy things another shop it gives you credits that you can be buying it is super cool.
Melina Palmer: And we’ll have another maybe conversation all about that game because I think it’s fascinating.
Melina Palmer: But we’re out of time today.
➡️ Next Steps and Final Thoughts
Melina Palmer: So for everyone who is now so excited to get their copy of Press Play and to learn all about this more in depth and to follow you and learn more.
Melina Palmer: In addition to links we’ll have in the show notes, what’s the best way for them to follow you?
Melina Palmer: Get the book, Learn more.
Bastian Bergman: Yeah, if you want to check out the book, there’s a dedicated website called pressplaystrategy.com.
Bastian Bergman: there’s all your favorite book resellers, all the different platforms out there.
Bastian Bergman: Obviously you can hit up your local bookshop, which I’m always a huge fan of.
Bastian Bergman: If, you want to follow me, connect me. we could talk about any of the ideas that you guys might have around this find, me on LinkedIn, add me.
Bastian Bergman: It’s a great place. And also, my own substack called Technically Entertaining. There’s also an Instagram profile around that.
Bastian Bergman: But I guess we’ll put the links in the show notes, but the usual, the usual places, LinkedIn substack and pressplaystrategy.com for the book.
Melina Palmer: Perfect. Well, like we said, we’ll put those links in there and thank you again so much for the conversation.
Melina Palmer: I am looking at all my games in a, in a whole new way, as we move forward and I can’t wait to see what’s on the horizon.
Melina Palmer: For everybody who’s been listening and is inspired from today’s conversation, of course from when they get the book as well.
Melina Palmer: It’s really cool stuff.
Bastian Bergman: Thanks for having me, Melina.
Melina Palmer: Thank you again to Bastian Bergman for joining me on the show today.
Melina Palmer: What got your brain buzzing in today’s conversation?
Melina Palmer: For me, it’s the reminder that a, gaming strategy isn’t just about self identified gamers.
Melina Palmer: And it’s way more than sprinkling in a few points or badges.
Melina Palmer: It’s about understanding and designing for real human behavior. Building for curiosity instead of compliance helps you shift from an experience that feels like it’s forced upon you, that people might resist into something that they can’t help but engage with and keep naturally coming back to.
Melina Palmer: And that made me think about how powerful play is as a learning tool.
Melina Palmer: When we play, experiment, fail safely and try again. That’s how habits form, innovation happens, and teams grow stronger.
Melina Palmer: So whether you’re thinking about your customers, your employees, or your own personal development, there is so much to gain by asking what would happen if instead of chasing attention, we designed for immersion.
Melina Palmer: After all, if 3 billion people play every day, what might your business be missing out on by sitting on the sidelines?
Melina Palmer: So what about you? I would love to hear what stood out for you from today’s episode.
Melina Palmer: Whatever it is, come share it with me on social media.
Melina Palmer: You’ll find me as the Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn.
Melina Palmer: There are links in the show notes to make it easy, along with links to my top related past episodes and books, including Press Play, ways to get in touch and more.
Melina Palmer: It’s all waiting for you in the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com 555 and thank you again to Bastian Bergman for joining me on the show today.
Melina Palmer: It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me next time.
Melina Palmer: Time for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It’s going to be a lot of fun.
Melina Palmer: You don’t want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.
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