Krispy Kreme found the right ingredients in a branded Facebook application game as it attempted to further mobile engagement among customers in Korea and advertise its new strawberry donuts.

The global donut and coffeehouse chain sought to promote its Real Strawberries product line to consumers in Korea, and tapped gamification as the marketing channel of choice. The Facebook-based game resulted in 88 percent engagement and 36.4 percent of players interacting with the Krispy Kreme Facebook page in some manner.

?Krispy Kreme has a large fan following on their Facebook page, and social marketing is a priority for them, so naturally one of their key objectives was to provide value-added entertainment content to their Facebook fan following and increase user interactions on their Facebook page,? said Danielle Hrin Kuek, producer at Branded Mini-Games, London.

?Through the increase of word-of-mouth social marketing through Facebook Likes, Shares and Comments, new users who are friends with these consumers would also learn about Krispy Kreme?s new game as well,? she said.

?In addition, by having a Facebook app, their branded mini-game became easily accessible from the top menu bar whenever one of their Facebook users visited their Facebook page and would not get easily buried below other Facebook page posts over time.?

Engaging on social media
Fans of Krispy Kreme could play the twist-and-form-the-picture game on Facebook to enter a contest. Players were asked to choose a level ranging from easy to expert, and turn each layer of the picture until it created a symmetrical image of a strawberry donut.

Users were then able to share their scores on Facebook and Twitter, which likely sparked interest among their friends and family and prompted more game playing.

Participants were also randomly entered for a chance to win 100 of the brand?s new pastries, with the top five scorers receiving a Krispy Kreme Tumble. This enabled the chain to give away free samples of its new donut line while simultaneously driving engagement on social media.

The ability for consumers to repost the game on Facebook also likely had a major effect in driving plays.

?When we look at the impact of word-of-mouth/social media marketing, 81 percent of people say that they are influenced by what their friends share on social media, with 84 percent of consumers saying they trust recommendations from family and friends about products ? making these recommendations the information source ranked highest for trustworthiness,? Ms. Kuek said.

Incentives of gamification
Krispy Kreme?s mobile game received more than 21,000 impressions from over 8,000 users. The possibility of garnering incentives, such as the free strawberry donuts, may have ramped up this usage and contributed to its Facebook page accumulating nearly 3,000 more Likes.

Eighty-eight percent of consumers engaged with the game for at least five seconds, while 78 percent completed their turn.

Branded Mini-Games revealed that it typically sees the number of replays per user double when there are prizes offered with a mobile game, suggesting that more food and beverage marketers should leverage these types of gamified campaigns to distribute free samples.

Incentives also spur consumers to be three times more likely to voluntarily provide personal contact details to the brand. If an advertising game does not offer prizes, the sign-in rate is generally around 15 percent as opposed to 43 percent for incentivized campaigns.

?The popularity of each type of mobile communication channel would vary from country to country, so it?s important to localize by geography as opposed to applying the same strategy across the world,? Ms. Kuek said. ?Generally, we notice a trend of increased marketing on social networks for mobile ? as consumers are mostly accessing these on-the-go with their mobile devices.

?This trend is particularly relevant and prevalent for F&B brand users, due to consumer social media trends of checking into places that they eat at and sharing their ?foodtography.??

Final Take
Alex Samuely is an editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York