Gen Z doesn't respond to ads the way their parents did: they give them a few seconds and move on. In this episode of Jugando en Serio (in Spanish), Lucía Quijano, co-founder of Impulse and lecturer at ESADE, explains how brands use gaming so people can live the brand from the inside, and why corporate training should be planned like a marketing campaign.
Gaming marketing: from ads to living the brand
With the internet and social media, the conversation between brands and users stopped being one-way. For Quijano, gaming goes a step further: it lets users live your brand from the inside, with more freedom and a deeper connection. Fifteen years ago brands bought TV ratings points; today they build virtual worlds.
The audience that needs it most is Gen Z, the first generation of digital natives, who expect experiences from brands. According to Quijano, it's also the first generation that already spends more time in ecosystems like Roblox or Fortnite than on other social networks. Hence her motto: Roblox and Fortnite are the new social networks.
How to design a brand game that works
Quijano sets two rules. Keep it organic: forcing brand values down players' throats never works. And build it with people who know how to make games, because players aren't passive viewers and the first priority is for the game to be fun. A logo plastered everywhere only puts people off.
Her examples: Netflix, whose Roblox experiences let you play in its different universes, so you understand what the platform is without anyone telling you; Gucci, Gen Z's second favorite brand after Nike according to a study that linked this to its activations in gaming environments; and IKEA, which made huge headlines by hiring a person to work in its store inside Roblox.
It's much more important for users to be hooked on the game and, at the key moment, to read that message knowing deep down that they're playing your game, because they're in your ecosystem. You have to bring the brand in much more subtly.
Training, run like a marketing campaign
Quijano applies the same logic inside the company: with any training program, you need to know who it's for, what it aims to achieve and how it will be measured. Unlike those team-building days organized because they look good, with nobody asking afterwards what they were for.
Gaming helps precisely with measurement: who completes the training, where people get hooked and where they drop off. It also reveals skills HR cares about: in a gamified team activity you can see who leads, who follows and how each person handles the anxiety of winning or losing.
Just as nobody would think of launching a marketing campaign without being clear about their objectives and what they're going to measure, the same should apply to training.
A culture that's embraced, not imposed
For Quijano, a successful organizational culture is never imposed: employees embrace it. She criticizes hiring processes that sell free coffee or fruit when what matters is the fit between person and company, both ways. Not everyone fits everywhere: Amazon, she says, has a very strong culture that some people love and others couldn't stand.
She urges the startups she mentors to define their culture from day one, because it gets diluted as they grow. And her advice to HR is basic: listen, not just through surveys but by being close to people, over lunches or breakfasts, to understand what teams really need.
Emotion, failure and data
According to Quijano, Gen Z gives an ad about two seconds, so either you go experiential and emotional or connecting is very hard. Simple games prove it, like Don't Scream, a horror game where you lose if you scream. Her advice to founders: be clear about which customer pain you solve and which emotion you want to convey. Once that's settled, adapting the packaging to the platform of the moment is the easy part.
She also calls for losing the fear of getting things wrong: failure gives feedback, feedback gives knowledge and knowledge gives power, so it's better to test with small launches. And the big breakthrough she'd like to see? A data platform that shows what each employee needs and when to personalize their training, because many companies are flying blind today.
