If you had five minutes to talk directly to your clients - what would you say?

Musa Ncula

This may sound like a hypothetical question, but it is in fact a case study. Earlier this year, Sea Monster released Lighthouse - a white label brand engagement platform that allows brands to really connect with their customers through gamified content, and share real value with them. The platform also allows brands to measure and prove return on investment in one single place.

Makro was one of our first-use cases, running a 13-day campaign on the platform over the Easter period. One of the best things about this campaign was that it integrated traditional media and modern technology so seamlessly. Radio adverts directed customers to the Makro Lighthouse platform, where they opted in, and were able to engage with content, take quizzes and earn points which they could then redeem for in-store discounts and purchases.

We are thrilled that this campaign has just been awarded the bronze award for the best use of innovative technology in the international Content Marketing Awards but we are most pleased that customers were genuinely able to reap rewards and benefits.

The success of the campaign is visible in the numbers - recording almost 1 million page visitors in the 13 days, with users spending an average of five minutes on the platform each visit. This is more than 100,000 hours of voluntary engagement. More importantly, people chose to return.

In our industry, people talk a lot about the conversion funnel, the journey that a consumer takes from first becoming aware of your brand or product, to eventually becoming an advocate for it. And while most tend to focus on the awareness stage as being the most important, the real value and beauty lies in the consideration stage. This is the step where you start to build a relationship which feels authentic and meaningful, and which for brands, translates into real share of mind, rather than just getting a product in front of a customer.

It’s precisely this level of consideration that made Lighthouse the ideal platform for PointTaken, a project aimed at combating vaccine hesitancy and misinformation. Earlier this year, Sea Monster was named as one of three winners in the US Africa Tech challenge for our concept of using games and animation to combat vaccine misinformation. We have used the prize funding to develop a website which combines animations, games and quizzes which allow people to learn and engage with information in a safe space. As people make their way through the content, they earn coins which they can exchange for real life rewards like prizes like travel and food vouchers, providing incentive and motivation to keep going.

Similar to the Makro case study, we’ve also seen that people are spending time on the site, opting to return and to really engage with the content.

In the attention economy, where people’s time has value, the fact that they actively choose to listen to what you have to say should never be taken for granted. As marketing messages compete in increasingly congested channels, voluntary engagement is key. Consumers are no longer captive to marketing content - their time and attention matter to them, and brands should use that time wisely.