Gamification stuff we love: Shaun in the city
Yesterday I was walking around the financial district in the city of London and I happened to spot the most unlikely random art piece outside the Lloyds building near the Gherkin. I posted the picture below on Facebook only to find out that it is a campaign for the Wallace and Grommit Children’s charity featuring Shaun the sheep. This one is Kanzashi Shaun, who is wearing a kimono in tribute to Japanese culture
The fun thing is that there is a trail around London where you can meet all 120 of the sheep, the app is completely gamified. You get clues as to how close you are to finding one of the sheep, then when you log one in the app, you earn baaa rewards. As you come closer to the sheep, the app will start encouraging you to look and find it, it gives you an approximation of how far away you are and an image of which one you are looking for. So far I have only found 3 of the beauties near where I am staying which has unlocked the following badges: Mind the gap, Baa-code, London Calling, Reverse engineering (I found that one walking backwards), sprint to the finish, Part of the flock…. with 32 more potential rewards to earn.
Each time someone downloads the app for £1.49 the money goes to charity for sick children. The aim of the app and the artwork is to encourage more people to also do more fundraising such as trail hun, Baaa-ke sales etc to support a number of initiatives to help sick children. At one of my photo moments with Shaun the sheep, I met a dad with 2 young children and the grandparents, who were on their final sheep for the day. It was nearby Ruffles the sheep I met the family.
The young girl proudly showed me the 8km trail they had walked and all the sheep they had found on their way. It seemed like they had a good bit of fun. Although the grandmother whispered to me she was glad it was over. There are a number of trails to follow to find the fun looking statues. For the time being they are stationed in London but later in the year they will also be housed in Bristol, so you have 2 chances to find them and explore a city in the process.
My latest find was Shaun the pearly king:
So I guess mixed fun for different reasons. But in one way it helps families explore the city in new ways, it also helps charity as well as the launch of the movie.
Because of my fascination with the funny statues and talking about it at a client’s office there may be some Friday night pub trails alongside Shaun, but it’s all for a good cause.
