However, they Weight Watchers is online and the experience is very functional and very Brand Utility.
Clive Thompson over at Wired thinks the experience is very much like an RPG..
"Even the Weight Watchers web tool is amazingly gamelike. It has the poke-around-and-see-what-happens elegance you see in really good RPG game screens. Accidentally snack on a candy bar and ruin your meal plan for the day? No worries: Just go into the database and see what spells -- whoops, I mean foods -- you can still use with your remaining points.
And those 35 extra points you get every week? They're like a special buff or potion -- a last-ditch save when you're on the ropes.
Indeed, I'm in awe of the sheer brilliance of Weight Watchers in adopting the word points as its metric for measuring food. The word immediately shoves the user into the semantics -- and fun -- of gameplay. You regard losing weight as an intriguing challenge, as opposed to a mere grind."
Clive as give us all a clue as to where the future of Brand Utility lies.
"This puts me in mind of the talk that Jane McConigal- a brilliant and pioneering alternative-reality game designer -- gave at this year's South by Southwest conference. She argued that game designers ought to put their skills to use in the real world by reshaping dull, everydayday activities into fun challenges."
So, it's easy to see who can move into this space.
Clorox/Unilever/P&G- Home cleaning
Whole Foods/Safeway/Kroger/Kaiser- Nutritious eating
etc....
Posted by Ed Cotton
