Know-How Exchange : Taglines/Names

Have you spent some time interviewing the teenage girls in your target audience to see what words they use to describe the things they enjoy, that are important to them, the games they play, the ways they like to interact with each other? If so, it would be particularly helpful in coming up with a name/tagline to see transcripts from those interviews.

And if not, one thing you will want to be sure to do is get their reactions to the name/tagline suggestions you end up with here. Most of us are not contemporary teenage girls, so I would be careful about relying too heavily on our suggestions ... unless we have the transcripts referenced above.

There are some relatively inexpensive ways to get reactions from your target audience, so this doesn't have to be a major market research project ... but you'd be taking a big risk if you didn't find some way to get input from your target audience before launching your game.

thanks - I always check everything with my audience - via my website and a survey - that is how we have tested various site designs and also names for site features - so if I can come up with a handful of options I can get feedback from my audience-

It is a challenge to ask them directly on this one because I want the name to convey a healthy lifestyle but not necessarily have girls think it is about health - that is boring - we want it to be fun and about winning awards - the name "challenge" is too obvious but that is what might work with our brand name in front of it -

MJR

I want to take another angle on this. Because health isn't about rewards. It's about their having a life.

Because rewards are the sort of thing that many children associate with school and exams and hard work. For many girls winning simply doesn't feature. It didn't for me. That was for the boys. Mind you, I'm 50 so there will be a generation gap. Never the less, with a reward style game somebody loses.

Life isn't about losing, it's about doing.

Now as an aside, I never had any problem getting my two kids to eat their greens. Not because they were forced to, not because there was any reward. Because between me and my ex, we grew them ourselves and they tasted good. That had downsides in that we couldn't go to restaurants because the food didn't taste as good as the stuff that came out of my kitchen. As I say, they didn't eat healthy food because it was healthy for them, it was simply that it was great to eat. No issues of age or anything else. What's more, when their friends found out just how good it tasted, they wolfed the stuff too.

The other part of the problem is that there is a major disconnect between modern life and healthy lifestyles. Aonghus Gordon runs the Ruskin Mill projects which seek to address this problem and does so by taking the youngsters (usually late teens) and taking everything back to the beginning. An example is that each child is given a small handful of rye seed and is told to bake a pound loaf of bread with it.

If you don't know the answer, I'll post it tomorrow. You can find the Ruskin Mill Trust website here - and they are always up to helping people with your sort of projects.

Hope this helps. Moriarty xx

Oops! Forgot the link, I got reading the latest news from the Glasshouse project ... https://rmt.org/

M xx

If the name communicates anything meaningful, that might be a good solution. If it's just a nonsense name or a name that isn't really relevant, then perhaps something like "Wild Challenge" or "Global Challenge" or "Universal Challenge."

Another approach is to call it "Rock-Star Challenge" or "Teen Triumphs."

Can you tell us more about the game? Are the points you accumulate public? Is there a chat? Is there a goal - with proof that this game connects to what you're trying to instill/teach? Teens only or tweens also? Located where in the world?

As an aside: what sort of privacy options are built into the game?

Thanks for the comments and ideas -
there are points that accumulate first for virtual awards - then the next level is for real prize rewards from sponsors - there is a community section where the public can see progress at large but there is a social element for friends to create groups so they can see each others reward levels too - so it can be competitive - there are goals and challenges on various topics - girls ages 13-18 - we have privacy and security covered - any name ideas?

MJR

my thought again: are girls likely to be motivated by "there are goals and challenges on various topics"

because my feelings are that they won't be.

Many children in remedial classes are extremely intelligent. Think about it.

Moriarty

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/24/technology/all-the-worlds-a-game-and-bus...

Which is great for winners. Perhaps you need to focus on Asian kids?

https://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/so-asian-kids-are-good-at-m...

Because health affects both winners and losers.

Wow I love all of these ideas and would like the option to use them for my game! thanks -
I will leave this open to see what other creativity pops up -

Hopefully you will reward some group or sharing effort too not just solo 'dog eat dog' stuff.
Taglines can entice action in the game ...

Life is Change, Growth is Optional.....Make a choice now!

"Everybody wants to get a gold star," KD said, "but in reality you don't learn anything from getting a gold star because you've already gotten kudos and applause and you know about the gold star. What you want to know is what didn't work so that you can move resources away from that stuff…and toward the stuff that does."

In Beth's view, making such moves involves a mindset change.

"There are two different mindsets we can have," she said, "a fixed mindset were we are driven or motivated by external praise—'Wow! You got an A+!'—or a growth mindset…where you're motivated by the internal drive to improve what you're doing—'You know, I got a C+ but, wow, what do I need to change to get an A?'"

https://www.marketingprofs.com/podcasts/2012/9727/nonprofit-performance-met...

Only there aren't just the two mindsets spoken of here. M

MJR

if you want to speak only to those kids who are already winners, that's fine by me. It does leave a lot of kids left out in the cold though. That is a real problem in the US today. It is one that you could address with your skills.

Moriarty