7 Thanksgiving marketing game and online contest ideas
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Depending on exactly where you are, Thanksgiving’s origins will be celebrating something slightly different, but it’s fundamentally a harvest festival that takes place in Autumn that’s become a huge commercial opportunity.
People come together at Thanksgiving. They treat one another (and themselves). And yet, as it’s easy to overlook Thanksgiving from a marketing point of view because it falls in with the shuffle of Black Friday-Cyber Monday and Christmas, it presents real potential to make gains on your competitors.
So the message is: sleep on Thanksgiving at your peril, and to make it super easy, we’re going to share with you our top online contest and marketing game ideas to make effective connections with your audience.
1. Turkey Trot (Pacman)
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The turkey trot is an American Thanksgiving tradition of running anywhere from a mile to a half marathon on or around the big day – often dressed as a turkey.
However, in this marketing game, things aren’t so simple.
Invite your audience to step into Harry Hardluck’s shoes. A family curse has turned him into a turkey at the worst possible time: Thanksgiving! However, if he can collect enough gold coins while successfully evading the chasing farmers, he can pay the wizard to turn him back into a human.
Except, make the gold coins your products, and the farmers some equally relevant villains to your brand (the McDonald’s Hamburglar, or the Domino’s Pizza Noid, for examples). Essentially use the game mechanics of Pacman to tell whatever branded story you want, coded to Thanksgiving.
Make it a contest: Enable the leaderboard and reward your highest scoring participants with an entry into a prize draw.
2. Feast or Fiction? (Interactive Quiz)
Turkey meatloaf with fig gravy in England? Coffee and sprout cake in Germany? But are these dishes feast or fiction?
Create a quick, fun, true or false-style quiz where you present your audience with wacky sounding foods that different cultures, or even different states, indulge in around Thanksgiving. Some that are real, some that are utter nonsense.
Brands this works for: Cookware brands, appliance brands, or lifestyle publications with a food or cooking category, to name but three.
3. Cranberry Crush Quest (Match 3)
It’s like your own branded Candy Crush or Bejewelled Blitz but with Thanksgiving foods – or whatever you need the candies or jewels to be…
Invite your participants to match three or more items to smash them to pieces and clear the grid (or their plate) and score as many points as they can.
Who could this work for? Pretty much any brand with products to promote. Imagine the matchable items are dirty plates and cups, and the explosive item is a brand of washing up detergent. Imagine the matchable items are all exercise equipment and the explosive item is a pre-workout supplement.
4. Crack the Wishbone (Scratch Card)
The Thanksgiving tradition of cracking the wishbone and making a wish but applied to a scratch card – an easy and intuitive instant win game, in-keeping with the holiday, where you can reward your customers while collecting data and promoting products.
They just need to “scratch” or rub over the wishbone visual to reveal – potentially – a fabulous prize.
A simple concept with extensive customisations: The digital scratch card gives you so much more versatility. Shareable on social media, deployable through email, QR codes, and website landing pages, and even the mechanism of prize delivery can easily be tailored to your needs.
Go “100% winning game” to distribute a prize to everyone who plays, or have multiple prizes in whatever volumes suit your campaign. Add unique or generic promotional codes, limit winners or participation by email – almost any required configuration can be catered for.
5. Yammer Hammer Slammer Jammer (Whack a Mole)
The yam is a classic Thanksgiving side, often candied for a sweet, indulgent treat, from which the Yammer Hammer Slammer Jammer takes its name. The similarities end there.
This is a contest based on the mechanics of Whack a Mole. Put the hammer or bat in your audience’s hand and invite them to spend 45 exhilarating seconds whacking as many enemies or nuisance items as they can to score points to climb your Thanksgiving leaderboard.
6. The Big Thanksgiving Quiz (Dynamic Path™)
Create multiple quizzes and instant win games, then combine them all into an interactive journey that participants can compete in over the course of the weeks or days leading up to Thanksgiving.
The concept? Things you’re thankful for within your brand’s niche. For example, if you’re a sports publication, it’s about all the highlights over the previous 12 months of sports. If you’re a cinema chain, it’s about all the great movie releases that have come out.
The idea is to take the whole concept of Thanksgiving – giving thanks – and making it specific to your community and audience, and finding opportunities within that to achieve marketing goals.
For example, an intermediate screen to promote a product, a slot machine game distributing a promotional code for said product, as well as call to action buttons (CTAs) to drive participants to your strategic web pages at the end of certain levels.
A global leaderboard: With the Dynamic Path™, you can have your audience’s scores aggregate across the whole experience, motivating them to try and climb the leaderboard from level to level.
7. The Big Thanksgiving Day Game (American Football Game)
The NFL has held games on Thanksgiving since its inception in 1920, although the tradition of American football games on the day dates back to 1876 (not long after the sport was invented) when Yale and Princeton began an annual tradition of playing one another, with other colleges and high schools following suit soon after.
With that in mind, an American football marketing game is a great way to capture audience attention around the holiday!
Brand the ball, the stadium hoarding, and give it a dynamic background, customise the data collection form and end screen to suit your campaign, then it’s game time! Embed the leaderboard on its own web page, or within your app, then invite players to score as many field goals as they can.
Did you know: Thanksgiving is celebrated on November’s fourth Thursday in the US, the Philippines, and Brazil, October’s second Monday in Canada, the last Wednesday of November on Australia’s Norfolk Island, and October’s first Sunday in Germany. And while there are NFL fans the world over, you could just as easily use one of our other sports games for your Thanksgiving promotions if they’re more culturally relevant.
Expert advice
Thanksgiving can be the hidden gem in your marketing calendar, where a more thoughtful campaign can really give you a leg up on your competitors.
Marketing games and online contests offer interactivity and more immersive branded storytelling, allowing you to apply game mechanics to the holiday, and to your brand, community, or niche. This cuts through social media noise for better customer engagement.
Any of the ideas here can be great jumping off points for your own gamified Thanksgiving campaigns, and there are a host of other game engines in our catalogue just waiting to be adapted to your brand to level up your next promotion.
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