What started with only a few thousand players is now over a million and counting. What does the rise of HQ Trivia mean?
HQ, for the uninitiated, is a trivia-style game show that can only be accessed through an app. The game is played twice a day, and upbeat host Scott Ragowsky guides the players through a series of 12 increasingly difficult questions for a chance to win a piece of the prize money (winners split the money evenly—sometimes that means the winners get little more than a dollar).
One obvious area that HQ will undoubtedly influence is the world of apps. The discussion on health apps was of particular interest to us as a medical device advertising agency. Based on the feedback from the group, it doesn’t seem like there is any one app in the health and wellness space that has taken off in the same way HQ has—the question being if any apps help gamify a healthy lifestyle. Most of the apps that were mentioned track, train, or teach, but I wouldn’t say that there was true gamification going on in the space. It’s surprising, given that it’s a crowded space for apps. Among the 100,000 current health and fitness offerings available in the App Storeon Digital Trends’ list of the best iPhone apps, only one was truly a game: Zombies, Run! For now, it looks like there is lots of room for marketers to incorporate creativity and fun into their health-related apps.
The discussion then veered into a strategic debate on whether or not it was wise to launch an app without a revenue plan. In other words: build a following first, then introduce advertising, or launch with ads already in place? General consensus was that establishing a fan base first and then launching the advertising portion later was within the acceptable limits of risk, especially with numbers like HQ has.
What does all this tell us about apps in the healthcare, and specifically the medical device space? Well, we know that patients now are more engaged and informed than ever. Now, can the industry innovate and provide technologies to keep up with our tech-savvy society and our high level of technological engagement that also support the clinical objectives of doctors? That remains to be seen!
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