Good Community Site in Switzerland: PostFinance - EventManager for Youths
The banking services branch of the Swiss Post, 
PostFinance, has recently launched “EventManager“, an educational game for kids and youths between 14 and 20. Its goal is to educate young people on how to be responsible consumers and manage their own finances. It’s designed along the latest didactic insights, conveys financial knowledge in an understandable way and is mainly meant to be used by teachers during class.
How does it work?
Students are asked to plan and run an event, real or fictional, using EventManager. In doing so, they develop knowledge and competencies related to running projects. Initially, you have to create your group or join an existing one. Then there are three different rounds of play: Budgeting, Financing, Investing. Each of these educational modules offers different clips for participants to watch, e.g. “account types“ or “my budget“. The idea is for students to work on these educational modules and clips and prepare for the event manager job. To give feedback and check on progress, there are five test questions to be answered afterwords. And then the actual game starts: Firstly, the event has to be planned by booking artists and providing infrastructure. Then the whole thing is run and, finally, the results of the job are analyzed and feedback is given.
I think that this is an interesting project, as it isn’t your typical one-size-fits-all social community. Still, it shows the main ideas behind using social media for business purposes:
- interactivity; students budget, plan and run their own events, fictional or real
- entertainment; students are educated by guiding them through a game instead of just a textbook lesson
- benefit; educational software usually costs something while EventManager is free, making it easy to use for teachers
- viral; of course, PostFinance’s logo is there, but the game itself does not bear the typical hallmarks of a marketing campaign, giving credence to PostFinance’s claim of primarily wanting to educate young people on consumption and money.
What’s your take? Please comment here or send me a tweet.
Tags: social communications