Roma Singhal: Marketing Has A Training Problem. The Solution Might Be A Game.
By Roma Singhal, Founder / Strategy Partner at Brandself and Creator / Strategy Trainer at Brand Game™, a gamified brand tool to sharpen brand strategy skills.
For an industry obsessed with innovation, marketing has a surprisingly old-school approach to learning.
Most strategists still develop their skills through a mix of university lectures, case studies from the early 2000s and the occasional conference talk. The rest is learned the hard way – on the job, under pressure, usually while trying not to blow a client’s budget.
But here’s the problem: modern marketing is moving faster than our training models.
Platforms change overnight. AI tools rewrite workflows monthly. Cultural moments appear and disappear within hours. And yet we’re still teaching strategy in ways designed for a much slower industry.
If we’re serious about building the next generation of strategists, we need to rethink how they learn.
And increasingly, the answer might look less like a classroom and more like a game.
Strategy Isn’t A Theory. It’s A Practice.
Anyone who has worked in an agency knows that strategy isn’t something you memorise. It’s something you develop through experience.
You learn by testing ideas, watching them succeed or fail, and adjusting your thinking accordingly. It’s iterative, messy and often unpredictable.
Traditional education struggles to replicate this.
Case studies explain what happened after the fact, but they rarely recreate the uncertainty that existed when decisions were first made. PowerPoint frameworks teach the theory of positioning, segmentation and brand building, but they can’t simulate the pressure of making real strategic choices.
Game-based learning flips this dynamic.
Instead of analysing a strategy after it happened, participants step inside simulated environments where they make the decisions themselves. It’s strategy as practice rather than theory.
Why Games Work
The effectiveness of game-based learning isn’t just anecdotal. It’s backed by research.
Interactive training environments have been shown to increase cognitive engagement by up to 60% compared with traditional learning formats.
More importantly, these environments often trigger what psychologists call a “flow state”, a condition where people become deeply immersed in a task and process information more effectively.
In marketing terms, this means strategists aren’t just hearing about frameworks like segmentation or positioning. They’re actively applying them.
Educational theory helps explain why this matters. Bloom’s Taxonomy, one of the most widely used learning models, distinguishes between lower-order skills like remembering and understanding, and higher-order skills like analysing, evaluating and creating.
Traditional marketing education often sits in the lower tiers.
Games push learners into the higher ones.
The Way We Actually Learn At Work
Corporate learning research reinforces the same idea.
The well-known 70:20:10 learning model suggests that 70 per cent of professional development comes from hands-on experience, 20 per cent from collaboration and feedback, and just 10 per cent from formal instruction.
Game-based environments mimic that experiential component by creating simulated environments where marketers can test strategies and see the consequences immediately.
Think of it as compressing years of real-world experience into hours.
The Results Speak For Themselves
Studies comparing traditional teaching with gamified learning environments show consistent improvements in performance.
One longitudinal study found that gamified learning produced:
• 14% higher success rates
• Up to 70-79% higher excellence rates
• 17% higher average grades
• 30% better knowledge retention
• 22% increases in productivity outcomes
Corporate case studies show similar patterns. Organisations that introduce gamified training report 20-25% improvements in knowledge retention, while SAP’s gamified learning initiative increased training completion rates by 70%.
For an industry that prides itself on data-driven decision making, these numbers are difficult to ignore.
Why This Matters For The Australian Industry
Australia’s marketing and advertising industry is world-class creatively, but like many markets it faces a growing capability gap.
Agencies are expected to deliver sophisticated brand thinking, performance marketing, AI-enabled insights and cultural relevance, often simultaneously.
Yet many young strategists are still learning the craft primarily through trial and error.
That worked when the industry moved slower. It’s far riskier today.
Game-based learning offers a way to accelerate that development. By allowing marketers to experiment inside simulated strategic environments, they can practise decision-making before they’re responsible for real campaigns and real clients.
Turning Strategy Into A Game
This shift toward experiential learning is what inspired the creation of Brand Game™, a new gamified learning platform designed specifically for brand strategists.
Instead of teaching frameworks through slides or textbooks, Brand Game™ places players inside interactive strategic scenarios where they must make decisions about positioning, audiences, messaging and competitive moves.
The goal isn’t only to gamify learning with points or badges but also to recreate the unpredictable reality of marketing strategy in a safe environment where experimentation is encouraged.
Players test ideas, see the consequences and refine their thinking through rapid feedback loops.
Which, if we’re honest, is how most of us learned strategy in the first place.
Just with fewer sleepless nights.
The Future Of Learning In Marketing
Marketing has always rewarded curiosity, experimentation and adaptability.
Game-based learning simply applies those same principles to professional development.
As the industry continues to evolve, the ability to practise strategic thinking in dynamic environments will become increasingly valuable.
And if the research is any indication, the next generation of strategists may not learn their craft in lecture theatres or conference rooms.
They might learn it in a game.
Learn more about Brand Game™: https://brandgame.thesmilingstrategist.com/
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