REDWOOD CITY, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 12/04/12 --

Core News Facts:

• J. Hilburn, the world's fastest growing luxury men's clothing brand, knows all about creating a made-to-order experience for customers. Now, the company is creating a similarly customized gamification experience to motivate its network of 3,000 style consultants, thanks to a powerful turnkey solution from Bunchball, the pioneer and market leader in gamification.
• Using Bunchball's Nitro™ for Web Engagement solution, J. Hilburn quickly and easily added proven game mechanics to the online portal its style consultants use to book orders and manage their business.
  • By gamifying its portal, known as the Green Room, J. Hilburn rewarded consultants for the day-to-day activities that drive business, such as booking orders, cultivating repeat customers, building teams, and extending their style expertise.
  • A contest that ran for four months in 2012 kept consultants focused on earning real-world rewards redeemable on the 2013 J. Hilburn Rewards Trip to Cancun.
    • A special Trip Tracker page within the Green Room portal featured customized game mechanics, including badges, missions, levels and leaderboards, that motivated consultants while letting them compare their progress to that of their colleagues. (see photo)
    • For instance, consultants earned 20 points for a customer's first sale and another 20 for a customer reorder. Monthly sales ranging from $1,250 to $20,000 triggered an array of points levels, with top performers earning thousands of points a month. (see photo)
    • The Margarita Sipper level, reached at 5,000 lifetime points, unlocked three free nights at the Ritz-Carlton Cancun. The Surfer level, reached after acquiring 6,000 points, unlocked airfare reimbursements, spa packages and more. Leveling up to Parasailer (7,000 points) and Salsa Dancer (8,000 points) made more free hotel nights and benefits available to consultants. (see photo)
• For J. Hilburn, creating a gamified portal with Bunchball's Nitro for Web Engagement proved fast and easy. User adoption was immediate because Bunchball's game mechanics folded seamlessly into the Green Room experience and the workflow of consultants.
  • Because Nitro for Web Engagement gives companies the ability to assign point values to specific actions, consultants acquired points automatically without having to take any additional steps.
  • The contest was so successful that J. Hilburn plans to gamify additional aspects of the Green Room to keep consultants motivated and to encourage and reward participation in the company's online community.
• Nitro for Web Engagement is part of Bunchball's growing line of Integrated Nitro Solutions that enables out-of-the-box gamification. It comes with everything organizations need right out of the box: pre-built web pages and mobile widgets, pre-configured point economies, a complete set of missions and an optimized admin console.
  • Nitro for Web Engagement is especially effective at encouraging user participation because it seamlessly extends across platforms to embrace the entire user experience from websites to mobile apps to social networks. Users can log into a gamified experience from Facebook, for instance, or advance within a mission using the gamification features added to a customer's mobile app.
  • Unlike competing engagement solutions -- which are typically just frameworks or APIs that require weeks of development -- Nitro for Web Engagement can be deployed in a few hours. Users can easily skin and configure their gamification components without intensive development.

Quotes:

Attributable to Neal Patel, Vice President, Technology, J. Hilburn
"With Bunchball's Nitro for Web Engagement, we've created a customized experience that lets our network of style consultants know that every action they take is recognized and valued. Our business is offering clothes constructed by hand for every customer, so we at J. Hilburn understand the importance of making an experience seamless, engaging and easy. That's precisely how our team found the Bunchball experience -- a complete value-add that required no extra effort on the part of our consultants and delivered only upside. We look forward to expanding our use of Nitro for Web Engagement in the coming months to cultivate even more business-building activities, and to inspire our consultants to establish reputations as style experts across their favorite social networks."

Attributable to Joe Fisher, Vice President, Products, Bunchball
"Engagement is the first step toward building memberships, revenues and loyalty online, but the job of engaging people online -- and keeping them engaged -- is getting tougher by the day. J. Hilburn's success illustrates how deploying Bunchball's Nitro for Web Engagement can help keep people motivated, keep them learning and developing, and keep them always working to reach the next level."

ABOUT J. HILBURN:
J.Hilburn is a luxury men's brand that delivers custom and ready to wear apparel and accessories made from the world's finest materials, hand constructed for every customer and offered at affordable prices. Shopping with J.Hilburn is unlike any retail experience in the world in terms of quality, service and value. Our network of 3,000 trusted personal style advisors across the country ensures the highest quality of service, customized fit and personal attention. J.Hilburn is disrupting the entire retail industry by compressing the supply chain, delivering exceptional quality menswear at a fraction of the price of comparable brands, and wrapping it with service and personal attention that no other retailer can provide. If you're ready to join the revolution, go to www.jhilburn.com to learn more.

ABOUT BUNCHBALL:
Bunchball is the market leader and visionary in gamification. Powering the Engaged Enterprise, Bunchball enables organizations to improve business performance throughout their ecosystem by creating highly active and loyal customers, employees, and partners. Bunchball's comprehensive suite of innovative cloud-based solutions empowers companies to engage and motivate, leading to improved employee productivity, customer loyalty and ROI. Bunchball's world-class customers include Adobe, HP, Cisco, Warner Bros., Comcast, LiveOps, VMware and Hasbro. Based in Silicon Valley, Bunchball's investors include Granite Ventures, Triangle Peak Partners, Northport Investments, and Correlation Ventures. For more information, visit www.bunchball.com, our blog at www.gamification.com, or follow @bunchball.

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