The folllowing report concerns Mikolaj Dymek's Flexit research project "Gamification - the new (game) rules of marketing communications" that was held between 2011.03.01 and 2014.03.01.

PURPOSE OF PROJECT AND POSSIBLE CHANGES TO PURPOSE DURING PROJECT
My research plan from 2011 defined the following broad research themes within a framework of the project purpose and research questions:
1) The use of digital media in PR contexts
2) The use of (video)game mechanisms within digital marketing communications
3) PR industry from a cultural industries perspective
The purpose of these three areas of research was not solely adapted to the needs of the guest company Jung Relations (JR) - but rather to find common areas of interest where my research interest could be combined with the interests of JR.

The purpose was defined as:
In an increasingly digitalised and globalised consumer world, practically all future strategic business communications, the understanding and dialogue with consumers in terms of marketing communications, will be conducted through digital media, and more specifically through so-called "social media". My study aims to focus on this intersection of between brand strategy, cultural industry, game/new media analysis and digital/social media, and more specifically how video game mechanisms can be used to highlight this area.

Subsequently, the research question is:
o How can a formal media analys of digital/new media in combination with cultural industries perspectives contribute to an increased understanding of social media within the frame of marketing communications and PR?

Due to the following external events modifications to the purpose were required:
o Flexit mentor leaves: the initiator of the Flexit project, VP, area manager and co-owner/partner at JR - chose to leave the agency during the summer of 2012
o Several mentor changes: after a transitional phase in terms of business activities, but also Flexit project, a replacement with new business focus was found - but he left the agency within about a year.
o High employee turnover: at the planning department, which accommodated the Flexit project, had during the spring of 2013 all original employees left the company, and consequently I became the oldest employee at the department. A cooperation department, Digital, went through similar changes, but also included sick leave and parental leave. During the three years of the project 39 of about 43 full time employee changed jobs.
o Substantial refocusing of operations: the last period (of the Flexit project) the planning department was practically closed and reduced to a head of sales, a junior part time assistant and my 25% Flexit employment.
o Limited operation settings: gamification within marketing communications, i.e. game mechanisms in non-game application, requires (frequently) digital productions with high budgets and profile - something that JR's business focus (media relations, event, press releases, execution of advertising related campaigns) and portfolio rarely allowed.

Post fact, the purpose became the following:
To study the daily operations of a consumer strategic marketing communications agency (consumer PR) and its research centric so-called planning department, focussing on their efforts to find competitive advantages in the changing PR consultancy industry, and in particular within the field of social media and the popular (yet unexplored) notion of gamification.

THREE MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS OF PROJECT
1) A practical and theoretical development of research concerning the concept of gamification. Despite the formidable challenges caused by the aforementioned events, the research on gamification has been advanced on practical and theoretical levels. On a practical level a number of client projects provided insights into the development challenges that gamification implementation is facing (within marketing communications). This has provided a more resource, competence and process based perspective when the concept has been explored theoretically with secondary empirical sources. Due to the fact that the development of the gamification notion, despite several years in the mills of the "trend machinery", is still driven by commercial actors, means that large parts of the theoretical analysis remains unexplored and appears as very promising from an academic point of view.
2) Marketing communication industry as cultural industry. The project has mapped and theoretically established the need to analyse the advertising and PR industries as a unified cultural industry, a a result of the increasingly present and important position of marketing communications in the globalised consumer society.
3) Consumer PR as a separate theoretical field. Advertising communication has historically dominated marketing and marketing communication research, while PR has been explored by media and communication studies perspectives (with focus on political, organisational and strategic communication). The Flexit project has clearly established the need for a separate field that studies consumer PR as a analytical hybrid between the fields of marketing science and media/communication science.

NEW RESEARCH QUESTIONS GENERATED BY THE PROJECT
The two latter results (Marketing communication industry as cultural industry and Consumer PR as a separate theoretical field) are both new research questions that have arisen during the Flexit project.

Furthermore, in a context of the purposes of Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond) with the Flexit project, these research question must be related to the "epistemological dimensions of the meeting between academia and industry" (which I represented at JR). This is inevitably something that cannot be missed from a research point of view. How do they (JR/PR industry) view science as such? What type of knowledge can be integrated into their worldviews? Are there synergies or is maybe so that academic science is not part of "reality"? That "real knowledge" can only be created "out there in reality" where PR consultants are daily advancing a form of "science" that cannot be translated, analysed or "extracted" with the tools that academia disposes of?

INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS OF PROJECT
The following events have associated my Flexit project internationally:
- Guest lecture
o William A. Kern Lecture, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester (USA) 1 Dec 2011
- Conferences:
o Symposium on medialisation of culture, politics, everyday life and research, Stockholm, 18-19 Aug 2011
o Pharmakon of Film & New Media Conference, Paris 2-3 May 2012
o 30thStanding Conference on Organizational Symbolism, Barcelona, 11-14 Jul 2012
o 29th European Group of Organizational Studies Colloquium, Montréal, 4-6 Jul, 2013
o 31st Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism, Warsaw, 13-16 Jul 2013
o Symposium on Mediatization of culture and everyday life, Stockholm 26-27 Aug 2013
Furthermore an international network of gamification related researchers have been established that will result in an edited volume forthcoming during 2015 on Routledge (see under publications).

RESEARCH INFORMATION EFFORTS OUTSIDE OF RESEARCH COMMUNITY
o The research cooperation with the guest company (JR) is in itself a three year research information effort. Furthermore I have partaken in the following events:
o Berghs School of Communication, Stockholm - several lectures
o PR of Sweden - guest lecture for major Swedish industry association
o Industry lecture - several for a major fashion brands, other communication agencies and at the industry conference Communicare 2014
- Media exposure
o (2013) Everyone is a photographer (Swedish National Television) - interview with me as a gamification expert on a documentary series on everyday photography
o (2011) "Embedded at the PR agency" (Rågsjö Thorell 2011) - interview with me in the industry magazine Resumé concerning my research cooperation with JR.

TWO MOST IMPORTANT PUBLICATIONS
o (2015, fortcoming) Dymek, M. & Zackariasson, P. (eds.) The Business of Gamification, Routledge
Edited volume on the gamification whose draft was created during the Flexit project. The authors is a international selection of researches focussing on business related gamification. Expected during 2015.
o (2013). Customer-focus as Cultural Industry, Narrative Production and Professional Identity - A Case ?from the World of Communication Agencies. 29th European Group of Organizational Studies ?Colloquium. Montréal.
A theoretical paper based on data from, among other JR, that presents a consumer cultural analysis of PR consultants as a type of consumer society avant garde that follows, but increasingly also, creates consumer trends.

PUBLICATON STRATEGY OF PROJECT
The project was initially encouraged to publish texts in conference and journals with Open Access, which was a challenge due to research related decisions. However, a number of the publications are Hybrid Open Access. Furthermore, a number of book chapters and books have been published and initiated during the course of the project.

PROJECT CONTRIBUTION TO INCREASED COOPERATION BETWEEN UNIVERITY AND PRIVATE SEKTOR
Regardless of results, in terms of commercial and academic successes, this project has brought together two environments and great number of people that would never have met within cooperation, but also at Flexit seminars or other similar arrangements. These meetings would never have taken place and the effects, new perspectives and ideas generated by them, cannot be overestimated (or underestimated for that matter). This Flexit project has radically changed my research focus and directly contributed to my current position as associated professor in strategic communications focusing on marketing communications at the Mid Sweden University. After the Flexit project my research area has developed towards the consumer focuses marketing communications field, or in terms of empirical/industry notions, towards consumer PR agencies.

Publications

 Böcker och bokkapitel
 • (2015, kommande) Dymek, M. & Zackariasson, P. (eds.) The Business of Gamification, Routledge
 • (2015, kommande) Dymek, M. & Sköld, D.. “SoundCloud – in or out? Inquiring into the organizational 
production of SoundCloud going “All In” with Adidas”. In: Earhart, R., Jardat, R., Letiche, H. & Moriceau, J-L (eds.) Turn to Film – Critical Pedagogies of Management and Film in Business Education, Sense Publishers
 • (2012). “Video Games: A Subcultural Industry”. In: P. Zackariasson & T. Wilson (eds.). The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future. Routledge

– Journalartiklar
 • (2015, kommande) Book review: Wångmar, Erik. Tillit och korruption – Korruption, maktmissbruk och bristande tillit i svensk lokalpolitik 1963–2011. Santérus Förlag, 2013 (Trust and corruption – Corruption, abuse of power and lack of trust in Swedish local politics, author’s translation), Ephemera: Theory and politics in organization. 2015, Issue 2. Special Issue Critiquing Corruption: A turn to theory, edited by Lennerfors, T.T., Breit, E & Olaison, L.

– Rapport
 • (2011) Sammanfattning och reflektioner kring symposiet om medialisering i kultur, politik, vardagsliv och forskning, In: J. Fornäs & A. Kaun (eds.). Medialisering av kultur, politik, vardag och forskning. Mediestudier vid Södertörns högskola 2011:2

– Konferensartiklar
 • (2014a) Gamification in Marketing Communication – Competing for Attention, SCOS 32nd Standing 
Conference on Organizational Symbolism – Sport, Play and Games. Utrecht.
 • (2014) Consumer PR – Brand of Corruption meets Corruption of Branding, 5th Latin American and 
European Meeting on Organizational Studies 2014 (LAEMOS), Havanna, Kuba
 • (2013a). Consumer Cultures as Industry, and Cultural Industries of Consumption. 22nd Nordic 
Academy of Management Conference, Reykjavik.
 • (2013b). Spectacles as communication industry – the rise and fall of the consumerist avant-garde. 31st 
Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism – Creative De-construction. Warszawa.
 • (2013). Customer-focus as Cultural Industry, Narrative Production and Professional Identity – A Case 
from the World of Communication Agencies. 29th European Group of Organizational Studies 
Colloquium. Montréal.
 • (2012). Sköld, D. & Dymek, M. Exploring Visual Production of Entrepreneurship: The case of 
SoundCloud going “All In” with Adidas. Conference on Management and Film: The pharmakon of film 
& new media. Paris.
 • (2012). Migrations Through Digital Spaces As Cybertextual Explorations of Branding. 30th Standing 
Conference on Organizational Symbolism – Organizing Through Displacement, Travel and Movement: Transience, Transitions and Transformations. Barcelona