Project 1: Hyper‑Casual Gaming Tournament
Overview
As Growth Lead for Telenor’s mobile app, I spearheaded an industry‑first hyper‑casual gaming tournament to boost engagement in an app primarily used for telco purchases. By integrating gamification directly into our core product, I drove deeper usage, longer sessions, and stronger monetization—all without detracting from our primary voice/data sales funnel.
Challenge
Low engagement outside purchasing flows: Users opened the app primarily to buy voice, data, or SMS bundles, then closed it immediately—session times were short and retention was flat.
Unproven concept in telco context: No one had run a gaming tournament inside a telco app before, so we faced uncertainty on user appetite and operational feasibility.
Approach & Product Leadership
Assemble & align cross‑functional squad:
Formed an Agile SAFe project team including Product, Marketing, Sales, Legal, Customer Service, and Engineering to ensure broad buy‑in and end‑to‑end execution ownership.
Design Thinking to uncover needs:
Facilitated a multi‑day workshop with squad members plus randomly selected frontline staff, using empathy mapping and customer journey exercises to hypothesize pain points.
Dual‑phase user research to validate hypotheses:
Phase 1: Conducted 50 targeted virtual interviews across our key personas (students, working professionals, commuters).
Phase 2: Collaborated with Market Research to run quantitative surveys, confirming incentives, social proof, and entertainment‑seeking behavior as core drivers.
Solution ideation & prioritization:
Led a second design sprint, benchmarking successful gamification campaigns externally, and co‑created two pillars of our strategy:
In‑app activity features (e.g., login streak rewards)
Time‑bound gaming tournaments
MVP tournament execution:
Scoped a lean hyper‑casual game with leaderboard mechanics.
Negotiated a partnership where we sponsored prizes and the vendor covered infrastructure costs in exchange for in‑app marketing—a win‑win deal I structured.
Launched daily, weekly, and monthly brackets over one month, iterating on rewards and messaging based on real‑time analytics.
Impact & Metrics
+20% average session duration, indicating deeper engagement
+15% daily active users, reversing a stagnant growth trend
+10% ARPU, directly lifting revenue per user
Built new internal processes for rapid gamification rollout, later reused for other engagement features
Skills Demonstrated
Stakeholder Management & Alignment: Orchestrated 7+ departments through shared vision and backlog prioritization
Design Thinking & User Research: Led qualitative and quantitative studies to ground solutions in real customer pain points
Agile Leadership: Scoped, prioritized, and delivered an MVP in 8 weeks using SAFe ceremonies and sprint reviews
Negotiation & Partnership: Secured cost‑neutral vendor agreement, maximizing ROI
Data‑Driven Iteration: Monitored live metrics (session times, DAUs, ARPU) to refine tournament mechanics mid‑campaign
Key Takeaway
This initiative proved that gamification—even in traditionally transaction‑focused apps—can unlock significant engagement and revenue gains when driven by robust research, agile execution, and creative partnership.