The second Democratic debate had an uninvited guest: Andrew Yang, an American attorney, entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder of Venture for America (VFA).

Yang is not a typical politician; in fact, he is not a politician at all. Being a successful tech entrepreneur, he decided to run for the 2020 presidential campaign with a controversial idea in his mind: Universal Basic Income. Yang’s flagship policy is UBI: $1000/month for every American adult. UBI is not as controversial in many regions as it is in the US. Iran, for example, has been realizing this idea for years. In Eurozone, also, different groups are supporting this idea, one of whom is DiEM25 and Yanis Varoufakis.

In this post, I’m going to discuss the gamification behind Yang’s successful presidential campaign and the lessons we can learn from it. I’ll use the Octalysis Framework, the #1 gamification tool in the world. You can read more about this framework, developed by Yu-kai Chou, here.

Core Drive #6 and Core Drive #5: Not Left, Not Right, Forward!

The key to success for 44 years old entrepreneur has not been UBI or a long list of detailed and innovative policies: it’s been his unique background and character. Millennials love authenticity and innovation; this has been one of the most sought after topics in modern marketing, and thousands of articles have been written about authenticity. In many cases, not being typical alone is enough to grab the attention of many, including the young generation. This is what youngsters enjoy to do: to question and break the laws. However, being novel is still a troublesome thing to do for politicians--but not for Andrew Yang.

We’ve seen the theme of “black sheep” in Yang’s campaign many times: he became the first candidate in history to not wear a tie in the Democratic debate, and one of his campaign’s slogans is "Let’s disrupt the 2020 election." And these are just a few examples of how breaking the unwritten rules of politics is very easy for the Asian entrepreneur.

A gamification designer needs to find a delicate balance between conformity and authenticity in the gamified experience. If you are a small company fighting with huge monopolies, you probably should become authenticate: the unique taste for unique people.

Core Drive #1 and Core Drive #5: Yang Gang

Being a black sheep is not the only mean Yang used to connect with the new generation; he also knows the language of millennials and gen-Z. Using atypical slogans like "MATH" (Make America Think Harder), Yang knows how to talk to the geeks. Throughout the past years, millennials have felt marginalized and out of the political debate. Recently, many politicians focused on this gap and tried to harness it (Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg, for example) which has led to increasing political engagement of the new generation. Yang, however, harnessed this gap with a more extreme approach. Being known as the internet’s favorite candidate, Yang has hardcore supporters in social networks and websites like Reddit and 4chan, where the majority of users are millennials and gen-Zs.

Because of his active online supporters (or "trolls" as Vox calls them), Yang usually dominates the online polls. YangMemes are also one of the most crucial tools of Yang supporters to spread his name throughout the internet.

Andrew Yang’s case revealed us that having a relatively small group of loyal fans/customers is sometimes more influential than having a large group of passive fans/customers.

Core Drive #8 and Core Drive #5: Let Yang Speak

The strange feud between Yang and MSNBC proved another essential point: having a common enemy can make your fan base more hardcore as it can make you more authenticate.

Even before the debate, many Yang supporters were mad at MSNBC because of not showing Yang’s picture among 2020 presidential candidates. But during the debate, MSNBC gave Andrew Yang the least speaking time among all candidates (barely 3 minutes), which increased the tension more than ever. Finally, after the debate, Yang accused NBC of turning his mic off and making him unable to participate and interject in the discussion during the debate.

Within a few hours, #LetYangSpeak became the second Twitter trend in the US. Yang supporters now had more evidence that they are the black sheep and are fighting with the “corporate mafia.” It did not matter if it was a conspiracy theory or not: Yang Gang was on fire.

The massive outrage of Yang supporters in social media helped Yang to earn more supporters than expected, even though his performance in the debate was hardly average. Yang made 40,000 new twitter followers (#4 among all candidates) and was also 42nd most viewed Wikipedia page last week.

MSNBC, unintentionally, helped Yang to strengthen this idea that he is the outcast of politics and wants to bring real democracy back again.

Having an "evil enemy" (Big Brother) helped Yang to strengthen his online fanbase and be even more authenticate. If corporate media hates someone, that guy must be the one. The same scenario happened with a different person in 2016; that guy was The Donald.

Pavel Durov, the genius behind Telegram messenger, used the same strategy to take on Facebook and Whatsapp, portraying Mark Zuckerberg as the Big Brother. After revealing major security issues with Google Chrome, now Firerox is following the same tactic.

If everyone hates a monopoly, you can become an authenticate underdog who fights to break the monopoly; you’ll have loyal supporters if you do it right.