BBVA Shares Ideas About Innovation and Gaming in its iPad Magazine

Extra, extra: banks just wanna have fun.

To be more precise, banks like BBVA are exploring ways to use gamification to get consumers "hooked" on their brand.

That's at the heart of the latest issue of Innovation Edge, a corporate magazine published by Spanish banking group BBVA. The September issue of the digital publication, which explores innovations and emerging trends that relate to financial services, focuses on gamification, i.e. "the business of fun," and banking.

The latest edition explores the gamification phenomenon through short articles —  including a blurb on its own BBVA Game —  and features content with interactive elements and infographics. The cover features a Pac-Man-like character.

Though BBVA only publically announced its digital magazine last week, it has already published three issues within the past year. The other issues focus on "simple bank" and "mobile banking."

The effort initially started as a form of internal communication, says Gustavo Vinacua, director of the innovation center. Now, anyone can access the free publication as it's available through an iPad app, online or in PDF format.

As BBVA "addresses innovation," Vinacua says the company wanted to share its knowledge with the larger ecosystem. Each issue of the publication will center on a specific innovation theme and explore trends and products BBVA runs into while building innovation, he says. The writers include BBVA staffers as well as execs from BBVA's "innovation network," he says. "Each issue, we ask [the network] to help us write the content or just review what we have written," Vinacua says. "It's collaborative."

Furthermore, he says "there are no goals" regarding audience aspirations. Though he says it would be "great" to have a large readership, "our intent is to share the knowledge that we run into."

BBVA plans to publish the magazine, which is available in English or Spanish, on a quarterly basis.