With attention and money continually growing in the sector, WPP agency Mindshare North America has hired Geoffrey Greenblatt as its director of gaming.

The role, which is new for Mindshare, was added because more than half of American adults play at least one digital game, said Scott Sorokin, Mindshare’s global digital leader in a release.

Greenblatt tells MiC the new role is a chance to start working with brands to evolve the field of gamification.

“Gamification has become something that can be much more immediately tangible for brands,” he says. “There is a lot of originality in the field because it involves taking something that you wouldn’t think of as a game off the top of your head and turning it into something [else]. Companies have turned going to the gym into a game with rewards, a town turned speed limits into a game to reward people for driving safely. It’s interesting to see where brands go with these intuitive notions which have never been used as games before.”

Greenblatt most recently worked as associate director, gaming strategy, at Mindshare Interaction. In his new role as director of gaming he will work to deliver gaming-oriented strategies and executions for clients throughout the company’s North American network, including Canadian clients like Unilever.