Equatorial / Equatorial Marathon

Equatorial started off as a group of exquisite corporate trainers willing to break the boundaries of regular workshops aimed at professional improvement. In time, they got to experience the most effective methods through which people assimilate information and leave the seminars with the feeling that they gained valuable knowledge. And the solution came from the most ludic of sources: gamification.

In a perfect blend of gamification and teaching, Equatorial Marathon was born as a learning game-based platform. Everything from naming, design and accompanying illustrations was created by us. Equatorial Marathon uses the metaphor of a marathon race around the Equator, in which companies enroll their employees and start competing. Each project is 100% customized for every company and even for each family of jobs separately. For instance, a company would like to help form leaders from its sales team, another one would like to increase the interactivity amongst the IT department, whereas a different one aims to motivate its employees to be more competitive.

In order to make progress, runners need to fulfill “running challenges” which are actual tasks and activities derived from their day-to-day work routine. The participants have at their disposal a broad range of resources (face to face workshops, online courses, business tools, articles, books or audio-video content) to help them with checking the challenges. Each running challenge brings runners a certain amount of equatorials, the virtual currency of the game, which can be used in the marketplace in exchange for prizes, such as: books, theatre tickets, access to coaching classes or smart tablets. The runners are challenge to participate in team work activities together with their peers, have the possibility of appreciating each other’s assets on their individual profiles and can see on what position their company is in the general leaderboard.

What is more, running challenges help you burn a certain number of virtual calories, which are also the unit which helps establish the leaderboard. At the end of the Marathon, each burnt calorie will be converted by Equatorial in healthy aliments which will be donated to children in need.

Ever since it was launched, in the platform 20 companies enrolled 800 runners: Metropolitan Life, TRW Timișoara, British American Tobacco, NetGrid, Banca Transilvania, Holcim, Bittnet Systems, UBD Poland, ENEL, Engie, Group Renault, Orange, BRD, Medicover, BCR, Groupama, Lugera, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Endava, Johnson Controls and ING Bank. More so, the successful Marathon was exported to: Poland, France and Sweden and more countries will soon be added on the map.