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| CLIENT |
Channel 4 |
| CAMPAIGN |
Lost for Words |
| SERVICE |
Online Advertising, Relationship Management |
| TERRITORY |
uk |
| OFFICE |
London |
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| The Challenge |
Channel4 launched a series of programmes to highlight the issues around childhood literacy. The season, entitled Lost for Words was based around the shocking fact that 1 in 5 kids leave school without basic reading or writing skills.
Our job was to raise awareness of the programmes and ignite interest in the issues of child literacy.
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| The Solution |
With over £1m of media invested in driving viewing to the programmes, (posters/on-air trails), we felt our digital budget could add a powerful, new layer to the marketing campaign.
So we challenged the brief and made a radical suggestion. What if we did something to address the problem instead of just highlighting it?
Through our research we discovered that the single most important action a parent can do to improve literacy in their children is to read exciting stories to them*. So we agreed a new aim – to find a way to inspire parents to read stories to their children.
In that moment the campaign to 'bring back bedtime stories' was born.
A microsite was built with AOL, selected as the only site which shared our vision and which could supply a rich parenting audience. The look and feel drew from the ATL creative theme of a small child lost in a scary wood and the content was designed to make the complex issues surrounding Literacy as accessible as possible.
But we wanted to do more than just give them information. We wanted to give them the magical stories to excite and amaze their children.
So we contacted Stella Gurney, the award winning author, and set her a challenge. A 2,000 word story to be written within a week based around the Lost for Words idea.
But there is a final twist to this tale
Every single story was to be uniquely tailored to the child it was read to.
Before the story starts the reader enters 9 variables (childs name, person reading the story, worst smell they can think of etc). Then at the click of a button all the details magically appear in the story.
Every child became the hero of their own book
The Crowmaster was brought to life using an illustrator and the pictures changed according to the details inputted. It can be read online, printed off into a beautifully bound book to be read in bed, or even emailed to distant relatives.
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| Results |
Interest 'ignited'
4.5m people saw the activity
17% interaction rate best ever C4 performance (3 x average)
0.45% CTR 6 x industry average.
4mins 49 seconds per visit, 25% better than AOL site average
Word soon spread
Organic discussions across major parental chat-rooms
Official endorsement by the PTA – newsletter to 13,000 PTA groups
Global word of mouth, 52 different countries creating stories
Kids are getting magical stories read to them
12,184 unique ‘Crowmasters’, WOM adding hundreds each week
89,000 uplift in kids book sales over campaign period
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