We were briefed by the Australian Government’s Young & Well Research Centre, to help stamp out cyber bullying, a very real social problem amongst teens. A problem costing $10.6 billion a year in counselling the victims. By researching the social media of teens aged 12-17, we discovered they share inspirational quotes with one another via Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr. We found the cyberbullies active on the very same social platforms instigating hate. Our strategic approach: Create a mobile social platform that generated love, not hate. Appreciate-A-Mate - a customisable quote generator. Designed to spread love not hate through social media. The mobile app generates positive quotes. We sourced these quotes directly from teens to counter cyberbullies. We enlisted 45 artists globally to craft each quote into beautiful typographic artworks that could be easily customised, and shared through the social platforms that cyber bullies dominate - Instagram, facebook and twitter.

We designed the application with minimal branding, no advertising and little messaging. Keeping the interface clean and simple, the app allows teens to customise and personalise each message so it can be tailored to a friend. The mobile experience let you shake the handset to shuffle quotes and colours into thousands of combinations. Technically we knew our audience were using mobile as their primary device so we built the first iteration to work in-browser across mobile devices. We built responsive tablet versions and finally desktop. After identifying our traffic source from iOS we launched a version on iTunes app store.

The first customisable quote generator of it’s kind. Using graphic artists from around the world we ensured the messages would be shareable. In just 7 days 91753 twitter accounts were reached. Over 22,830 unique quotes have been generated. Reaching 22,530,200 in social media impressions. The story of the platform has been covered by 200+ media publishers globally. More importantly in a government-funded survey conducted amongst 1000 teens, 76% said they liked the app and 56% felt the app made them feel better about themselves according to The Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre survey.