Young Australians are spending less and less time engaging with TV as a source of entertainment. Brands appearing in the advertising slots between shows are not being seen by our 12-17 year old digitally savvy target audience. Very few traditional brands in Australia have attempted to create branded entertainment properties although the Australian government is in fact commissioning projects to help reach illusive young people. We were commissioned by the Australian Young & Well Centre to help stamp out cyber bullying. It costs the Australian Government $10.6 billion a year to treat mental illnesses brought on by low self esteem. So we created an entertaining user generated content platform to get kids to spread love not hate to curb bullying.

We created Appreciate-a-mate - the first customisable quote generator of it’s kind. Designed to spread love not hate through social media. The mobile app is a messaging service that generates appreciative positive quotes. We took a user centric design approach and started investigating the end user - teens. We sourced positive messages and quotes directly from 1000 teens to counter cyber bullies. We enlisted 45 renowned typographers globally to craft messages of appreciation turning quotes into beautiful typographic designs that could be easily customised, and shared through the very social channels such as instagram, facebook, twitter that cyber bullies dominate.

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 over 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.