Create a mobile storytelling platform that allows parents to entertain (and distract!) their children during brushing time. We used the recommended brushing time by dentists, two minutes, as a limit for the stories, turning the content itself into another way to improve oral care habits.

The first step was finding an author that families would engage with as the idea would live or die by the quality of the content. Our research showed that children identified with the written style and illustrations of their favorite authors. Claire Freedman, author of ‘Aliens Love Underpants’ fit perfectly.

Where the content lived was also critical and dictated the platform. We partnered with Tumblr; it allowed us to host the content in a mobile-first format (and is home to a thriving community of Mum bloggers called Mumblrs). With Tumblr, we could have our own URL, colgatetwominutetales.co.uk, and its mobile-first consumption allowed us to replicate the experience of bedtime stories.

To grow awareness of the stories we partnered with Facebook, Netmums, Ogury, InSkin and Amazon to drive visits. Activity was time-targeted to prompt parents around brushing time. We also had a PR effort engaging with parenting influencers and parenting magazines.

We reached over 14MM people online (80% of our target) through paid media.

-191,000 parents visited our site (Goal: 184,000)

-Average time on story page: 4 mins (2x our benchmark and 4x Tumblr benchmark)

-23% of visitors returned

-Display ad recognition at 23% (Nielsen UK norm 18%)

-Shifted perception of Colgate (makes brushing fun for kids +10 pts; Meets the needs of my family +6pts) Nielsen UK

-Share grew for Kids 18% in the UK

-28% sales uplift from new customers

Engagement can be a tricky concept to measure, so we paid close attention to feedback:

“Fabulous idea. Kids love the aliens love underpants story so these should keep them happy. Thank you x”

“Brushing has always been hard, but I recently swapped to smiles and she loves it”

“What a fantastic idea”

These were just some of the 7,088 comments, likes and shares this heartwarming idea from Colgate generated.