Babyshop, a leading brand that benefits from high equity in the region, has always stood for being an ally in parenthood, with its purpose focused on “giving every child the best start in life” through its products, services, experiences and acts.

With the value of the category eroding, it was important for Babyshop to connect with its audience by bringing its purpose to life and making a real difference on-ground.

Supporting UAE’s mission to promote inclusive education, Babyshop sought to tackle an unspoken yet widespread condition: colour blindness. With one colourblind child in every classroom, discovering children's colour vision deficiency at the earliest is crucial to support them in having the best learning experience, from the start.

Although screening methods do exist, children are only diagnosed at a much later stage in life when they recognize shapes/numbers, and the exam does not explain WHICH color they see over the other.

Introducing the Babyshop ColourCheck pencils: An innovative, double-sided pencil set created to identify colorblindness in young kids; with one side representing the rainbow spectrum that regular kids would see naturally, and another having the spectrum the way colorblind kids would see it.

Therefore, each pencil becomes a colour blind test. If a child sees only one matching colour on the pencil instead of two distinctive ones, it is a clear sign that the child is colour blind.

The set breaks the convention of traditional testing and gives parents and teachers a playful and easy to use tool to detect, and support colour-blind kids at the earliest, so that they make the most of their learning experiences.

Our objectives were two-fold:

1) to raise awareness around colour-blindness in the region, and increase the number of children tested positively for the deficiency

2) Helping kids build colour confidence from an early age by improving their learning experience

To reach these objectives, we needed to target teachers, parents, and the educational system to educate them about the special needs of colour-deficient children and what can be done to help them in their quest to learn:

*Parents as the main caregivers

*Teachers to give each colour-blind child the right stimulus in the classroom that fits their needs, so they are able to thrive

*The Educational System: to endorse the pencil case as an official tool to use in schools to detect and support kids with colour vision deficiencies.

Reaching these audiences on-ground was crucial for them to start using the Pencil Set and appreciate the difference it can make.

After six months of development with specialists and colourblind adults, Babyshop launched the ColourCheck pencils set and partnered with schools across the UAE to distribute it in classrooms for students to use.

Babyshop also gave away colouring books that were specially designed using colours that most people with the deficiency cannot see, immediately revealing mistakes and detecting kids with colour vision deficiency.

The ColourCheck set was also distributed in all Babyshop stores online and offline, to be used in-store or at home.

To grab visitors’ attention in-store, we created ads that raise awareness around the topic, with strong facts that would entice parents to try the set and test it with their kids.

We also put Babyshop shopping bags into more useful use, by creating a limited edition version that would enable kids to use their ColorCheck pencils to colour the logo, helping parents detect colorblindness.

The BabyShop ColourCheck set proved to be a simple yet effective way to promote inclusivity and give every child, no matter the background, a great start in life:

*$110,000 media value for a $10,000 media cost

*Reached 15% of UAE schools and students

*2 children were identified as colorblind, and are getting the support they need 

*Babyshop brand love grew by 12%