OMO (Persil) believes that Dirt is Good, because when a child is free to play and get dirty, they learn essential life skills that cannot be taught in a schoolroom. The problem is that societal change and the explosion in technology over the last decade have drastically altered kids lifestyles: children are not getting dirty nowadays, because children are no longer going out to play. The implications for child development are deeply concerning. The brief to the agency was to draw attention to the drastic decline in children’s free play, particularly outdoor play, and to get the issue onto the agenda of parents, teachers and policy makers. The budget was minimal, £250,000 Our objective was to generate debate via earned rather than paid media, as a first step in a longer term campaign to drive behavioural change.

The time kids spend outdoors gets smaller every day - but it's hard to understand how much time is too little unless we can put it into a context that's easily recognised.

the rights of prison inmates to outdoor time are laid down by the UN. This is not the case for children, who now spend less free time outdoors each day than prisoners.

The Creative idea was to compare the time the average child spends outdoors with that of a prison inmate.

Filmed as a piece of documentary, we went to Wabash Maximum Security Prison, in the state of Indiana, United States, to investigate and compare the time the average child spends outdoors with that of a prison inmate.

Staying true to the documentary approach, everything was shot for real with a tiny crew that had restricted access to the prison.

We decided to go to the USA, since it best represents the iconic image people have in mind when it comes to Prison. We pre-selected 50 inmates and checked their criminal history background. The Prison allowed us to speak with the inmates but ultimately they would need to volunteer themselves for the film. As expected from a documentary, all the V/O, depositions and their reactions are for real.