Situation

Kids were addicted to screens and literacy was struggling as a result. For Big W, the country’s biggest retailer of childrens’ books and partner of the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation, this was of great concern.

Brief

Our brief was simply to get kids reading again. Not an easy task when screens rule the playroom now. The audience we needed to target to create this behaviour change were parents of new and young families who were relishing small moments of bonding with their kids, while reconsidering the role of screen time.

Objective

We wanted to make a positive impact on literacy in two ways - help them reconnect with books and raise funds to support literacy programs.

Rather than force kids to reconnect with books without their genuine enthusiasm, we wanted to find a way to make kids want to read books again of their own volition.

We trojan-horsed books back into kids lives via their favourite entertainment format - screens. We did this by partnering with singing social media sensation, Jessica Mauboy, and beatboxing YouTube star, Tom Thum to reimagine four childrens’ books as original rap songs and music videos.

Our audience was parents of young families who were relishing moments of family bonding. These parents no longer see screen time as a nemesis, but as a helpful sidekick in setting their kids up for success.

Our strategic approach was to leverage parents’ changing attitudes towards screens by catapulting children’s books into the digital age.

Our media approach centred on digital, social and audio channels to promote and seed our videos. Contextual placements allowed them to be present in everyday moments beyond eveing storytime.

Our talent selection was also strategic - Jessica Mauboy has a highly engaged following of young mums as a result of her launch on Australian Idol. Tom Thum brought his more traditional rap credentials, as well as a cult following on YouTube. Their creative input to the work set the unique tone for the music, as well as lending authenticity to the brand.

We released the four original rap songs, music films and karaoke videos on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.

Our talent, Jessica Mauboy, is also a passionate Ambassador for indigenous literacy, which was a great synergy for this project, which raised funds for Big W’s charity partner, the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation.

Timeline

The campaign period was 1st - 20th October 2020.

Placement

Paid: Facebook, Instagram, the BIG W Website, Youtube, Spotify and Kinderling Kids Radio App.

Organic: We invited people to take part by recording themselves singing along to the karaoke videos, which they then shared on their own social media, spreading the idea even further.

Scale

We produced 4 original rap songs, 4 accompanying music videos and 4 karaoke film (instrumental) versions.

Reach

This campaign resulted in unprecedented engagement for BIG W - Australians loved watching our Rap Books and making their own, so much so that they spent 4,335,475 minutes doing so.

Engagement

Our long-form skippable placements performed +57% more than planned and overall campaign sentiment was at 100%+.

Impact

For every listen we donated royalties to our charity partner, the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation. And best of all, kids were asking to read again - in fact, Big W reported a 122% increase in book sales.