According to UNICEF, 350.000 Romanian children are left behind with emotional trauma, as their parents work abroad to provide them with a better life.

And according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, reading stories to children helps them with their emotional development.

Telekom wanted to find a way to bring parents working abroad and kids let in Romania closer together, even when they are thousands of miles apart from each other.

The main objective was to further reinforce Telekom’s brand mantra, “Life’s for sharing.”

“Storytime” is the first mobile app for long-distance bedtime stories.

The smartphone is used for the first time as a medium that allows parents who work abroad to read bedtime stories in a new, immersive and engaging way to their children, even when they are thousands of miles apart.

Immigration is a serious problem for Romania, which is number 2 after Syria, in this regard.

Therefore, 350.000 kids are left behind by parents working abroad. It’s a traumatic experience, especially for the kids.

Our main target audience was made of parents working abroad and their kids left at home in Romania.

The secondary target is Telekom’s existing customers and prospect customers, for whom we had to prove once more that life can be shared in so many ways thanks to Telekom’s products and services.

The idea is relevant for Telekom through its nature: a mobile app with the purpose to connect people help creating meaningful bonds, in an interactive way.

Telekom teamed up with game designers and psychologists and created a new way of bringing kids and parents together, through an immersive and engaging bedtime story experience.

We launched the “Storytime” app both on the App Store and Google Play.

This is how the app works:

First, parents choose their kids’ favorite stories from the app.

While parents read the stories on their screen, kids listen to their voices and enjoy the respective stories unfold in beautiful in-app animations.

With the help of specially designed face filters, parents also become story characters.

Other effects add to the engaging nature of the experience: vibration affects for knocking on doors or flashlight effects for in-story lightnings, for instance.

This way, thanks to Telekom, the bedtime ritual is transformed into a new, interactive bonding experience and is made possible even when parents and kids are separated by thousands of miles.

Within days, StoryTime reached #1 in Google Play.

The app was downloaded in 6 countries.

19000 hours of StoryTime spent between the parents and kids, and counting.

The idea was immediately broadcasted and embraced by local and international tech media.