Hard To Reach
Bookstart
Issue 7 | July 2008
Agency
Kitcatt Nohr Alexander Shaw
Creative Team
James Vigar
Production Team
Clare Clarke - Agency Producer; 12foot6 - Production Company; 12foot6 - Post Production; Nigel Manington (Marmalade) and Crawford Blair (Angell Sound) - Audio Post Production
Other Credits
Emily Butt - Campaigns and Communications Manager (Bookstart);Caroline Gibbs - Planner;Howard Saunders and John Balmond - Account Team;Trinity Communications - Media Agency (planning);MG OMD - Media Agency (buying) ;Simon Timlett - Media Planner (Trinity Communications)
Date
January 2008
Background
Reading books to children from as early an age as possible has many and varied benefits in both the short and long term. The problem is that 38% of parents don’t currently read to their children for a variety of reasons. For some audiences (teenage / single parents, people for whom English is not their first language and people who themselves have literacy problems), the barriers are even greater. The agency needed to persuade these ‘hard to reach’ audiences to start sharing books with their children.
Idea
Although there are proven links between reading at an early age and improved academic performance over the long term, educational benefits were thought to be a possible turn off for the specified audience. The agency therefore decided to focus on the emotional and immediate benefits of reading. The campaign set out to show that sharing books with children creates uniquely bonding moments that both parent and child can enjoy. It also showed that you don’t have to be a great reader yourself to get your kids used to enjoying books and that an added benefit of reading is that it can instantly calm down tantrum-throwing children, making books a useful tool in the parenting armoury.
The agency made three films, all prefaced with a title frame saying, ‘A tiny story about books’ in order to give the films the feel of being a piece of entertainment. Three different and engaging styles of animation were employed to sidestep the danger of depicting families in a stereotypical way and avoid communicating any specific cues in terms of age, socio-economic group or ethnicity.
Results
The campaign had a phenomenal response, with almost 74,000 texts being received – a response rate of 0.05%. Also, the right people responded. Whilst people falling into the nine Mosaic profiles that were used as a proxy for the ‘hard to reach’ audiences constitute just over 13% of the population, they formed almost 23% of the respondents, meaning they were 65% more likely than the average person to respond.
Target Audience
Parents with children under four. In particular: adults with basic skills needs; teenage mums; single parents; ethnic minorities (recent arrivals or those for whom English was not their first language).
Our Thoughts
This is a deceptively simple-looking solution to what must have been a pretty tricky brief. How can you get adults to read more to their children, especially if they aren’t very good readers themselves? A traditional above-the-line agency would have concentrated solely on the end benefits but Kitcatt Nohr have told the story of how you get to the end benefit and the results speak for themselves. I’d call it classic beside-the-line thinking.