The Campaign

Utilising outgrown toys to teach new lessons. The best way to communicate the benefits of meaningful learning is through engagement. Children quickly outgrow their toys, and they are often discarded despite being in good condition. With tiny studs, multiple colours and its interlocking nature, toy bricks are the perfect tool to teach arithmetic, pattern recognition and creativity skills. We worked with the teachers at Little Village to develop Brick Book- a learning kit designed as a hands-on substitute of textbooks to engage children of different ages and levels of interest. Placed into a nifty box inspired by the toolbox, the Brick Book makes it easy to bring the learning guides and toy bricks out of the class for independent or outdoor learning.

The Brief

• Overall budget: SGD 15k • Breakdown of costs: Development of boxes and activation in Yangon: $9.5k Transport and accommodation to Yangon: $3k Production of Brickbook box: $2.5k • Paid Media budget: Amplification of FB post -- USD 375

Creative Execution

Through seven months of planning, design, donations and production, over 8,000 old toy bricks were collected through public donations held island-wide and packaged with 100-card deck of learning guides for varying levels of simple mathematics and problem-solving skills. Together with other stationery, food and clothes, the donations weighed a total of 300kg and were all delivered by hand to more than 10 school villages in rural Yangon, Myanmar. Post the trip to Yangon, the team of teachers worked to digitise the teaching guides and gamified lessons, making them available online and accessible to parents and teachers around the world. Future plans also include creating more Brick Book learning kits to expand access and support for early childhood in other impoverished villages in and beyond Myanmar.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Hundreds of Singaporeans came forward to donate old toy bricks, and we amassed over 8,000 bricks in a short span of time. Within the first week of launch, local media and forums picked up on the initiative and it sparked several discussions on the indisputable role of play in early childhood development. Little Village was applauded for their alternative pedagogy centred around meaningful learning for young children. The response was encouraging, 1 in 2 parents reached out to Little Village as they wanted to get their hands on Brick Book. During the launch, engagements on social media soared and rose by 400%. The Brick Book initiative also inculcated the value of giving back to society amongst the young students – teaching them that they can make a difference. On the receiving end, children in Myanmar gained access to essential and engaging learning resources.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Little Village, a pre-school in Singapore, grabbed the attention of the media and sparked discussions on the importance of play in early childhood development in a grades-obsessed nation, where enrichment classes begin as young as 6 months. By combining creative thinking and design, Little Village seeks to answer an urgent need in early childhood education – helping to inculcate the love of learning from young and keeping students engaged in classrooms. With social responsibility at the core of the idea, we helped to bring the brand experience to life and demonstrated the benefits of meaningful play beyond the classroom.

To demonstrate the benefits of meaningful learning, our strategy was to let the students of Little Village, beneficiaries of the school’s philosophy, speak for themselves. As part of Little Village’s brand mission to nurture their students holistically, they have an annual program for students to contribute back to society. Previously, they’d sold home-grown plants from their backyard to raise funds to support disadvantaged schools in the region. We wanted to walk the talk, which was why this year we got the students to create these Brick Books as their way to contribute back to society. The students rallied together to lead the donation drive and collected thousands of toy bricks. They assembled the Brick Book learning kits, which were donated to rural schools in Myanmar who lack the resources to provide learning aids to their students. This was how we brought Little Village’s teaching philosophy beyond the classroom.