Why is this work relevant for Social & Influencer?

This campaign is relevant because it was a global social-media led campaign, designed to make the world care about the importance of early childhood development, that went viral. We leveraged social media channels and a unique influencer (who is now famous thanks to our campaign), to not only drive awareness of our message but to positively change how parents connect with their children, globally. Our "Tiny TED talk" catapulted 7yr old Molly Wright into stardom, and the supporting videos have equipped parents with the tools required to effectively connect with and develop their children.

Background

Scientific research has proven how positive interactions in the first five years of a child’s life can not only have a remarkable impact on their development into adulthood, but can also positively effect the socio-economic health of a nation in the future. Yet parents all around the world are finding this out too late, if ever. 140 million babies are born, annualy: the ambition was for our campaign to be seen by all of their parents across the world, to land not just awareness but so parents could improve how they connect with their children. The problem is, parents are overwhelmed when faced with the steep learning curve that is becoming a parent, and view neuroscience as one more thing to learn that they simply don’t have the capacity for. We needed to radically rethink how we delivered our message, if we wanted to truly cut through and change behaviour.

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

The world’s first neuroscience TED Talk given by a 7-year-old. We put the proof of the neuroscience on a stage so she could convince the world that the first five years of a child’s life is crucial to every child and nation’s future. Molly Wright, now one of the youngest people ever to give a TED talk, was ideal because she had just experienced the benefits of connection herself, making her the most compelling vehicle through which we could make neuroscience understandable, accessible and attention grabbing. Her confidence, competence, and ability is because her parents played with her early and often. For 7 minutes Molly presented facts, experiments and scientifically proven ‘serve and return games’ any parent can action to connect with their child. The TED talk was supported by shorter edits, and films designed to equip parents with the tools they needed to improve how their child develops.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

Our audience were parents, caregivers, and the general global population. Facebook and YouTube were our key channels; Facebook because this is where parents are most active, and we knew we could capture attention in-feed with teasers and edits optimised towards how parents consume content. Parents also watch YouTube because they are regularly searching and viewing parenting how to’s and advice, and if they have children already they're often watching kids videos with them. To secure the impact we were seeking however, we needed to consider how we were going to most efficiently reach as many people as possible. To do this we looked at where we could secure the most reach for our media spend; Facebook, Instagram and YouTube offered the best ROI. We also wanted earned media, so we seeded the film through parent groups on Facebook, whilst influencers including Hugh Jackman shared the film with their followers.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

To kickstart our campaign, we organically teased the film via our owned social channels and TED’s, utilising edits designed to pique interest and anticipation, targeted to a broad audience. We then launched the full 7 minute TED talk via our our owned social and digital channels and via TED and UNICEF’s, with media spend targeted at parents and at a broad audience. We started in Australia, and have since rolled out into over 190 markets, with the film being translated into 27 languages to date. Molly’s talk was also recorded for podcast and radio. In social, the full version was supported with shorter versions designed to boost views, and with interactive polls and additional educational short films that extrapolated the points Molly makes in the film about how to play, connect and talk with your children.

List the results (30% of vote)

Our campaign has been streamed over 23 million times, shared over 500,000 times, and reached over 1.1 billion. It secured over 500 media mentions, 4,530,253 views on TED.com plus 1.8million views on TED’s YouTube. Over 90% of parents who saw the film said they would be more likely to connect, talk and play with their children after watching, and the majority would recommend it to their friends and family. 61% have taken some form of action as a direct result of seeing the campaign and 75% of parents have taken action or intend to. Our Australian social media strategy delivered over $1.8million in value. 14.2M total media contacts were reached and we received 7.28M in total media video views. Across our 6”, 15”, 30” & 3 Min edits we secured 110,461 total clicks.