British Heart Foundation/ BHF: YOOBOT VS YOONOT

Credits & Description:

Category: Charities, Public Health & Safety, Public Awareness Messages

Advertiser: BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION

Product/Service: CHILD OBESITY CAMPAIGN

Agency: GREY LONDON

Date of First Appearance: Sep 28 2009 12:00AM

Entrant Company: GREY LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

Entry URL: http://www.yoobot.co.uk

Creative: Dan Cole (Grey London)

Creative: Andy Garnett (Grey London)

Digital Producer: Tyrone Hannick (Grey London)

Planner: Peter Zezulka (Grey London)

Business Director: Lee Simpson (Grey London)

Senior Account Manager: Chris Sherwood (Grey London)

Media Manager: Suneil Saraf (PHD)

: Amanda Jacob (Bloc)

: Rick Palmer (Bloc)

Media placement: Website - http://www.yoobot.co.uk - 21/09/2009

Media placement: Banner ads - Various children's websites e.g. http://www.nick.com - 21/09/2009

Media placement: Dm - Nickelodeon TV - 21/09/2009

Media placement: PR - Various - 21/09/2009

Media placement: Education Packs - Direct to teachers - 21/09/2009

Media placement: Bebo Application - http://www,bebo.com - 21/09/2009



Describe the brief/objective of the direct campaign.

Our target was 9-13 year olds who start to have both the pocket money and opportunity to make independent choices thus creating life long eating and activity habits.

The problem was not one of awareness or knowledge. Children know which foods are healthy or not. The challenge was that children consider themselves to be invincible. The effect of their unhealthy diets develops gradually and can go unnoticed; eg 3 Rolos a day will result in putting on a third of a stone a year. Children will not change their diet just because they are told to.



Explain why the creative execution was relevant to the product or service.

We had to get children to engage in a way that would change their behaviour. We needed a medium that was popular, flexible enough to allow for highly interactive communications and cheap enough to have a large proportion of children to engage with it. Creating digital content was the perfect answer – creating an online game through which all learnings could take place.

We partnered with Nickelodeon’s CSR program. Our TV ads advertising the game were followed up with in-school posters and 1,000,000 DM packs in the style of game manuals which were left on kids' school desks.



Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective with reference to the projected response rates and desired outcome.

1 in 3 UK children are obese or overweight. Today’s average 12 year old is a stone heavier and wears trousers 3 inches wider than 20 years ago. Childhood obesity isn’t just an issue of puppy fat. It is the start of a habit that leads to serious health issues later in life. The BHF wanted to make the risks of an unhealthy diet or lifestyle relevant to children and get them to take steps to improve their health. To do this we ditched the traditional do what we say advertising approach and instead created a digital game, Yoobot.



Describe the results in as much detail as possible with particular reference to the RESPONSE of the target audience including deliverability statistics, response rates, click throughs, sales cost per response, relationships built and overall return on investment.

Yoobot was the 3rd fastest growing UK search term at launch (Britney Spears was 4th).
Average site visit was over 9 minutes with 3 visits per user compared to typically cited advergaming engagement of 3-4 minutes.
If Yoobot was a commercial game it would have joined the elite group of 11 games that have achieved diamond status (selling 1 million units in the UK)
Yoobot made diet an immediate relevancy an effect not seen in previous BHF campaigns
78% of children who played Yoobot claimed to be eating better – 15% increase in eating healthy cereal, 14% decrease in unhealthy cereals.