Summary

Currently, one in three UK children is obese or overweight and, if this trend continues, it is predicted that 90 per cent of today’s children will be by 2050. A radical change of approach from “telling” to “playing” helped the British Heart Foundation to set in place a generation’s lifelong eating patterns and take steps towards tackling the obesity epidemic. The creative strategy involved “Yoobot”, an educational game that allowed children to experiment with the future health effects of diet. Children could either care for their Yoobot or feed it into an early grave, quite literally, learning about the effects of diet and exercise on their long-term health along the way. More than one million children created Yoobots and 78 per cent of the 11- to 13-year-olds who played claimed to have improved their diet as a result.

Judge’s comment

The judges were very impressed by this paper as it understood how kids learn through play and, in doing so, showed how to effectively change their eating habits. It was a clever campaign and a well-deserved winner.

Jennelle Tilling, vice-president of marketing UK and Ireland, KFC, Yum! Restaurants International

For the complete case study visit the WARC website.