PHD
British Heart Foundation
Yoobot

Reaching children with a message about eating the right foods is a notoriously tricky job, but the integrated campaign for the British Heart Foundation proved it can be done - and well.

Working with a budget that did not immediately appear to allow for TV activity, PHD not only created a television presence but also online and direct marketing activity, through the Yoobot campaign.

Yoobot was an online application created as part of BHF's Food4Thought campaign that allowed children to experiment with their future health by "feeding" virtual versions of themselves and watching how their existing diet and exercise affected the way they would look in years to come.

Aimed at 11 to 13-year-olds who were just entering secondary school and starting to express freedom of choice, the campaign started with 10-second teasers on Nickelodeon, followed by a 60-second launch spot showing the game in action. A limited budget meant BHF decided to partner with just one TV channel that would enable it to hit its target audience.

Teasers encouraging children to log on to Yoobot coincided with posters in 1,200 schools revealing more game-play details and, on the launch day itself, almost one million pieces of direct marketing landed on the desks of 11 to 13-year-olds in schools across the country.

Digital ads, homepage takeovers and a heavily branded Bebo profile all supported the offline activity, resulting in more than 1.15 million registrations - 10 times more than the client had expected.

Careful use of TV was crucial to the campaign's success, because research showed the target age group spent less than an hour a day online, while TV was the most influential medium in their eyes.

Two months after the launch of Yoobot, market research of registrants showed 85% of children were still playing with their Yoobot character and two-thirds were visiting the Yoobot site at least once every few days - exactly the same levels as two weeks after launch.

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