2014 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

When we started working with Fun City, it had a perception was that of a frivolous play area for children. However, this was hardly the fact. In reality, Fun City is a place that provides children with the freedom to play in a safe and secure environment; take risks - climb, jump and run, indulge in pretend play - All these elements augments their cognitive development and healthy growth. However, there was a need to change this perception among parents. Furthermore, an understanding of the play patterns of children in this region was not available. Fun City embarked on this thought leadership platform and took on the responsibility of raising salience for meaningful play and therefore launched the 'Children's Play Index' - a measurement of playing patterns of children. Furthermore, it even launched a 'Play Index Calculator' which is a handy mechanism for parents to calculate the play index of their child. This is purely a PR based strategy as campaign was using PR with support at a store level and social media. The campaign has elevated Fun City's stature in the industry. In addition, it is also considered a custodian of 'deep understanding of children's play patterns'.

The Brief

Although a clear market leader in this segment, our challenge was to transform Fun City’s perception among parents from ONLY being a play centre to a destination that also gives an opportunity to get value added information; an opportunity for children to learn whilst having fun and also provide value added insights and guidance to parents.

Results

Fun City Children’s Playing Index received an overwhelming response from media as well as parents. . Scores of parents shared their comments in media stories and endorsed the findings, with many pledging to encourage their children to play outdoors more often. Media impressions from this campaign alone touched 0.5 million USD. Parenting Workshops were held biweekly at 3 locations across Dubai with almost all sessions achieving a maximum possible attendance. Information leaflets were distributed to over 100,000 parents across all Fun City locations. More than 50,000 smses were sent out, facebook ads and social updates to a fan base of app. 15,000. The campaign reached out to 700,000 visitors of Fun City in that particular month and for the next 2 months. Footfalls increased by 6% Fun City was no longer considered a ‘frivolous play area’ and changed its perception to a responsible and fruitful play centre.

Execution

A research was hired to interview 1000 parents across diverse nationalities in UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman with questions about playing patterns of their child to formulate the Children’s Playing Index. The Index assessed fundamental play activities in a child’s regular day such as total amount of their days’ time spent playing, the split of indoor vs. outdoor play, active vs. passive play, popular playing activities, and exposure to technology. A reputed child psychologist and parenting expert helped us interpret the results and suggest tips for parents. Every year, the United Nations celebrates 20 November as Universal Children’s Day and on this day we unveiled the ‘Fun City Children’s Play Index’ at a press conference. The index brought to light alarming trends among children that were adversely impacting their overall development. The Fun City COO and the child psychologist presented the findings and discussed ways to alter the harmful trend.

The Situation

Fun City is the largest indoor entertainment company in the Middle East with over 22 play centres. In UAE alone, it has a total of 17 centres across seven emirates. Children love to visit Fun City for playing and this is also the preferred venue for organizing birthday parties.

The Strategy

We knew that the extreme weather conditions and lack of open play areas in the near vicinity are the reasons for children in the region to stay indoors and entertain themselves with T.V and gadgets. This limits physical activity and social interaction that leads to obesity and personality development issues that are quite prevalent in the country. Statistics are always a compelling reason for call to action. So we created the region’s first ever ‘Children’s Play Index’. We wanted to know what children did in their leisure time and how they entertain themselves. Do they venture outdoors or spend time on computers? The findings would be made public and Fun City would be positioned as a catalyst for bringing positive change in the society. In addition, Fun City also launched the first ever ' Fun City Play Index Calculator' that enabled parents to compute their child's personal index.