All bookstores in the UAE have been seeing declining sales, year after year. It has led to the closure of big brand stores, leaving everyone wondering if books had entered their final chapter. WH Smith was facing its biggest decline in the children’s category, and to reverse that, they wanted to promote their new editions of children’s books that were introduced in their stores across the UAE.
Through research, we found a statistic that changed the brief’s objective i.e. An Arab child reads for an average of 6 minutes a year. (Source: Arab Thought Foundation survey). From simply promoting books, our objective changed to promoting the love of reading itself. If we could get kids to love reading with WH Smith, we could get them (and their parents) to find the books they love with WH Smith.
Describe the creative idea
To increase their love of reading, we decided to enter the world they love to spend time in. Up to two-thirds of children in the UAE (between the ages 7-11) spend hours playing games on their (or their parents’) mobile phones.
These games have frequent pop-up ads that cannot be closed. So we hijacked that space with our ‘Pop Up books’ that they could read to close the ad. We identified the most popular kids’ games in the UAE, and redesigned famous children’s books as short stories to appear in place of the Pop Up ad. The child could read the story and answer a follow-up question to close the ad. Which got them rewards in the game, like coins, extra lives, boosts, and more.
These gamified stories interested them and made the interaction feel rewarding. Forging a positive association with the reading habit, as well as with WH Smith.
Describe the strategy
We couldn’t simply promote new books or force kids to unlearn existing habits. So in terms of channel strategy, we had to go where they currently are – mobile games.
The strategy for the idea was based on what child psychologists say is the best way to inculcate new habits - through repetition and reward. We looked for the games where they spent most of their time in, so we could repeatedly engage them with the habit of reading stories.
Through gamification, we made each interaction, a positive and rewarding one.
We wanted to associate that positive interaction with WH Smith and then direct them to our microsite where they could buy the discounted book related to our 30 second story.
Describe the execution
Instead of putting the books as is, we redesigned them to fit within their world of gaming to feel immersive. The stories were made shorter, with intriguing endings and the colours were playful and vibrant to suit that environment. The digital drawings had simpler shapes and the animation was gently-paced, allowing the child to focus on reading the stories at their natural speed.
The stories were gamified with a quiz that the child could answer to close the ad and get rewards in the game like coins, boosts, extra lives and more.
We released a range of stories across the top 50 gaming apps over four weeks and designed the stories to match the style of those games. This way we were able to make the interaction as engaging as possible.
List the results
By going beyond promoting books and promoting a habit instead, we achieved returns on culture, brand and business.
We engaged with 29% of children in the UAE (from ages 7-11). In a medium where few ads are watched completely, 98% of our stories were interacted with till the end, accumulating 1.1 million views.
We received enquiries from parents at our stores across the UAE. And local and international authors at the Emirates Literature Festival contributed stories as well.
From an average of 6 minutes a year, the unique reading time of children interacting with this was nearly 6 minutes a day.
Increased interest in our catalogue and footfall in stores led to an increase in sales too, with a pickup of 11% in the first three weeks. With the Ministry of Youth, this experimental campaign will now be expanded to a wider audience.