Winner: Reading/DfEE
Agency: D’Arcy
Author: Charlie Snow
Creative Director: Nick Hastings
Art Director: Carl Le Blond
Copywriter: Richard Russell
Client: Department for Education and Employment/COI
Product: Reading and Literacy
The judges were unanimous in their decision on the Grand Prix. This
paper showcases traditional planning skills deployed to solve the
difficult and worrying social problem of child literacy. The planner
listened carefully to understand the problem from the audience’s point
of view, identified the key barriers to parents spending time teaching
their children to read and then found the solution for creative to
polish.
This work came from a Labour Government initiative to address a striking
statistic: that two out of five children in England are unable to read
English to the required standard. The advertising set out to encourage
more parents to help their children to read. Research among parents
discovered that they felt they did not have time to help and that they
found the book at bedtime routine a chore.
The planning solution was to tell parents to think of reading as more
than just the book at bedtime: it was recipes, football programmes, road
signs, instructions for toys. All of this counted as reading; it was fun
and easy to do. Even fathers, who tended to put the responsibility on
mothers, could do it.
Planning’s insights also helped guide the media strategy to make the
most relevant impact for the creative work. It recommended ’mutual
viewing’ occasions when mum, dad and the children enjoyed TV or films at
the cinema or football matches as a family.
