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The Drum Awards Awards Case Studies Marketing

Gameloft on bringing Kinder Surprise toys to life with AR

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By Awards Analyst, writer

November 4, 2021 | 4 min read

Gameloft won the ‘Best use of mobile content’ category at The Drum Awards for Content 2021 with its work for Ferrero’s Kinder Surprise. Here, the team behind the winning entry reveals the secrets of this successful project...

The challenge

For more than fifty years, Kinder Surprise has fostered the curiosity of generations of children. Within each chocolate egg, a new surprise with a toy to build that both entertains and educates.

The way children play, interact and learn has changed as physical and digital worlds blur, raising new expectations among today’s families. Parents want to make sure digital isn’t purely a distraction but also help their kids grow, and children claim learning is easier when it feels like play.

The strategy

To meet families’ new expectations, Applaydu promises to unleash the iconic tiny Kinder Surprise figurines from their physical limitations, opening a safe and imaginary world where kids can now interact further with their toys through stimulating and educational games. As an enhancer of playability, Applaydu was created to bring together children's thirst for entertainment and parents’ educational expectations.

Applaydu is a free edutainment mobile app launched in August 2020 in a hundred countries in six different languages. Created for the whole family, the app encourages bonding moments where parents and children can play and learn together. Intended for children aged from three to nine, the app delivers one of the first Augmented Reality (AR) experience dedicated to kids, at a massive scale. Thanks to AR, kids can now take control of their toys, interact with them, discover their personalities in the real world, and immortalize moments by taking pictures with them, like they were true friends.

Applaydu allows kids to embark their toys in personalized adventures where each decision and action will craft the outcome of the story. As this was a first for this target audience, we created our own technology called procedural narrative tool in order to shape all stories crafted by kids into readable books, illustrated with their own creations and decisions they took during their playing experience. As kids aged three to nine do not necessarily know how to read, it would become a bed-time story moment where kids and parents can share quality time together.

The activation

To support kids’ growth, Applaydu offers a collection of games co-created with doctors in Children Education from Oxford University, with educational potential across different areas of child development such as Communication or Mathematics, and development of cognitive skills like memory or attention. Kids will encounter characters who will challenge them through stimulating games with different levels of difficulty that will adjust to each kid’s learning curve. If the kid is struggling in a memory game for instance, the next sessions would be a bit easier to really favor the most adequate learning curve.

Designed as an artistic crafted universe made out of cardboard, Applaydu’s universe introduces kids to colors, shapes and patterns thought to reassure and inspire them with recyclable materials that they can replicate at home with their parents.

The results

  • +10 million app downloads since its launch;
  • 87% of parents state that Applaydu enhances playing moments between them and their kid(s);
  • 84% of parents state that Applaydu offers their kids a chance to learn something new;
  • +8.2% net increase for the overall likeability of the toys, fueled by the fact that the great experience with the app results in a significantly higher evaluation from app users compared to non-app users;
  • +43% net increase in family togetherness;
  • +28% net increase in value for money.

This project was a winner at The Drum Awards for Content 2021. Click here to find out which of The Drum Awards are currently open for entry.

The Drum Awards Awards Case Studies Marketing

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Gameloft

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