How Beano become a force for good in EE partnership
Pitch Marketing Group and EE won at The Drum Awards for Content 2022 in the Best Content Campaign/Strategy for Good for its Dennis the Menace gets Phonesmart with EE. Here, we find out more about the collaboration we never knew we needed.
Dennis the Menace gets phonesmart with EE
With the rise in young children getting their own mobile phones, EE knew they needed a clever strategy that would help parents teach their children about phone safety. If parents couldn’t learn and teach from their own experiences, they needed a familiar rebel to learn from instead. They needed Dennis the Menace.
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The brief
For children, a first phone is a portal into a world of opportunity and adventure. To a parent, it’s a gateway to a world of hidden dangers. And in recent research, it was revealed that over half of parents say they wouldn’t survive the online world if they were a kid today.
That’s why EE partnered with Beano to give Dennis the Menace his first phone and used the hijinks that would provide parents with an easily accessible, non-threatening guide to keeping their kids safe online.
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The idea
EE partnered with Beano Studios to tell the tale of Dennis the Menace and Minnie Minx getting their first phones from an EE store. They show the good, the bad and the ugly of their first days with every child’s most wanted device.
We see Dennis join every social network going and turn his cousin into an unwilling internet icon before he gets his comeuppance with his family showing him how easy it is to be catfished online.
This was complemented by two supporting mini-comics that directly provided their audience with valuable digital skills, covering everything from children keeping their location safe to understanding how to mute, block and report unsavory characters online. Crucially, these comics drew directly on expert advice provided by EE partner Internet Matters, making sure that they weren’t just fun, they were genuinely useful and full of credible advice.
They then turned these print assets into a set of beautifully animated videos by recruiting a voice artist to read the comics in the style of a parent reading a bedtime story.
The content was housed on a bespoke digital hub (ee.co.uk/beano) and rolled out through a fully integrated campaign across owned, earned and paid. They were also distributed to national and lifestyle media; the learning content ran on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube; and as TV ads on BT Sport. It also featured on digital screens in key London Underground stations, in EE stores, on 602 StreetHub screens nationwide, and as an OOH execution at Westfield Shepherd’s Bush.
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The results
After viewing the commercial…
- 433k parents feel they now know how to help their kids stay safe online - exceeding the key campaign objective by 44%
- 82% of parents have a better understanding in the different ways to help their child stay safe online (vs target of 65%)
- 74% of parents feel better prepared and more confident in helping their child stay safe online
- 63% of parents were inspired to talk to their children about how they use their phone
- 61% of parents think EE actively addresses important cultural issues (vs target of 50%)
- 76% of parents are more likely to consider EE (vs target of 55%)
And the rest of the comms, including print and OOH, saw…
- 3.95m content views (vs target of 2.5m)
- 86 pieces of media coverage including 24 nationals (vs target of 50)
- 95% of coverage included either video or comic – including all 24 national hits (vs target of 60%)
- 47.3m digital impressions (vs target of 30m)
- 80k clicks to the ee.co.uk/beano digital hub
This campaign was a winner at The Drum Awards for Content 2022. You can see all the winners here. The Drum Awards for Marketing are currently open for entry. Find out how you can enter now.