Habbo and NSPCC Childline “Idea” Virtual Creative Agency

Background:

The NSPCC’s ongoing business problem was to reach out to potential young users of their Childline service to speak out about their problems or talk to a counsellor to report their anxieties or personal problems. Making the first call to a young person is quite a barrier. NSPCC understand this so want to create safe spaces where young potential users of the service can express themselves freely.

Habbo has a large audience of young expressive tweens and teens who the NSPCC wished to engage in conversation, share their ideas and help inform the NSPCC’s business strategy going forward.

The Big Idea:

In complete partnership with the NSPCC, we created a Virtual Creative Agency in the virtual world of Habbo A core user behaviour is that Habbo users create spaces and experiences that mirror the real world. Habbo is an immersive experience that allows users a high degree of self-expression and creativity . We recruited the then real life CMO of NSPCC to found our virtual agency. We staffed the agency with Habbo users who become virtual workers in the agency. Copy writers, art-directors, account managers, designers and more. The Idea Virtual Creative Agency worked on monthly briefs that cracked real life business problems The NSPCC was experiencing and wanted fresh thinking from the perspective of the target audience. Successful submissions would win virtual  limited-edition NSPCC branded items that were seen as virtual currency in the virtual world. The year long partnership culminated in a real user winning an Internship at Saatchi and Saatchi and also mentorship from the CMO of the NSPCC.

The Results:

We engaged over 6 million unique visits over the course of one year, x amount of uplift the partnership won best use of Social Media at the New Media Age Awards.