BHF

Yoobot

Problem

A third of children in the UK are currently overweight. We were tasked to get 11-13 year old children to take greater responsibility for their own health. It is at this pivotal age that children start gaining more freedom in the choice of food and where future food habits are formed which last right through adulthood.

Insight

We needed to provide children with the basic tools to make good food choices. They have been targeted by messages in this area before and generally know what is good and bad food but they feel ‘invincible’ and they tend to just eat what they want. We needed to show them the future relevance of the problem on their terms, i.e. with impact and play value.

Solution

We created an online game called Yoobot at www.yoobot.co.uk. Users register to create a free Yoobot, a mini version of themselves, which they customise to look like themselves (e.g. upload their own photo as the face, design their Yoobot’s home etc). Children can then experiment on their Yoobot by setting its diet and activity routines and watch the effect that this diet would have on their health in the long run - physically and emotionally.

Results

Our original launch of Yoobot in 2008 was so successful we launched Yoobot II at the end of 2009 which has proved equally effective. The site has received over 5 million unique visits and 1.35 million individual Yoobots have been registered. The campaign has been so effective it won Silver at the IPA Effectiveness Awards and also The Broadbent Prize for Best Dedication to Effectiveness for all of our work for The British Heart Foundation.