Ad agency harness kids’ imagination while teaching them tricks of the trade

The Pets4Pets Project is an ad campaign for WWF Italy that consulted children during every step of the process.

Tapping the creativity and oddball imagination of young kids isn’t a new idea, and in the past brands such as Whole Foods have already crowdsourced eco ideas from teenagers. Now the Pets4Pets Project has developed a new ad campaign that consulted children during every step of the process.

Working with Italian agency Leo Burnett, the kids were tasked to come up with ideas that could demonstrate the plight of pandas on the brink of extinction for print, radio and TV spots for WWF Italy. The young participants were encouraged to go wild with their concepts and create as many as possible, getting them down in sketch form. Once the best ideas were picked, the kids then worked with designers and broadcasters to turn their work into reality and translate them into language that adults would understand. The project resulted in two TV commercials, four radio spots and eight print campaigns featuring the unique ideas of the kids. The video below documents the process:

Although a one off project, could an agency adopt this as a business model, charging low rates while also educating kids and taking advantage of out-of-the-box thinking?