THE POWER OF PLAY

There has never been a more important time to practice good hygiene habits. Recognising this, Reckitt set out to expand its hygiene education in schools to reach 100 million children globally by the end of 2026 – teaching positive hygiene habits to reduce incidents of preventable illnesses and absenteeism rates. 

Teaming up with PRELOADED & LEO, Reckitt wanted to explore how play can drive positive behaviour change for children aged 6-9 as well as helping teachers demonstrate the importance of good hygiene in engaging ways. 

The result of this collaboration is Dettol Hygiene Quest, a hybrid learning programme which brings together interactive play with story-led learning. Anchored in meaningful storytelling, the experience drives real-world health outcomes by empowering children to play, practice and learn.

STORY-LED LEARNING

The starting point for the project was to design a learning framework that was scalable across diverse educational topics and audiences. Together with our sister company LEO Learning, PRELOADED ran a discovery phase to map the learning requirements and explore play concepts that could make serious, and sometimes complex, subjects digestible and engaging for children. 

Anchoring the learning in a story was the most low-threshold way of onboarding children to the programme. The story-led framework enabled the experience to scale across classroom and at-home learning, maximising student reach and impact. Importantly, merging real-life lessons with a story world helped to capture children’s imaginations and camouflage the learning.

DEVELOPING A NEW IP

Building on the story design, PRELOADED worked with Reckitt to develop the IP based around a unique set of characters and a surprising world. The colourful, comic book art style created by PRELOADED ensured that the characters and the story would resonate with children globally. 

‘The Adventurers’ are a group of real-world kids who start out as strangers, but after being summoned to the colourful and quirky land of ‘The Hidden Reach’, they must quickly learn to work as a team and complete ‘The Protector’s’ quests together – the balance of this land is in their hands!

They soon see that their strength is in their differences and start to share their real-world experience, behaviours and knowledge with each other. The result is an IP that is socially responsible, memorable and inspiring for the target audience.

CHANGING REAL-LIFE BEHAVIOURS

The learning design was carefully embedded throughout the programme to convert facts into behaviours. For example, the design of the hand washing game was based on a real-time simulation of 20 seconds to tangibly recognise the time children need to dedicate to hand washing in real life.

Children can also track their progress through a collectible card game highlighting characters and transferable hygiene skills. Through this camouflage learning, play is used to further enhance learning outcomes.

Transforming the story moments into practical, playful activities helps to empower children with the tools and understanding they need to become agents of change for a ‘healthier world’ within their local communities.

DESIGNED FOR GLOBAL COMMUNITIES

The hybrid digital and physical programme has been designed for classrooms and learners with different needs. Playful activities and teaching materials, including short animated episodes, comics, mini-games and physical worksheets ensure that schools with limited internet access can participate in the programme. 

So far, the Hygiene Quest pilot has been rolled out in schools and communities across Nigeria, Malaysia, Italy, Australia and at COP26 in Glasgow. A measurement framework allows Reckitt to understand engagement and continue to grow the programme exponentially to reach and empower as many children as possible with positive hygiene practices.