National Trust turns to e3 for child focussed campaign

Launching today, the site is aimed at 8-10 year olds. It challenges children to complete 50 activities like catching a butterfly, going abseiling and cooking on a campfire.

Using games, videos and a woodland characters to direct users, children are encouraged to complete the activities with the promise of rewards and ultimately, a badge.

The look of the site has been inspired by National Trust imagery, reflecting the many locations of Trust properties.

e3 also researched popular children’s websites like Club Penguin and considered the tastes of their own children to develop a site that it hopes is fun and interactive. Users can change the backgrounds and the characters’ clothes.

The consultancy has worked with the National Trust for nearly five years and this site is the first of three new projects it is working on.

The project started in December 2011 when the Trust approached e3 to design the website to accompany a ’50 Things’ scrapbook. The consultancy says that as the project developed the digital side became the focus because children like to play computer games. Now the campaign and scrapbook are based around the online content.

Tristan Pride, creative director at e3 says, ‘The site feels very traditionally “National Trust”, but also modern. The Trust is keen to make the campaign relevant to everyone not just members.’

‘We’ve used gamification in an unusual manner. It tends to be used to keep people on sites, we’ve used it to get people outside.’