Ad Council Hopsters

The Brief: To create a low-budget campaign that would actively help fight childhood obesity in America. Kids already know eating healthily and exercising will help them lose weight, but knowing is not doing.

The Solution: To engage with them in a way that makes exercise fun and addictive. We’d distribute pocket-sized, customizable toys that contain pedometers that record specifically they height of a child’s jump or hop. The kids can sync their Hopsters to an online community where they can track how much time they’ve spent in the air and the total height they’ve jumped to date, and where they can challenge friends to see who can jump higher over a period of time. There will also be collective challenges across the entire user base, such as seeing how long it takes for Hopster users to “jump to the moon.” Exercise becomes fun and addicting, since kids will want to beat their friends, unlock trophies and gear for their Hopster through challenge wins and milestones, and see what happens when everybody together reaches the moon.