As the world becomes more digital, brands must increasingly seek innovative solutions, either related to the brand’s core business or beyond, to keep up with people's needs and desires.

As fintechs set new expectations for consumers over their digital experiences with brands in the financial industry, Itau, one of the largest private banks in Latin America, had to further strengthen the perception of a digital brand in all its interactions with people, related to financial services and, equally important, to the social causes they support.

And one of the most life changing initiatives supported, the one most capable of positively affecting the brand’s image and prestige, is related to children education.

Every year since 2012 Itau promotes a massive campaign based on an educational program called 'Read to a child', in which people can request hard copies of selected books via mail. However, due to the program’s huge success, the number of requests was higher than the number of copies available, making impossible for lots of people to get the books.

We spotted a great opportunity there to help transform more lives by amplifying the reach of the project ‘Read to a Child’ while strengthening the perception of Itau as digital bank.

In order to develop an effective strategy, we needed to acknowledge the fact that Brazilians are not big fans of reading books. However, not reading any book does not mean they are not reading at all, since the less time they spend on a book, the more time they spend online, specially on Facebook.

But Facebook is not exactly the most kid-friendly space: in a sea of hateful posts, fake news and alternative facts, we had to create an opportunity for an adult to bond with a child.

To do that, we hacked the platform to stimulate positive behaviors. From Canvas, that had just been launched as an ad format, we created Kidsbook on Facebook: a collection of 5 interactive books for kids displayed on the perfect shelf: parent’s newsfeeds.

With the help of Brazilian famous writers, the project really got the audience’s attention: in the first week, we increased our sharing rate by 600% and at the end we helped generate more that 22 thousand days of reading time, increased the distribution of books in 30% and strengthened the audience’s perception of Itau as a digital brand.

But, most importantly, we managed to transform adults’ routine and subvert old habits into new behaviors, using digital platforms in completely different and surprising ways to make peoples’ relationships even more personal and help change their lives for the better.