The Literacy Campaign – entitled Lost for Words – was created to draw national attention to the literacy crisis in the UK’s primary schools, as 1 in 5 children currently leave unable to read and write.The challenge was to make a very complex educational issue emotive and engaging, so the campaign dramatised the threat, fear and intimidation of words by featuring a vulnerable young boy lost in a scary forest of letters.

The campaign launched with unmissable TV promotion and a heavyweight outdoor posters campaign including London underground posters. National newspapers and weekly magazines featured the same iconic, intriguing image to raise awareness of the issue. The online strategy aimed to address the issue instead of just highlighting it, and comprised a highly informative website on channel4.com/lostforwords, which featured a fully interactive website with age-specific stories online, plus a storybook generator for personalised tales on AOL. The second TV phase raised profile higher with well-known personalities reading from children’s books on screen.