Up to 1.2 million children in Australia risk missing school due to physical or mental illness from days, to months, to years. Isolation from their school community and peers has significant long-term consequences - research shows that their learning, relationships and wellbeing suffer.

MissingSchool uses bespoke 'See-Be' technology to keep these sick kids connected with schoolmates in their classroom during extended absences. However, while MissingSchool provide hundreds of robots, thousands more are needed. Our brief was to grab the general public's attention, drive awareness of the situation, encourage people to think about it and go to the website for more information.

So many Aussie children miss months to years of school because of physical or mental illness, but previously it's been left to individual parents to find ways to retain a connection amongst the trauma of their child's treatment, with very little support from the government.

MissingSchool was created by Megan Gilmour, out of her personal experience, when her son went through a very serious illness. The development and distribution of bespoke 'See-Be' robot technology has been a game-changer for sick kids, their families and schools. It makes it so much easier for the kids to stay connected, involved, and part of the community.

Thousands more robots are needed to give more sick kids the ability to stay connected - the drive and budget for these can be generated by broader awareness and engagement with the issue by individuals, corporates and governments.

The overarching idea is to give seriously sick kids a voice. To bring this to life, we had them making a direct, emotive, difficult-to-ignore appeal to their friends, peers, teachers, communities and broader society through the words and sentiment of the iconic song 'Don't You Forget About Me'. In doing this we wanted to showcase the use of the 'See-Be' robots and how they help keep sick kids connected.

The strategic approach was to give the sick kids a voice.

The target audience was threefold:

-The MissingSchool community (health and education partners, sick children and their families) - to demonstrate tangible support.

-Government depts and related organisations - to stay on their radar and keep reminding them about the importance of funding in this area.

-The broader Australian public - to drive awareness and engagement in the issue.

The project actually took three years, as we started production pre-Covid, shooting some of the sick kid scenes in 2020. But Australian Covid lockdown rules were followed by a temporary ban on choirs. As soon as the choir ban was lifted in late 2022, we were able to shoot the remaining scenes, working closely with the principal and team at North Rocks Public School.

The music element was key, so composers from Rumble Studios arranged the track and we had a series of auditions/run-throughs with the choir and school musicians, prior to the shoot day.

Ultimately we created a 90 second film - and 60, 30 and 15 second versions. The 90 second version was placed on MissingSchool's YouTube channel, Facebook page and website. We engaged Zenith to secure pro-bono media space for the 30 second edit across free-to-air TV and Broadcast Video On Demand channels across Australia.

The campaign was launched in February 2023, so is pretty fresh at the time of writing.

• It’s been covered in a wide range of media outlets, from The Guardian, ABC and Channel 10 News to Sky News, SBS and 2GB. So far there's been an audience reach of over 6 million via earned media.

• Visitors to the MissingSchool website are up by over 200%.

• Search rankings and subscribers both increased.

• Enquiries up 200% in the month following launch.

• Anecdotally, the broader MissingSchool community, including health and education partners, and families of sick children have been incredibly supportive about the campaign and fed back that the idea and execution represents the reality of the situation in a positive, inspiring way.

While Don't You Forget About Me was released in 1985 it remains an iconic, classic track, much-loved in Australia by people across multiple generations.