We transformed any highway in the Netherlands into a fascinating story. For this to happen, all parents had to do was select a character and connect play the app through the car speakers. Then, the outdoor medium would come to life through the story. Ordinary road objects were detected by the app and transformed into magical characters of a story, in real time. To do this we scanned every dutch highway and wrote story fragment for each of them. Then, on the road, the app would select the object that was most relevant and weave it into the story to deliver a story experience. The biggest challenge in executing this idea was to find a scalable solution that allows users to start a story at any point on the highway. Instead of creating fixed linear stories on limited segments, we created a story engine that detects objects along the road.

Road Tales is a series of location-based audiobooks that transform ordinary highways into magical tales. Road objects like windmills and bridges are detected by the app and transformed in real time into magical story sound bites that are weaved together to then create a unique story. Parents can play the interactive stories through the car’s sound system and then put the phone away. Children can experience the world transforming in front of the eyes as they look out through the car window, only by using their imagination and listening to the audio stories. No screens. Windmills turn into giants, tunnels become magical space launchers for rockets. Every car ride generates a different story based on location: as every drive consists of different objects along the road, therefore generating a different storyline.This immersive experience consisting only of sound teaches kids to look at the world through the eyes of imagination.

When looking into typical car-related behavior amongst families, we quickly found that there’s an interesting tension around the use of screens in the average backseat. We know parents tend to use screens to keep their kids quiet: 76 percent of parents with children aged 3 to 16 say their child is typically on a device or watching digital media on car trips.

Most parents do feel guilty about this though, as nearly all parents - 95 percent - consider family drives the perfect time for bonding and view them as an opportunity to get their kids to open up. Furthermore, research has shown that frequent screen exposure decreases kids’ imagination, which can have negative long-term effects.

We therefore aimed to create an experience that addressed all of these issues: (1) decrease screen usage in the car, (2) stimulate imagination based on your surroundings and (3) facilitate interaction within the car.

The biggest challenge in executing this idea was to find a scalable solution that allows users to start a story at any point on the highway. Instead of creating fixed linear stories on limited segments, we created a story engine that detects objects along the road. To populate the engine with objects we used a combination of existing data points and manual research on Google Streetview, which was partly supported by a tensorflow computer vision engine.

The Road Tales app can be downloaded from both the App Store and the Google Play store.

Our campaign was aimed at creating awareness for Road Tales and encouraging parents to download the app. It consists of a social campaign, influencer strategy, and online video. Moreover, word of mouth amongst befriended parents (based on their positive experiences with the app) proved to be a strong and relevant driver for the campaign.

To make the story stick, we made car-stickers of the characters that were given to schools and were handed out at dealerships. Because in the end, there’s no better way to keep the stories alive than stickering ‘your’ window with your favorite characters.

At this point in time the campaign has only been released for a month. The first results look very promising:

• The Road Tales app reached the #1 position in the app store’s book category within 3 days.

• Was picked up by bigger media like Linda, Nu.nl and Het Parool and international advertising blogs including The Drum, Campaign, AdAge and Contagious.

• Over 30,000 tales have already been told on Dutch roads, with a total of 450,000+ minutes of highway storytime. Time that otherwise would be spent behind screens.

However, the biggest compliment we got is parents asking for more stories, as with Road Tales they don’t feel the need to hand out screens for every ride anymore: screentime became storytime, and thus quality time. We are therefore researching the possibilities of a sequel, like adding new stories to the app, or even expanding the app to other countries.