Little Brush Big Brush
- Brand
- Signal
- Year
- 2016
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Fashion & Beauty
- Mechanic
- Adventure & Quest
- Platform
- Social
- Agency
- Monks
- With
- Unilever
Objective
Signal/Pepsodent's own research found families brushed mostly in the morning: evening brushing got tangled up with bedtime resistance, and tired parents let it slide. In Indonesia, 79% of parents told their kids to brush twice a day without doing it themselves, so the brand needed a way to make the evening routine something a child wanted, not a fight before lights-out. Indonesia and Vietnam — its biggest and fastest-growing markets, with the lowest brushing frequency — became the launch markets for a 21-day habit-building push.
Solution
A parent starts by messaging Signal on Facebook Messenger, answering a few questions and picking a nightly time slot. Every evening for 21 nights, a new two-minute animated episode drops into the chat: Little Brush and Big Brush arrive in a new country and meet an animal who sets that night's brushing challenge. The child brushes along with the episode, then collects a reward — a balloon from a lion in the Serengeti, say — that unlocks the next night's story. In the 2019 update, the phone camera turns the child into that night's animal with a mask (lion, deer, bear, monkey, poodle), pairing a new mini-game with each mask as levels unlock day by day. Kids without smartphones followed the same 21 nights by SMS and voice call, or unlocked the story by scanning a barcode on the pack in-store.
- 1
The player's parent opens Signal's Facebook page and starts a chat with a bot — no separate app to install. The bot asks a few questions about the family and the child to personalize the story, then lets the parent pick a time of evening for the daily episode to arrive.
- 2
Each evening at the chosen time, the chatbot delivers a new two-minute animated episode — one of 21 total, one per night — in which the child character Little Brush and the parent character Big Brush travel to a different country and meet a local animal.
- 3
The animal sets the family a country-specific tooth-brushing challenge and promises a reward for completing it.
- 4
The child and parent go to the bathroom and brush their teeth together in real time, in sync with the two-minute episode.
- 5
In the AR version, the phone camera overlays one of five animal masks — lion, deer, bear, monkey, or poodle — onto the child's face while they brush.
- 6
The masks unlock companion mini-games and levels that open progressively as the family advances through the 21-day program.
- 7
Completing the brushing task earns a reward sticker from the bot and unlocks the next episode — the story does not advance without it — and over the 21 days the child builds a collection of every animal character met along the way.
- 8
Daily reminders in the Messenger chat bring the family back each evening until the full 21-day program is complete.
- 9
Families without a smartphone can follow the same story via SMS or an automated voice call, starting by scanning a barcode on the product packaging in-store.
