Nivi's World
- Brand
- Nivea
- Year
- 2020
- Objective
- Engagement
- Industry
- Fashion & Beauty
- Mechanic
- Adventure & Quest
- Platform
- AR & VR
Objective
NIVEA saw that parents and kids were spending screen time apart and wanted the brand to anchor a shared, safe activity instead. The goal was a scalable branded product for 4–7-year-olds that builds emotional and social skills — empathy, confidence, naming feelings — and supports families through transitions like starting school, tying NIVEA to closeness and reassurance.
Solution
A parent and child play through the story together, phone in hand, at home or outside. Four chapters unfold as animated cartoon episodes where the player steps in directly — shaking the phone to steer through a meteor shower, tapping to trigger an emergency landing. The other three chapters switch to AR: point the camera at the room and Nivi, a small stranded space pilot, appears standing on the real floor in front of you. From there the player talks to him, gives him a high five, and searches the space around the room for lost ship parts scattered among floating AR meteorites, needing roughly one clear square metre to play. No ads or purchases interrupt the story, and camera and microphone data stay on the device throughout.
- 1
The player downloads NIVEA's free app and starts an interactive story meant to be played by a parent and a child aged 4–7 together, either in a living room or outdoors in a yard or park; ahead of each augmented-reality segment the app asks the family to clear about a square meter of open floor space to move around in.
- 2
The story opens as a hand-drawn 2D animated chapter introducing Nivi, a small space pilot from the planet Blupiter flying his ship.
- 3
During the animated scenes the player takes an active role rather than just watching: shaking the phone to steer the ship around meteorites and tapping an emergency-landing button.
- 4
The ship crashes on Earth, setting up the story's throughline: the family's shared goal of helping Nivi repair his ship and get home.
- 5
The story shifts from drawn animation into augmented reality: the player points the camera at their own room, and Nivi appears as a character standing in that real space.
- 6
In the AR chapters the player interacts with Nivi directly, talking to him through the microphone and giving him a high five by holding a hand or the phone up to him.
- 7
One AR task has the player searching for the ship's missing parts: a field of floating meteorites surrounds the room, and the player turns around with the phone to spot and collect the needed fragments.
- 8
The full experience runs seven chapters that alternate between four 2D animated scenes and three real-space AR episodes, stitched together with cinematic transitions and sound that adapts to the player's physical surroundings.
- 9
Each chapter is built around a childhood emotional theme or transition, such as starting school, meant to be experienced and talked through by the parent and child together.
- 10
The app runs without ads or in-app purchases, and states that camera and microphone data stay on the device rather than being transmitted, a claim it discloses to parents both in its store listing and inside the app itself.
