“As part of our ongoing commitment, we spend time with children and young people to understand how they view the climate crisis, what do they understand about it, and adapt our campaign to support them,” said Monika Oomen, VP Brand, Comms & Digital Content Strategy , Kids EMEA at Warner Bros. Discovery, during an exclusive interview with Campaign Middle East.
Warner Bros. Discovery went into details with Campaign about Cartoon Network Climate Champions.
How will Warner Bros. Discovery foster industry-wide support for environmental education, and what strategies will be employed?
Warner Bros. Discovery has launched Cartoon Network Climate Champions, which is a comprehensive, multiplatform campaign designed to engage kids on topics of climate change and empower them into taking actions.
The program is aimed at kids aged 6 to 12, using Cartoon Network’s popular brands, animation, and storytelling to inspire kids to participate actively in combating climate change, accepting relevant daily challenges. .
The campaign creates a community of young people motivated to act for the climate. Kids can see how their actions, along with those of others worldwide, are making a difference, fostering a sense of global community and collective agency.
The initiative is accessible in multiple territories and in multiple languages making it a wide-reaching effort to raise climate change awareness among children in various parts of the world.
To deliver the content in a relevant way, we ensure that the Cartoon Network Climate Champion platform offers a range of interesting content like videos, and games, fact cards and of course daily challenges.
These resources are tailor made to show kids how they can help the planet daily without overwhelming the audience.
How will you utilise your platforms to promote environmental education among the younger audience?
We believe that Cartoon Network is well placed to engage, guide, and offer kids the opportunity to take small, actionable actions.
We have a robust ecosystem of networks, digital channels across all relevant platforms and are using all touchpoints to drive awareness of the campaign.
As part of our ongoing commitment, we spend time with children and young people to understand how they view the climate crisis, what do they understand about it, what concerns them the most and what does action look like to them and adapt our campaign to support them.
Our engagement goes deeper. Kids consume our content. They tell us that they expect us to have a role in the future of the planet, and through our content we are able to cover environmental storylines and themes in a way that is relatable to our kids audience.
We air episodes or characters dealing with themes like conservation, renewable energy, or recycling ensuring that environmental themes are woven into the fabric of storytelling, showing rather than telling how characters can make a difference.
Can you share any specific collaborations to champion this responsibility for environmental education?
As part of the Cartoon Network Climate Champions campaign, we partnered with expert scientists at World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Conservation International, Envision Racing, as well as various Local NGO’s to help amplify our campaign whilst bringing credibility.
We also partnered with local Schools, and organisations like Climate Action Project and Tag to help promote environmental awareness in schools, and have an educational impact.
These collaborations help us leverage our reach and influence to promote environmental education and responsibility.
There are many exciting partnerships and activations for us in store for 2024. We are finessing partnerships to work on Global Water Week next year, bringing a very important subject closer to our audience.
Regarding positive influence promotion, what role do you envision digital content playing?
Kids are digital natives from a very young age. 14 per cent of 5-8 years old can tie their shoelaces but 89 per cent can navigate a smartphone. One of many reasons why digital content is paramount in promoting positive influence.
We have robust presence across various media platforms and every campaign is built around the behaviour following the digital blueprint.
Cartoon Network’s Climate Champions microsite acts as the campaign hub with challenges, quizzes, games, and videos championing sustainability. The content travels across the Cartoon Network linear and digital channels and on HBO Max.
Further driving our Climate Champions initiative, we have integrated it into our Roblox game, Cartoon Network: Game On! Within the game, we have incorporated Climate Champions challenges in a playable format.
The ambition was to connect with kids where they love to be, seeding behavior in a gamified way.
This way we can reward kids for completing environmental activities and accepting eco-friendly challenges and drive awareness in a non-invasive but fun way.
What measurable goals does the company aim to achieve in environmental education?
This campaign is a long time commitment and the need for it won’t go away.
For Cartoon Network Climate Champions we can measure the success of our goals over time through engaging more expert partners, encouraging more actions to help the environment in kids around the world, and inspiring more young climate champions to accept challenges.
WE are working with several institutions to combine forces and track the impact our campaign creates on the planet.
