— PROJECT NAME
Happy Readers:
Digital Books
— ROLE
Copy Director
@ R/GA
— DATE
2019
The Happy Readers programme gave kids a new book to read inside every Happy Meal. After they'd finished the physical book, the Happy Readers app let them download another book where the story could continue on their phones or tablets.
Cressida Cowell, world-renowned author of the 'How to Train Your Dragon' franchise, wrote 12 exclusive stories for McDonald's about 'The Treetop Twins': two members of a time-travelling family who love to learn about dinosaurs.
I helped to develop the 12 digital versions of these stories. As each story was read out loud, voice recognition tech brought it to life with rich animations and sound effects. The digital series went live in 72 markets and over a million books were downloaded in 2019.
There were 12 physical books in the series: one free inside every Happy Meal.
Each physical book continued as a digital story. As the words were read out loud on-screen, the adventure came to life with animations and SFX.
Setting the scene
for voice
Cressida Cowell wrote the 12 digital books in this series. But I wrote the concept script that laid the foundations for our voice-activated storytelling. The script established our copy length (two lines per screen) and how to use trigger words to activate animations and sound effects.
One key principle was show don’t tell i.e. there’s no need to describe all of the action in words: let the special effects bring their own immersive magic to the storyline. It was a tricky balance to get right but we captured it perfectly with our first story concept 👇
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