Choose Play Every Day

Client: UNICEF

UNICEF’s brief was rooted in a startling truth: Despite overwhelming evidence that ‘parent play’ boosts a child’s development, research showed that parents are not playing enough with their children.

Parents often think that if their child is playing, that’s enough. Southpaw’s solution was to disrupt that assumption and reframe shared play as essential, not optional, but without guilting or shaming parents. At the heart of the campaign is a breathtakingly simple but emotionally supercharged idea: to a child, even the smallest moment of play with a parent can feel like the biggest game in the world. We needed parents to feel the same way, so we paired real, everyday user generated content of families playing together, with something epic - the soaring sound of the world’s most iconic sports commentaries. The juxtaposition is surprising, moving, and unforgettable. Transforming these fleeting family moments into epic, celebratory highlights of childhood.