Shockingly, New Zealand has the second worst rate of schoolyard bullying in the developed world. The Ministry of Education, responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of school children, wanted to help stop this growing problem.

 

But unlike past campaigns that have tried to make victims more resilient, we shifted our focus to a previously unconsidered group - the bystanders. Research showed that attention is like oxygen for bullies, and it’s the bystanders that hold the real power. Ignore the bully, and they lose their puff.  

 

From this insight, we created ‘Oat the Goat’; an immersive online story where children and parents could help our hero character ‘Oat’ navigate right and wrong as he witnessed bullying on his big adventure. An adventure only made possible by ignoring the bullies and being kind to the victims. While the tale showed children the right thing to do as a bystander, it also gave them freedom to make the wrong decisions in Oat’s world, so they’d learn to make the right decisions in the real one.

 

To date, over 85% of all 4-7-year-olds in New Zealand have visited oatthegoat.co.nz, spending an average of 9 minutes immersed in the story.

 

Most impressively, ‘Oat the Goat’ is now an official part of the New Zealand school curriculum.