TouchIT

To spread awareness and promote Zoobles, a new toy line for girls ages 4-10, Spin Master approached BLITZ to create an immersive, experiential Web site. Because Zoobles launched with a fairly limited market presence—there is not a corresponding TV show, video game or related product—the site is the main tool for introducing children to the whimsical Zoobles world, generating hype, motivating sales and maintaining brand familiarity.

Targeting such a young consumer market challenged our team to design visually pleasing, yet simple, fun content that would engage users with minimal “clicks” or barriers to site exploration. Considering their short attention span, we ensured quick loading and operating times while strategically developing detailed graphics and interactive Flash-based activities that would captivate the youngsters. Throughout this process, we also had to maintain compliance with COPPA to ensure a safe and secure child-friendly environment. From a technical perspective, we made all content easily updateable so nontech Spin Master personnel could complete revisions as needed. Because new Zoobles products and worlds will launch in the future, we constructed an extensible site and localized all text to facilitate global usage.

As a way to prompt young girls to frequent the site and build their niche among the fantastical lands, we wrote silly Zoobles back stories, created entertaining games and devised addictive mini-tasks that encourage exploration and travel between Azoozia, Petagonia and Seagonia. As user involvement increases, so does their earning of “Zoints” which can be traded for colorful stickers, fun prizes and special privileges, such as the ability to customize their own Zoobles land or character. By targeting the textual content for the slightly older girls who can better understand the stories and earned privileges, and targeting the interactive experiences for the younger girls who prefer the aesthetic stimulation of the colorful collection tasks, we were able to create an immersive environmental site where the full target audience can enjoy learning about and interacting with the rolling, popping, silly and surprising world of Zoobles.