Reckitt Creates Dettol Hygiene Quest - A Hybrid Learning Program to Build Long-Lasting Hygiene Habits for Children
About Reckitt
Reckitt is home to some of the world's most well-known and well-regarded hygiene, health, and nutrition brands, including Dettol, Lysol, Harpic, Finish, Durex, Mucinex, Enfamil, Move Free, and more.
The Challenge
Considering the global impact of recent health crises, practicing good hygiene habits remains as important as ever. Recognizing this, Reckitt set out to expand its hygiene education in schools to reach 100 million children globally by the end of 2026—teaching positive hygiene habits to reduce the incidence of preventable illnesses and associated absenteeism rates.
Teaming up with LEO and our sister company PRELOADED, Reckitt wanted to explore how play can drive positive behavior change for children aged 6-9 as well as helping teachers demonstrate the importance of good hygiene in engaging ways.
The Solution
The result of this collaboration is Dettol Hygiene Quest, a hybrid learning program that brings together interactive play with story-led learning. Anchored in meaningful storytelling, the experience drives real-world health outcomes by empowering children to play, practice, and learn.
Anchoring the learning in a story was the most accessible way of onboarding children to the program. The story-led framework enabled the experience to scale across classroom and at-home learning, maximizing student reach and impact. Importantly, merging real-life lessons with a fictional world helped to capture children’s imaginations while camouflaging the learning.
Building on the story design, LEO and PRELOADED worked with Reckitt to develop the IP based around a unique set of characters and a surprising world. The colorful, comic book art style they created ensured that the characters and the story would resonate with children globally.
LEO mapped and designed a blended curriculum with a range of supporting activities, classroom-based learning, and teacher guides. All key learning points were incorporated into the supporting materials as well as the comic, animation, and game that PRELOADED developed.
In the world the team created, ‘The Adventurers’ are a group of real-world kids who start out as strangers. However, after being summoned to the colorful and quirky land of ‘The Hidden Reach’, they must quickly learn to work as a team and complete ‘The Protector’s’ quests together—the balance of this land is in their hands!
Children can also track their progress through a collectible card game highlighting characters and transferable hygiene skills. Through this camouflaged learning, play is used to further enhance learning outcomes.
The PRELOADED and LEO teams were fantastic and were able to distill the science into a story-led curriculum that has universal appeal across cultures. The program has driven measurable behavior change and is creating impact in pilot countries with plans in place to scale to 10 countries by the end of 2022.
- Hamzah Sarwar, Global Social Impact and Partnership Director, Reckitt
The Results
The hybrid digital and physical program has been designed for classrooms and learners with different needs. Playful activities and teaching materials, including short animated episodes, comics, mini-games, and physical worksheets ensure that schools with limited internet access can participate in the program.
So far, the Hygiene Quest pilot has been launched and trialed in schools and communities across Nigeria, Malaysia, Italy, Australia, and was promoted at COP26 in Glasgow. A measurement framework allows Reckitt to understand engagement and continue to grow the program exponentially to reach and empower as many children as possible with positive hygiene practices.