What’s a good strategy to get children involved with more stories as gadgets claim their attention and they read fewer? Get the children to listen to them. Then, how do you get them to do it? By means of the missed call. Ask them to give a missed call to a toll-free number, call them back and offer them a choice of stories and the languages they are available in.

Chocolate brand Kinder Joy took this approach to engage with its target audience in a recent marketing initiative called the Kinder Joy story station. Call the number and Kinderino, the brand mascot with the ringing, cheery voice, calls back, asking the children which story they want to listen to.

There are stories from the Land of Sweetopia and Speed Tuner. Earlier, there were stories from Disney Princesses and Marvel Avengers. Each story is around four minutes. Once done, the child has the choice to continue listening to the next story or arrange for a call back from Kinderino for another date. The stories are available in English, Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

The Story Station got about two million calls in the first six weeks of its being set up. Listeners spent over three minutes on the call. A spokesperson for the brand says the brand realised the importance of engaging with its consumers beyond the regular advertising to take the brand to the next level of success. Children are increasingly spending time on mobile phones.

With evolving times, the priority for parents has changed, making it difficult for them to spend time with their kids. Most parents today do not mind giving their mobile phones to their children to explore.

A 2014 study in the US by publisher Scholastic says more than half of children ages 0–5 (54 per cent) are read aloud at home 5–7 days a week. This practice declines to one in three kids aged 6–8 (34 per cent) and to one in six kids ages 9–11 (17 per cent). Twenty-three per cent of parents of children aged 6–17 stopped reading aloud to their children before age 9, saying their children were reading independently by then. However, the study found that 40 per cent of children aged 6-11 did not want the reading aloud to stop as it gave them special time with their parents. In fact, 83 per cent of the children surveyed said they loved or liked being read to. Kinder Joy had similar reasons in mind when it came up with the concept of the story station. The spokesperson says that with the advent of the digital age, it is imperative for brands to explore novel ways to engage with their consumers, adding that it is being done under parental supervision.

The concept has won awards nationally and internationally across various categories till date, including a Gold at Festival of Media Asia, Gold and Bronze at Goafest 2016, and at the Mobbys, awards for excellence in mobile entertainment and technology. Now there’s a return to the hoary old tradition of story-telling, making it amenable to the digital form!

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