Spark PR & Activate helps keep New Zealand beautiful with special children’s book

Primary school students will have some new friends come Term Three, thanks to a special children’s book developed by Spark PR & Activate and not-for-profit organisation, Keep New Zealand Beautiful.

Dedicated to keeping communities clean, safe and beautiful, Keep New Zealand Beautiful (KNZB) has launched its nationwide school programme, ‘Litter Less’, featuring Kiki Kiwi and Friends – characters conceived by Spark PR & Activate.

Spark PR & Activate, an agency of PHD Group, worked with local children’s author Chris Gurney and illustrator Ross Kinnaird to create the characters and bring them to life in the ‘Kiki Kiwi and Friends’ storybook.

Says Dallas Gurney, managing director, Spark PR & Activate: “It was a unique and incredibly fun project and the first time we’ve been tasked with coming up with a kid’s story book. It demonstrates how content comes in many forms in 2018.”

In creating Kiki Kiwi, Spark PR & Activate aimed to embody the curiosity, smarts and humour Kiwis are so famous for. The storybook is to be read in parallel with ‘Litter Less’ educational worksheets, also adapted by Spark PR & Activate for the New Zealand market.

Keep New Zealand Beautiful is proud to be behind the initiative.

Says Kath Doubleday, marketing manager of KNZB: “Our goal is to achieve long-term behavioural change through education. We know Kiwi kids will fall in love with Kiki as well.”

In 2015, Keep New Zealand Beautiful calculated that over 190,000 tonnes of litter were collected from the streets of New Zealand by approximately 86,000 KNZB volunteers. That’s enough to fill one hundred and twenty rugby fields half-a-metre high with rubbish.

The Kiki Kiwi and Friends ‘Litter Less’ programme is going to be made available to schools for free in term three of 2018, thanks to Keep New Zealand Beautiful.