In safe hands: Children's video makes hygiene fun

China – Safeguard, a health initiative aimed at children in China, is encouraging good hygiene practices through an interactive video that engages young viewers in the act of hand-washing.

In a country where hand-food-mouth disease remains alarmingly prevalent, Safeguard has targeted hand-washing as an effective preventative tool. Instilling the practice early in childhood could halt the spread of viruses. In the Safeguard promotional video, it states: ‘Our challenge was to show the germs lurking on [children’s] hands in a fun and engaging way. We created an interactive game in which the invisible world of germs comes alive.’

The video, designed by Saatchi & Saatchi Shanghai for Safeguard, enables children to project images of their hands onto a screen, showing bacteria in different colours. Children then use animated bar soap to clean their hands thoroughly. Bubbles scrub away germs to reveal sparkling, clean fingers.

Similar in principle to the hyper-real interior of The Royal London Children’s Hospital, the initiative actively appeals to Generation I’s positive responsiveness to user-connected, technology-driven solutions to learning.