Marika and the IDEO.org Bezos team deliver their early childhood learning campaign to the Bezos Family Foundation. Although this phase of the project is over, the campaign is just begining!

Well, our first official early childhood education project here at IDEO.org has wrapped, and we’re definitely all the better for it.

We had an exciting final meeting with the Bezos team in Palo Alto after a harrowing couple of days coordinating travel as a freak snow storm pounded Seattle, threatening to cancel our meeting altogether. Somehow the Bezos team managed to cut through the weather and make it down to the Bay Area—an impressive feat in itself.

At the meeting we presented a number of different elements of a dynamic brand roll-out strategy.  At the center of the strategy is a multi-faceted media campaign that aims to reframe good parenting, reflects parents’ reality and amplifies their strengths.  It will highlight ways that parents can maximize the quality of their interactions with their children during habitual activities, in the places that they go to anyway, and in the spaces that they actually enjoy.  In a way, the approach flies in the face of more conventional parenting advice, which tends to set unreasonably high bars for acceptable engagement activities, is judgmental in tone, or simply doesn’t resonate.

It’s with a bit of a heavy heart that we close the book on this fascinating set of research and design—let’s just say that there were tears at the post-meeting bar. The larger project, though, is far from over. We’ll be posting much more as we hear more about the development of the campaign and our related programmatic ideas, so please check back periodically. Truly, this is just the beginning!