“Leia para uma criança” (Read to a child) is a campaign developed in partnership between Itaú Unibanco and Itaú Social Foundation that distributes books for free every year. Its goal of making the habit of reading more widespread faced a challenge in 2019 – expand beyond the physical world into the digital one. Since the idea was to reach the most people, the channel of choice was WhatsApp. Present on almost every Brazilian’s smartphone, the most daily accessed app in the country now also gives access to exclusive stories. Using the Blip platform, Itaú developed a chatbot that was responsible for distributing special PDF editions of 3 new children’s books. Those who interacted with the profile in the message app could download the books “O Cabelo da Menina” [The Girl’s Hair] by Fernanda Takai, “Meu Amigo Robô” [My Robot Friend] by Giselda Laporta Nicolelis, and “As Bonecas da Vó Maria” [Grandma Maria’s Dolls] by Mel Duarte. In its new format, the campaign gained even more strength. It was possible to share the books with other contacts and also read the story to a child anywhere, anytime. With more than 2.5 million books downloaded, over 800,000 users and about 8 million messages, the WhatsApp campaign reached people all over the country, especially in the states of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná and Ceará, which led the number of stories downloaded. The whole campaign was managed automatically on the Blip platform.
