New ‘free wonder product’ set to take Christmas market by storm
Monday 9th December 2013
With just 16 shopping days left until Christmas the Wild Network is today launching a brand new nature-based product in the highly competitive voucher market
The ‘Wild Time’ voucher is free to download [2] and involves parents pledging to spend more wild time with their children. Wild time is defined as time spent outdoors - building dens, climbing trees, playing pooh sticks or going on a dusk walk – and there are over 700 suggestions available on the website and the free wild time app.
Its launch coincides with the DVD release of the Wild Network backed ‘Project Wild Thing’ documentary film [3].
Three years in the making, ‘Project Wild Thing’ takes a funny and moving look at one of the most complex issues of the age – the increasingly fragile link between children and nature.
In a bid to get his daughter and son off the sofa and outdoors, filmmaker and father David Bond appoints himself as the Marketing Director for Nature. He wants his brand – nature – to stand out from the crowd of brands competing for their attention.
This new ‘Wild Time’ voucher will be trying to make waves in a UK market worth around £5billion annually [4] with some very well established high street and online brands from Amazon to WH Smiths.
Film-maker and self-appointed Marketing Director for Nature, David Bond said: “Breaking into the Christmas market is the holy grail for any new product. But it’s a tough task competing with very popular and familiar brands that unleash huge marketing budgets in the festive season.
“However, we think that our new and unique ‘Wild Time’ voucher is the perfect free wonder product for hard-pressed families having to cope with the rising cost of living.
“There is always a huge amount of pressure on parents to spend more and more money on gifts for Christmas.
“And yet the evidence clearly shows that what kids really want is time with their parents [5]. This voucher is a very simple and cost-effective idea that has the potential to become a one of the most popular stocking fillers.”
Retail experts are predicting that 2013 will be a ‘tablet Christmas’ [6] with families on average spending nearly £600 on presents and gifts [7]. Children are currently spending around four and a half hours a day watching TV or surfing on the internet [8].
In October the Wild Network launched its campaign to encourage parents to swap some of their kids daily screen time for wild time. It also unveiled a new ‘Wild Time’ app [9] that showed the important role that screen time can play in enabling kids and families to get some more wild time in their everyday lives.
Michael Wolff, one of the founders of international brand consultants Wolff Olins, said: “The raw material of the product that you have called nature is so astonishing, and so interesting all you have to say is ‘look’ - it's as simple as that. And if you can get that to happen, all of it is so miraculous and so much grander than any man-made anything.”
To download the free ‘Wild Time’ voucher visit http://projectwildthing.con/wildtime
For further press information and images please contact Mike Collins on 07900 138419 or media@thewildnetwork.com
Notes to Editors:
[1] The Wild Network was launched on 25 September. Hundreds of organisations, large and small, and thousands of individuals, have come together to create a movement whose aim is to reconnect kids with nature and outdoor play. Details on how to get involved can be found here. You can see a list of organisations involved here. Members include the Woodland Trust, The Wildlife Trusts, National Trust, RSPB, Play England, Scouts Association, Swarm and the NHS Sustainable Development Unit.
[2] ‘Wild Time’ vouchers can be downloaded for free from here and they have no expiry date and no batteries or extra space at home is needed.
[3] You can buy a DVD of ‘Project Wild Thing’ by visiting http://projectwildthing.com/film
[4] The value of the gift card and the voucher market in 2012 came in at just under £5billion in the UK via the UK Gift Card and Voucher Association
[5] The research was carried out on behalf of the Children’s Commissioner. Read the full report here.
[6] Experts are predicting that Christmas 2013 will be a ‘tablet Christmas’ with sales of tablet computers out-performing PC’s for the first time, in The Guardian.
[7] On average families are predicted to spend £599 on gifts and presents for Christmas in 2013.
[8] Children are on average spending four and a half hours a day surfing the internet or watching TV (Childwise 2013 Monitoring Trends report)
[9] The ‘wild time’ app, which is packed full of nature and play inspired ideas, can be downloaded for free via http://projectwildthing.com/wildtime and is available for all smartphones.
Tagged with: Project Wild Thing; Discovery; Wild Time, Wild Network