The archive · Content & Film · Marketing decision · 2021–2022
Big W's Craft, Camera, Action! turns homemade craft into the heroes of a family film
Big W builds an animated story whose heroes are missing, so families craft the characters at home and photograph them into a personalised film via Messenger.
BIG W
What it had to solve
BIG W, Australia's leading family retailer, saw families spending time in the same room but on separate devices and wanted to bring them together for family time with a screen experience that could turn real-life craft into the hero of a movie.
How it works
Australian family retailer BIG W faced a familiar paradox: families were spending time in the same room but on separate devices — physically together, emotionally apart. Instead of lecturing parents about screen time, the brand wanted to create family time, using the very screens that were pulling people apart.
The answer was Craft, Camera, Action!, a digital tool built around an animated story with its main characters deliberately missing. Families had to make the heroes themselves from odds and ends around the house, then photograph their creations and send the picture through Facebook Messenger. The tool rendered each handmade character into the film, added personalised credits, and produced a bespoke animation that no other family in the world had.
The mechanism turned a passive viewing moment into a shared making ritual: parents and children planned, cut, glued and crafted together because the story could not be completed without their work. The finished film was something the family could watch together immediately and keep afterwards, so the experience paid off beyond the single session.
The work was featured in the D&AD awards archive, was listed among the winners at the ONE Asia Creative Awards 2021, and earned a 2022 One Show honour for M&C Saatchi Sydney in Craft / Use of Technology. No engagement or sales figures are recorded in the sources read.
Why it lands
- Leaving the story's heroes missing gives families a built-in reason to participate: the film stays incomplete until they make the characters themselves.
- Messenger and a single photograph remove every technical barrier, so a three-year-old's lopsided paper monster can star in the movie with no app or skill required.
- The ritual redefines the family screen: children and parents create together instead of retreating into separate feeds, which is the exact behaviour the brief wanted to change.
- Personalised credits and a film to rewatch afterwards turn the campaign into a keepsake, so the brand rides on a memory the family wants to repeat.
What it did
The tool changed what the screen was for: instead of dividing the family, it made children's homemade characters the stars of a film the whole family could watch. The work was featured in the D&AD awards archive, was listed among the winners of the ONE Asia Creative Awards 2021, and took a 2022 One Show honour for M&C Saatchi Sydney in the Craft / Use of Technology category.
What you can take
Don't fight screen time — recast it: when a brand makes the child's own creation the hero of the content, families play together and the brand gets to live inside the memory.
Since then
Craft, Camera, Action! was featured on creativepool in July 2021 and written up by Campaign Brief in its 2022 Contenders series as one of M&C Saatchi's flagship Australian campaigns for Big W. It was listed among the winners of the ONE Asia Creative Awards 2021 and earned a 2022 One Show honour, and its entry lives in the D&AD awards archive. No engagement, footfall or sales figures are recorded in the sources read; the case survives as a template for retailers that want to turn the family screen from a divider into a shared creative tool.
Sources
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