The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
2degrees' Good Tings teaches phone safety before a child unboxes a first phone
2degrees' First Phone Programme turns the unboxing moment into the lesson: 10 sessions and family rules before the phone is ever switched on.
2degrees
What it had to solve
Smartphones bring children poor mental health, grooming and cyberbullying, while the companies monetising the addiction do little about it. 2degrees, a telco known for fairness, wanted to act at the moment a child receives a first phone.
How it works
The first smartphone is where the trouble starts: poor mental health, grooming and cyberbullying are among the harms the devices bring children, and the companies monetising the addiction were doing little about it. New Zealand telco 2degrees, whose positioning is fairness, stepped in.
Its answer, Good Tings, is billed as the world's first first-phone safety programme. The creative move was to interrupt the unboxing moment: before the excitement of the new phone took over, families went through an unboxing before the unboxing.
The programme took families through 10 lessons, facilitated the conversation and set rules before they switched on the phone inside the box. What would normally be a two-minute product moment became a deliberate family decision about how the phone will be used.
The result was a first phone that arrived with habits already agreed rather than an unmanaged device. The work is held in the D&AD awards archive under Direct, which records no separate audience figures.
Why it lands
- It meets families at the exact moment the risky behaviour starts — the first phone — instead of lecturing after the habit has formed.
- Making parents and children set rules together converts a telco product into a family decision both sides own.
- It gives 2degrees' fairness positioning something tangible, a contrast to carriers that profit from unmanaged use.
- The unboxing is already the emotional peak of getting a phone; the programme borrows that occasion for the lesson.
What it did
The first-phone moment stopped being a bare product handover and became a taught family ritual, giving 2degrees' fairness positioning a concrete service to stand on. The D&AD archive page records no audience numbers; the work is held there under Direct.
What you can take
Find the moment a behaviour is born — the unboxing, the signup, the first use — and put the teaching there, before habit sets in; the product's own ritual becomes the campaign.
Since then
Good Tings turned the moment a New Zealand child gets a first 2degrees phone into a taught family ritual rather than a bare product handover. Families completed 10 lessons and agreed their own rules before the phone inside the box was switched on, so the device arrived with habits and boundaries already in place. 2degrees positioned it as the world's first first-phone safety programme and the work is held in the D&AD awards archive under Direct; that page records no separate audience or sales figures.
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