Odido and CPNB Turn a Phone Ban Into 55,000 Books for Dutch Children
Het Telefoonboekje is a children's book created by Odido and CPNB in The Netherlands in 2024, designed to resemble a smartphone and written entirely in chat format, aimed at rekindling children's love of reading as mobile phones were banned from all Dutch primary schools.
The campaign launched in April 2024, timed to a nationally significant policy moment. The Netherlands introduced a blanket ban on mobile phones across all primary schools, with the new academic year beginning on 19 August 2024. Rather than simply publicise that restriction, Odido — a major Dutch telecom provider — and CPNB, the Collective Promotion for the Dutch Book, chose to reframe the conversation entirely. The result was Het Telefoonboekje: a physical book that mimics the visual language of a smartphone, making the act of reading feel native to a generation raised on screens.
Author Marjon Hoffman, known in the Netherlands for her bestseller De regels van Floor, wrote the book. On 19 August 2024, Hoffman presented the 50,000th copy at a Dutch primary school, marking a milestone that underlined the scale of teacher uptake. The book's design — formatted as a chat conversation — was conceived to lower the psychological barrier between children and reading by presenting the story in a format already familiar from their daily digital lives. According to Clapboard's editorial assessment, this structural inversion — using the phone's own aesthetic to argue for putting the phone down — defines the campaign's creative thesis. The integrated media approach brought together publishing, education, earned media, and experiential activation, giving the campaign reach well beyond a conventional book launch. In the Dutch market, where competition for children's attention is intense, Het Telefoonboekje earned a Clapboard Score of 78 out of 100.
Odido identified a tension at the heart of its brand position. The telecom provider, competing in a Dutch mobile market where more than 70% of mobile customers were subscribed to KPN, Odido, or Vodafone, according to Telecompaper, needed a way to demonstrate social relevance beyond connectivity pricing and network coverage. CPNB, whose mandate is the promotion of Dutch literature and reading culture, faced a parallel challenge: declining reading engagement among primary-school children as screen time increased.
The strategic logic of the partnership rested on an honest admission. Odido, as a phone company, was part of the problem it was trying to solve. That candour became the creative foundation. Rather than position the brand as a neutral advocate for reading, the campaign acknowledged Odido's role in the attention economy and used that tension productively. The Soms even niet — meaning "sometimes just not" — brand positioning already encouraged moments of digital disconnection, and Het Telefoonboekje extended that positioning into a tangible, school-ready product.
In the Dutch market, the timing was structurally sound. The national government's decision to ban phones from primary schools, announced through Rijksoverheid, gave the campaign a policy tailwind that no amount of media spend alone could manufacture. Teachers, already navigating that transition, were primed to adopt classroom tools aligned with the new rules. Primary-school educators ordered copies in volume, confirming that the campaign had correctly identified gatekeepers — teachers, not parents or children — as the most efficient distribution channel. Competitors including KPN, the market leader with 36.9% of consumer broadband connections at year-end according to Telecompaper, made no comparable cultural intervention during this period, leaving Odido to occupy the social-responsibility narrative almost entirely unopposed in 2024.
Het Telefoonboekje was conceived and produced by TBWA\NEBOKO, working with EssenceMediacom on media strategy, for Odido and CPNB. Author Marjon Hoffman brought literary credibility to a format that could easily have felt gimmicky without her involvement. Her track record with De regels van Floor established her as a writer who understood how children actually speak, which made the chat-format narrative feel authored rather than engineered.
The physical design of the book was its primary creative act. The object was built to resemble a smartphone in its proportions and cover aesthetic, so that a child encountering it on a desk would instinctively reach for it in the same way they might reach for a device. Inside, the story unfolded through chat bubbles, emoji-style formatting, and the staccato rhythm of digital conversation — a deliberate editorial choice that reduced the visual density associated with traditional children's books and made each page feel navigable rather than demanding. This was not a cosmetic decision; it was a reading-behaviour intervention embedded in the book's architecture.
The campaign's integrated media dimension, handled with EssenceMediacom, ensured that the book's launch did not remain within the publishing ecosystem. Earned media coverage, documented by LBBOnline on 19 August 2024, described the initiative as an unprecedented success and confirmed the distribution milestone of more than 50,000 copies. The One Club's ADCN case entry reported 300,000 earned-media impressions generated in the campaign's first month, placing the book inside a broader cultural conversation about children, screens, and education policy in the Netherlands. TBWA\NEBOKO subsequently received three Lampen at the ADCN awards, including recognition in the Activations and Brand PR and Entertainment categories, plus a bronze Members Award, as documented in the ADCN awards records for the 2025 cycle under entry ADCN25_D022F.
Het Telefoonboekje reached a final total of 55,000 copies distributed to Dutch primary schools, described by LBBOnline and documented at Contentmarketingawards Nl as more than 100 times the average Dutch book's print volume. That figure alone distinguishes the campaign from conventional branded publishing efforts, where runs in the hundreds are common and runs in the thousands are considered exceptional.
The One Club's ADCN case entry reported 1,375,000 minutes of reading time generated in the campaign's first month — a figure derived from an average reading time of 25 minutes per copy, as stated by CPNB. The same entry documented 300,000 earned-media impressions, confirming that the book's cultural footprint extended beyond classroom distribution. Among a surveyed group of 2,425 students, 80% reported considering reading other books after finishing Het Telefoonboekje, and 72% expressed a desire to read more books in the chat format, according to CPNB.
The campaign received a Gold award in the B2C Content Marketing Programme category at the Content Marketing Awards Netherlands in 2024, credited to EssenceMediacom and TBWA, as recorded at contentmarketingawards.nl. Adformatie, the Dutch advertising trade publication, characterised the initiative as smart, sympathetic, and socially relevant in its Cannes-related assessment. Eveline Aendekerk, Director of CPNB, stated publicly that the level of teacher interest was beyond expectation and that children's appreciation of the book was directly increasing their enjoyment of reading. Clapboard awards Het Telefoonboekje a score of 78 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic clarity, measurable cultural impact, and creative ingenuity, with marginal room to deepen long-term programme architecture.
Het Telefoonboekje is a children's book created by Odido and CPNB in The Netherlands in 2024, produced by TBWA\NEBOKO. Designed to resemble a smartphone and written in chat format by author Marjon Hoffman, it was distributed to Dutch primary schools to encourage reading as mobile phones were banned from classrooms.
Het Telefoonboekje reached a final total of 55,000 copies distributed across Dutch primary schools, according to LBBOnline and contentmarketingawards.nl. This figure is described as more than 100 times the print volume of an average Dutch book, reflecting the scale of teacher demand following the national phone ban in primary schools.
The campaign won Gold at the Content Marketing Awards Netherlands 2024 in the B2C Content Marketing Programme category, credited to EssenceMediacom and TBWA, per contentmarketingawards.nl. TBWA\NEBOKO also received three Lampen at the ADCN awards in the 2025 cycle, including recognition in Activations and Brand PR and Entertainment categories.
According to CPNB, among 2,425 surveyed students, 80% considered reading more books after finishing Het Telefoonboekje, and 72% wanted to read more books in the chat format. The campaign generated 1,375,000 minutes of reading time in its first month, based on an average reading time of 25 minutes per copy.
Odido's existing Soms even niet brand positioning already encouraged moments of digital disconnection. The 2024 Dutch government ban on phones in primary schools gave the brand a timely platform to act on that positioning, turning the phone's own visual format into a reading tool and demonstrating social responsibility in a competitive telecom market.
CPNB, the Collective Promotion for the Dutch Book, co-created Het Telefoonboekje with Odido to address declining reading engagement among Dutch primary-school children. Director Eveline Aendekerk stated that teacher interest was overwhelming and that children's appreciation of the book directly increased their enjoyment of reading, per CPNB's published statements.
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