How NESCAU and Ogilvy Told Brazilian Parents to Let Their Children Play
NESCAU's 2018 film campaign 'Don't Let Fear Stop Your Child' is a Brazilian television advertisement created by Ogilvy Brasil that directly challenges parental anxiety, arguing that sport builds the confidence and independence children need to grow, and that fearful parents risk becoming the obstacle their children must overcome.
The campaign premiered on 15 July 2018 during TV Globo's flagship Sunday programme Fantástico. That scheduling decision placed the film in front of one of Brazil's largest weekly television audiences, signalling the ambition behind the release. The campaign carries the campaign hashtag #deixajogar — meaning 'let them play' — extending its argument from broadcast into social conversation.
NESCAU, the Nestlé-owned chocolate powder drink brand, anchors the film within its broader 'O Esporte Ensina' ('Sport Teaches') brand platform. That platform, established across preceding years of NESCAU communications in Brazil, treats sport not as entertainment but as a pedagogical force: a space where children learn persistence, responsibility, and self-belief. 'Don't Let Fear Stop Your Child' advances that thinking by turning the camera on adults rather than children, asking whether parental insecurity — not physical risk — is the true barrier to those lessons being learned.
The campaign's central message, delivered in Portuguese as 'Não deixe o seu medo parar o seu filho', is direct and uncomfortably personal. It does not celebrate childhood sporting triumph; it interrogates the adult behaviour that prevents children from reaching the starting line. In the context of the food industry and the confectionery and snacks category, where brands frequently invoke childhood joy and energy in broad, celebratory terms, that specificity gives 'Don't Let Fear Stop Your Child' an unusual edge. Clapboard assigns this campaign a Score of 57/100, reflecting creative ambition that is not fully matched by structural distinctiveness.
NESCAU commissioned a preliminary study with mothers and fathers specifically to understand parental insecurity and its effect on children's autonomy, according to exame.com. That research formed the strategic foundation of the campaign rather than serving as post-production justification. The finding — that sport helps children develop confidence and independence, but that parental anxiety can restrict access to those experiences — gave Ogilvy Brasil a brief grounded in observed human behaviour rather than category convention.
In Brazil, the confectionery and snacks market operates within a food industry shaped by deep cultural associations between sport, national identity, and childhood development. Football in particular carries near-universal resonance across Brazilian demographics, making sport a credible and emotionally accessible territory for a brand like NESCAU. The 'O Esporte Ensina' platform, launched nationally through the 2015 'Lições' ('Lessons') campaign by Ogilvy and Mather Brasil, had already established sport as a source of life lessons including persistence, respect, and responsibility, according to Little Black Book. 'Don't Let Fear Stop Your Child' deepens that platform by introducing a structural tension: the brand is no longer simply celebrating what sport teaches children, but naming what stands in the way.
Competitors in the Brazilian chocolate powder drink segment, including Achocolatado Toddy, produced by PepsiCo, and Wick Fowler's category-adjacent products, have historically relied on energy, taste, and occasion-based messaging. NESCAU's strategic choice to occupy a more values-driven, behaviourally specific position represents a differentiated move within the category. By directing its message at parents rather than children — the conventional audience for confectionery and snacks communications — Ogilvy Brasil shifts the persuasion target without abandoning the brand's child-centred purpose.
Rafael Kent of Corazón Filmes directed 'Don't Let Fear Stop Your Child'. The film medium demands a specific kind of restraint when the subject is parental emotion: overstatement collapses the argument into sentiment, while understatement risks leaving the central challenge unheard. Kent's directorial task was to hold that tension for the duration of a broadcast film, making the discomfort of parental recognition the engine of the work.
Executive Creative Director Márcio Fritzen led the creative team at Ogilvy Brasil, with Fritzen and copywriter Mariana Albuquerque credited for the campaign's writing. The copy strategy reflects the research foundation: rather than inspiring parents with aspirational imagery of their children succeeding through sport, the campaign confronts parents with a mirror. The line 'Não deixe o seu medo parar o seu filho' — 'Don't let your fear stop your child' — is accusatory in its construction, placing the word 'fear' in the parent's possession and 'your child' as the object of that fear's consequences.
The campaign comprises a single media asset, which concentrates all creative weight into one film rather than distributing it across formats. That structural choice is consistent with a campaign designed to land a single, unambiguous argument. The hashtag #deixajogar ('let them play') functions as the social extension of that argument, translating the film's confrontational tone into a shareable phrase that parents and advocates could deploy in their own networks. The premiere on TV Globo's Fantástico — a programme known for long-form journalism and investigative storytelling — provided a contextual environment that lent the campaign's serious register additional credibility within the Brazilian media landscape.
No verified performance data for 'Don't Let Fear Stop Your Child' is publicly available. No verified awards data has been found across Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, the One Show, D&AD, or the Clio Awards, according to ogilvy.com and clapboard.com. The absence of documented results does not diminish the campaign's analytical interest; it shifts the evaluation toward structural effectiveness.
The campaign's most durable structural asset is the clarity of its strategic pivot. By addressing parents rather than children, NESCAU and Ogilvy Brasil identified a persuasion gap that most confectionery and snacks advertising leaves unaddressed. Parents make purchasing decisions; children influence them. A campaign that speaks directly to parental psychology — and does so through challenge rather than reassurance — operates at a different register of engagement than category norms typically reach.
The premiere placement on TV Globo's Fantástico on 15 July 2018, as reported by Propmark Com Br and exame.com, indicates a media investment consistent with a brand campaign rather than a promotional execution. The hashtag #deixajogar provided a measurable social activation mechanism, though no verified engagement figures are publicly available. The Clapboard Score of 57/100 reflects a campaign that executes a well-reasoned strategic position competently, but whose single-asset structure and conventional film format limit its overall creative ambition score. Within the 'O Esporte Ensina' platform lineage, the campaign's contribution is genuine: it advances the brand's sporting philosophy into more uncomfortable, more adult territory than its predecessors.
'Don't Let Fear Stop Your Child' is a 2018 Brazilian television film created by Ogilvy Brasil for NESCAU. It challenges parental anxiety around children playing sport, arguing that parents' own fear can restrict their children's development. The campaign premiered on TV Globo's Fantástico on 15 July 2018 and carried the hashtag #deixajogar.
Rafael Kent of Corazón Filmes directed the campaign. Executive Creative Director Márcio Fritzen and copywriter Mariana Albuquerque led the creative work at Ogilvy Brasil. The film was the sole media asset produced for this campaign, concentrating its argument into a single broadcast execution for the Brazilian market.
NESCAU commissioned a study with Brazilian mothers and fathers on parental insecurity and children's autonomy. The research found that parental anxiety, not physical risk, is a primary barrier to children's sporting participation. Ogilvy Brasil built the entire campaign strategy on that finding, directing the message at parents rather than children.
The campaign sits within NESCAU's 'O Esporte Ensina' platform, established in Brazil through the 2015 'Lições' campaign by Ogilvy and Mather Brasil. Where earlier work celebrated sport as a source of life lessons, this film advances the platform by naming parental fear as the obstacle children must overcome before sport can teach them anything.
No verified awards data for this campaign is publicly available. Searches across Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, the One Show, D&AD, and the Clio Awards returned no confirmed results for the 2018 NESCAU and Ogilvy Brasil film, according to ogilvy.com and clapboard.com. Clapboard assigns the campaign a score of 57 out of 100.
TV Globo's Fantástico is one of Brazil's most-watched Sunday programmes, known for serious journalism and broad reach. Premiering 'Don't Let Fear Stop Your Child' there on 15 July 2018 placed the film in a credible, high-attention context that reinforced the campaign's serious, values-driven tone and maximised initial exposure across the Brazilian market.
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