Penny Gives Children a Voice in The Kids Campaign

Inside the Strategy That Made Penny's Public Interest Campaign Stand Out in Germany

Penny operates within one of Europe's most competitive grocery markets. In Germany, the four largest grocery groups accounted for approximately 76% of German grocery revenue in 2023, according to data compiled by the United States Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service. Within that landscape, REWE Group, which owns Penny, reported revenue of US$71.564 billion in 2023, up 8.6% year over year, according to the same source. Its closest peer, EDEKA Group, recorded revenue of US$86.054 billion in the same period, also according to the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. Lidl, operated by the Schwarz Group, represents an additional direct competitor for discount-positioned shoppers across Germany. Differentiation through brand values rather than price alone has therefore become a meaningful strategic lever for discount retailers seeking sustained customer loyalty.

Penny's response to this competitive pressure is an annual social awareness campaign that addresses public interest themes with documented social relevance. The Kids draws its strategic intelligence directly from the Förderpenny network, ensuring that the causes the brand champions are ones its own community has already identified as urgent. This is a critical distinction from campaigns that adopt social causes as external creative hooks. By asking children in clubs Penny already supports what they need and want, the brand builds a feedback loop between its commercial activity — customer rounding-up at checkout, bottle-return donations — and its public communication. Christoph Everke, Creative Managing Partner at Serviceplan, stated as reported by shots.net: "I'm thrilled with Penny and how determined, committed and empathetically the brand keeps speaking out, in order to give children and young people a voice." The insight that children are structurally excluded from conversations about the very future they will inherit is both politically resonant and emotionally accessible — qualities that allow the campaign to operate simultaneously as public service communication and brand-building activity in the German market.

Gregory Ohrel and Serviceplan Campaign Craft a Children's Rights Film Rooted in Real Life

The Kids was directed by Gregory Ohrel and produced by Akkurat Studios, as documented by house-of-communication.com and shots.net. The film takes its narrative material from genuine responses gathered through the Förderpenny clubs, meaning each scene dramatises a conflict that a real child or young person identified as meaningful. This grounding in lived testimony shapes the production approach: rather than constructing idealised or allegorical representations of childhood, the film presents recognisable domestic and social situations in which adult authority overrides young people's expressed preferences.

Three central scenarios carry the film's argument. In the first, a young girl is enrolled in ballet classes her parents have chosen for her when what she wants is simply to dance freely on her own terms. In the second, a boy is photographed and posted to social media by his mother without being asked for his consent — a scenario that speaks directly to the growing public debate in Germany and across Europe about children's digital rights and parental oversharing. The third scenario addresses body-shaming and unrealistic beauty standards, presenting the kind of casual adult commentary that children absorb and internalise before they have the language to contest it. The film also incorporates climate protection as a concern that children hold urgently but which adults routinely deprioritise in the context of daily life.

As reported by shots.net, the publication described the film as a powerful children's rights campaign, noting its closing demand — "It's our future" — as the rhetorical pivot that transforms individual grievances into a collective political statement. The Film Craft — Music: Adapted category Silver at the 2024 Clio Awards, as recorded by clapboard.com, signals that the campaign's creative team achieved a meaningful integration of music and narrative tone rather than treating the soundtrack as incidental. Production credits for additional agency craft roles on The Kids are not comprehensively documented in publicly available sources beyond the director and production company named above.

Penny's The Kids Campaign Reaches Over 21 Million Views Across Germany and Digital Platforms

The Kids generated verified performance data of considerable scale. According to house-of-communication.com, the online film accumulated 21 million views in total. Of those, more than 13 million views were recorded on YouTube alone, according to the same source, with more than 3 million additional views accumulated across media library platforms. The campaign generated 43,000 interactions, also according to house-of-communication.com, and reached 74.2 million digital-out-of-home contacts across Germany, per the same source. These figures collectively indicate a campaign that moved well beyond paid media placement to generate genuine audience engagement — the gap between total views and passive reach suggests meaningful active sharing and return viewing rather than incidental impression delivery.

The structural effectiveness of The Kids rests on several reinforcing decisions. Anchoring the creative content in real children's testimonies from across the Förderpenny network gives the campaign a credibility that scripted social-purpose advertising frequently lacks. The Förderpenny mechanism — rounding up at checkout or donating bottle returns — connects the campaign's emotional argument to a tangible and repeatable customer behaviour, which sustains relevance beyond the initial broadcast window. In Germany, where consumer trust in brand social responsibility claims is subject to increasing scrutiny, this integration of community infrastructure and creative communication represents a durable model. The Silver recognition at the 2024 Clio Awards, as reported by clapboard.com, provides independent industry validation of the craft standard achieved. Clapboard assigns The Kids a score of 70 out of 100, reflecting the campaign's strong strategic foundation and emotional execution, with potential to deepen long-term measurement of community and behavioural impact from the Förderpenny initiative.