What do you do at TalK2U?
by Nico Ferrario
CEO & Founder
This screenshot is in Portuguese, but it says: ¨I don’t know if you’re going to read this message / But you helped me a lot / Your story is the same as mine / Because of you, I didn’t kill myself / Thanks for everything ❤️¨. This message is real, written by a 14-year-old Brazilian teenager. But it was not me who received it. It was a fictional character, a virtual actress, a robot that changed her life with just a chat conversation.
And you know what? It’s because of messages like these that I wake up every morning wanting to do what I do.
My name is Nico Ferrario, I am a scriptwriter and 2 years ago I started creating fictional chat stories that help youth from all over the world challenge the status quo, gain skills and tools to face obstacles, and become changemakers.
How do these chat stories work? Like any other conversation.
The main character talks to you about a specific topic, and depending on the story that we want to tell and the behavior we want to change, we use different narrative structures (conflicts, tensions, dramatic curves) to drive engagement and avoid being boring.
How do you participate? You talk to the main character, just like you would do with a real person. And, as you go, the story adapts to your choices and helps you reflect. I like to say we encourage good, intimate conversations, with no judgement of your ideas.
Our goal is to open up new perspectives. And we believe that even if you think differently, the most powerful way to learn, empathize and connect is through an honest dialogue.
But while designing what we do at Talk2U, we knew that to create change, information was not enough. That’s why we combine storytelling with science-based behavior interventions. Whaaaaaaat? These are proven strategies and techniques led by behavioral experts, to boost positive change in adolescents. Basically it is science made available to improve our lives.
[The world of behavior change is huge. And there is more and more news. We promise to write more about this].
And finally, our engine. To have multiple conversations, in different languages at the same time, we use digital platforms and artificial intelligence to scale up our impact. That is how we do it. That is our magic blend.
We have reached more than two million teenagers around the world with our stories, and every day more keep on connecting to talk about sex education, self-esteem or even immigration crises.
We are currently developing two new stories. One is called AMAZONAS ON FIRE which aims to shed light on the climate crisis and global warming and mobilize adolescents around the world to take concrete action. As for the other one, for now, I can only give you a sneak peek… which is that the neuroscience laboratory at Oxford University called us to tackle this project together. [ 😲 ]
And since we are talking about incredible partners, I am proud to say that UNICEF is like a professional mentor for Talk2U. They were the first ones to trust us. And they still do. And National Geographic, yes, the legendary NatGeo has given us a grant to finance our project and also declared me a NatGeo Explorer, something that any storyteller on the planet wishes to be.
The University of Bristol and its Centre for Appearance Research, the University of Brasilia, Facebook, Unilever and many other partners are joining to work toward our purpose every day.
So…what do we do at Talk2U? Well, we tell chat stories for behavior change.
So if you like what you read so far, and feel you want to collaborate with us, let’s talk. As you may have noticed, it’s something we love to do. 😀
Hugs,
Nico.
