SmartyCard Joins Scholastic Summer Challenge

Today SmartyCard announces that it will join the Scholastic Summer Challenge, a program designed to encourage summer reading in children. Children who log time reading books as part of the Scholastic Summer Challenge will receive virtual currency rewards from SmartyCard, which kids can then spend on physical goods or virtual items in one of SmartyCard's partner virtual worlds. SmartyCard participants include Club Penguin, Webkinz, and Stardoll.

"SmartyCard shares Scholastic’s mission is to help motivate kids to learn," said Ann Amstutz-Hayes, Vice President of Scholastic InSchool. "This summer we are challenging kids to read ‘4 or more’ books to help prevent the loss of academic skills that can happen over the summer and in addition, they can earn exciting real and virtual world prizes through rewards from SmartyCard."

To get the SmartyCard rewards, a child has to log at least 20 minutes reading. The reward for that is 2,500 SmartyCard points. A child who reads continuously through the summer can earn up to 10,000 SmartyCard points, worth roughly $20, based on total number of minutes logged. SmartyCard VP of Marketing Aaron Burcell says that SmartyCard's sponsorship arrangement with the Scholastic Summer Challenge comes as a result of years of experience the SmartyCard founders acquired while working with Scholastic at previous jobs.

While there are 200 physical items that participating children can
spend their SmartyCard points on, virtual items are usually more popular
with 85% of SmartyCard users. Burcell notes that the SmartyCard participants in the Scholastic Summer Challenge have been racking up points much more quickly than the average user and he thinks that these children may take advantage of the catalog's physical rewards more frequently.

Because the deal is essentially a SmartyCard sponsorship of the Scholastic Summer Challenge, the company isn't monetizing it directly. Points earned by children through reading are essentially give-aways. Burcell instead hopes that families introduced to SmartyCard through the Scholastic Summer Challenge come back to become regular customers. This is probably a safe bet; thanks to the Challenge, SmartyCard now essentially has Scholastic's blessing as a parenting tool.

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