Leading brand PR and digital marketing agency Spider has today launched an awareness and engagement campaign on behalf of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines Children’s Fund (RNRM Children’s Fund).

The Kid Years campaign is aiming to highlights the impact long parental absences can have on children. Long absences such as these are commonplace for naval families and as typical deployments last between three and nine months, these absences can have a profound emotional impact.

The campaign, developed from scratch by Spider, centres on the idea that children perceive time as moving more slowly than adults do. To help with this, Spider has worked with the RNRM Children’s Fund to develop and commission an original work of children’s literature called Zoe and the Time Rabbit – the story of a girl’s emotions when her daddy goes away.

As well as being the centrepiece of a PR and social campaign, 3,000 copies of the book are being distributed throughout the Royal Navy and Royal Marines network to help families come to terms with long absences. The public is also being asked to get involved by knitting their very own time rabbits to be sent out to families with copies of the book.

The Kid Years campaign is running throughout the summer.