Prodigy Education is using a cuddly mascot to connect directly with teachers rather than parents.

The Canada-based ed-tech brand is looking to empower educators and raise awareness about its game-based elementary-level math platform, with a new campaign developed in partnership with Toronto-based agency Conflict.

“This campaign is designed to help teachers feel ‘more powerful with Prodigy’ at a time when back-to-school season is in full-swing,” says Lauren Turchet, director of brand and creative at Prodigy Education.

As Turchet explains, Prodigy is a brand with multiple target audiences, however, in recent years, it had largely focused on communicating to parents and reinforcing its mission to foster a love of learning among.

“Our task with this campaign was to communicate directly to teachers, a key audience for ongoing product adoption,” Turchet says.

Prodigy aimed to dramatize the teachers’ experience by tapping into the unique conflict in their profession – having to do more with less.

Jason Last, partner and strategy director at Conflict, which began working with Prodigy earlier this year, says that while many teachers put their heart and soul into trying to make kids love tough subjects such as math, it’s hard to provide encouragement when they’re chronically under-resourced.

“We wanted to capture the sense of power that Prodigy can give to teachers and show how it can be a game changer in their classrooms.”

The campaign includes connected TV, OLV and Spotify audio elements as well as a suite of digital and social assets.

While Prodigy has found success with a media buy typically weighted heavily toward lower funnel digital tactics, the current campaign focuses on top-of-funnel awareness tactics to introduce the brand to more teachers.

All media is bought in house by Prodigy.