The Teleporter Adventures

CommBank's Start Smart program was one of the most genuinely valuable things the bank did: free financial literacy education from primary school through to high school. But it depended entirely on a facilitator physically visiting each school, which meant regional and rural kids consistently missed out. That gap was both a social problem and a strategic opportunity.

Google Cardboard had just launched, and nobody in financial services had touched it. I brought a pitch to the general manager through CommBank's internal innovation program: use VR to take Start Smart directly into any classroom in Australia, facilitator not required. It got funded before a single line of code was written.

Working with M&C Saatchi, the original seed grew into an original VR storybook. At three points in the story a yellow Teleporter vortex appeared on the page, a cue kids immediately understood: pick up the headset. They stepped into interactive VR games that brought the lesson to life, like choosing between needs and wants while renting a hover buggy on Planet Eek.

The structure was grounded in educational research. Kids lose concentration in sustained sessions, so the Teleporter was deliberately designed as a reward, breaking the program into manageable segments and re-engaging attention at exactly the right moments. The physical kit sent to schools was produced to the same standard as the experience inside it.