The Lost Grimm Fairytale

What We Did

The brief was to generate coverage, buzz, awareness and traffic for Sleep Stories, the new bedtime stories for grownups on Calm, the meditation and sleep app.

Among the ways that we responded was by producing the world’s first and so far only bedtime story generated by AI – and the first new Brothers Grimm tale in 200 years.

We did so by commissioning Botnik, a community of writers and developers, to feed the complete works of the Brothers Grimm into a predictive text algorithm, that had been trained to mimic their style.

“The Princess and the Fox is the product of an algorithm that was fed the complete works of the Brothers Grimm, the 19th century compilers of folktales, and trained to mimic their style.”

The Times

“You might call it literary cloning …We’re doing for the Brothers Grimm what Jurassic Park did for dinosaurs – bringing them back from the dead with modern science.”

Michael Acton Smith, co-founder of Calm

Outcome

The result was huge, international coverage, both in Tier 1 media and every other tier – along with general buzz and praise.

It was one of many ideas that helped Calm grow rapidly from nine staff in a one-bedroom apartment to become Apple’s App of the Year, the first mental health unicorn and the world’s top-grossing health and fitness app.

Key Points

  • Huge global coverage
  • Tier 1, national media
  • Spreads virally

Coverage

Over 1,000 pieces of coverage, including:

  • BBC News
  • The Times
  • Yahoo
  • CNET
  • MSN
  • The Press Association + Many local media
  • The Daily Mail/ Mail Online
  • The Independent
  • The iPaper
  • The Irish News
  • The Belfast Telegraph
  • Quartz
  • Gizmodo
  • Reddit
  • Entertainment Weekly
  • BT.com
  • Trendhunter
  • Die Welt (“The New York Times of Germany”)
  • Der Spiegel (Twice)

And hundreds more.

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