Recently some colourful ads have caught our eye, popping up on some of our favourite design websites. Well, the ads are working because we just couldn’t resist having a quick snoop to see what the colourful illustrations are all about.

Turns out, Toca Boca is a relatively new company who specialise in developing digital toys and games for kids. Part of the Bonnier publishing group, Toca Boca develop games that are fun and functional as well as looking great. We just love the fantastic characters and designs. It seems we are not alone, the company has just passed 5m downloads 10 months after launching its first app.

“We reached 4m in December and then 5m on 15 January, with December being by far the best month we’ve ever had,” says chief executive Björn Jeffery. “We have a fairly sizeable team of 12 people now, but we were profitable in December, and now have around 200,000 daily active users.”

Jeffery says that one key lesson from Toca Boca’s first 10 months as a business is the power of free. “It gets the word out for sure: whenever we give something away for free, everything else sells more,” he says.

“You have to get out of that media mindset of thinking that if you give something away for free, it’s impossible to charge for it again. We’ve found the opposite effect. When we give something away, we sell three, four or five times more of the thing that we’re selling.”

So it would seem that word of mouth and giving something away for free wins the day as usual. When it comes to apps, the options are endless so standing apart from your competitors is a challenge. This can be said for any business, and these rules can be applied to most companies. Quality work and a clever strategy are key ingredients to success. Toca Boca are proving this theory in style. Supercute, colourful style.

Take a look here for more info.