The mission
As part of creating an experiential marketing communications campaign, we were tasked with looking into the Crayola brand. The main problem we found was that traditional crafting has been on a steady decline over the past decade, in large part due to modern technology. For those that do craft, when it comes to finding inspiration, traditionally Millennials have turned to Pinterest while Instagram is the more likely source for “iGen”. Among teen youths (ages 13-17) YouTube carries the most weight, followed by Instagram.
This is important for Crayola when considering their social implementations as 60% of kids ages 6-17 state that the internet helps them make decisions. Additionally, when considering demographics for the Crayola brand, among all crafters, Hispanic families index higher for traditional crafting and young girls are more likely to embark on creative pursuits than boys.
Class: Comms Planning
Skills: Brand strategy, Experience design
Year: 2019
Teammates: Robert Blanton, Zavi Harman
The idea
While Crayola has made efforts to stay relevant through the creation of tech based apps and the Crayola Experience (70,000 feet of attractions that bring the magic of Crayola to life), not every child and their family knows about it or has the ability or funds to experience it all… So, we decided to bring the Crayola experience to the people through a fully interactive experiential campaign – Color Across America: a two-month long, interactive, nationwide tour with the goal of inspiring creativity in America’s youth.
The Crayola CAA Tour features a comic-type story that kids can follow along with while the original eight Crayola crayon colors travel across the country, making stops at schools, community centers, and children’s hospitals along the way bringing creativity and “color” back to the country. At each stop, Crayola will showcase the power of creativity through interactive activities, crafts, and games for kids and parents alike.
People will be able to follow along with the journey and see tour stops in real-time at coloracrossamerica.com, Crayola’s official social media channels, the hashtag #coloracrossamerica, and each character’s own hashtag (i.e. #teamScralet for the red tour).
The CAA Tour will culminate on March 31, ‘National Crayon Day’, with a giant celebration for people of all ages, live from NYC. The National Crayon Day celebration will include live music, Crayola experiences, games, activities, and galleries of fan submissions from throughout the tour. Winners for the best submissions will be announced by the Crayola CEO, and one lucky grand-prize winner will walk away with a lifetime supply of Crayola goods.
Target Audience:
Children 3 – 12 years of age and their parents.
Objective:
Refresh the Crayola brand by making the Crayola Experience a mobile, nationwide attraction.
Strategy:
Inspire the creative originality in every child.
Why it'll work:
Because of the decline of traditional creative supplies due to technology (think tablets and computers), Crayola has seen a marked decline and popularity decrease amongst its children’s user base. However, not all is lost. Through our research, we actually found that many children and their parents still prefer using traditional coloring tools when it comes to creativity… This creates an excellent business opportunity for Crayola to seize upon.
We believe through our research combining technology with traditional creativity tools, along with a fun, nationwide tour that allows children and parents to follow and see when the the tour coming near their town, this event could be a huge success that draws millions of impressions, earned media, and revenue generated from the event and beyond.
