How Crayola’s emotional storytelling marketing campaigns earn 6 billion impressions with targeting adults. Its latest campaign debuts for back-to-school shopping season.
Crayola’s art supplies may be designed for kids, but it’s marketing campaigns often target adults.
Crayola’s recent marketing and brand initiatives all center on the meaning and importance of creativity, said Victoria Lozano, chief marketing officer at Crayola. The brand is hoping to shift the conversation about what creativity is and that it doesn’t necessarily mean artistic output.
“Creativity is really a critical life skill. It is not a ‘nice to do’ activity,” Lozano said. “It is part of critical thinking, creative thinking, problem solving. It’s part of the way that kids can learn and develop and really be ready for whatever career or life path they choose.”
And in that sense, Crayola’s message target adults to “undo” the misconception that creativity means artistic skills, she said. This will help them prioritize creative projects at home and buy their products. Plus, adults use Crayola products for creativity for themselves for their overall wellbeing and sense of self improvement.
“That’s the part of the conversation that people are really sparking to,” she said.
In fact, in 2024, more than 50% of household purchases for Crayola products happened in households without kids, Lozano said.
Crayola’s Campaign for Creativity
Crayola’s Campaign for Creativity started in April 2024, with videos of reuniting adults with pictures they drew as children in the 1990s that they submitted to Crayola to display at museums. The campaign generated nearly 3,000 earned media placements, and a 53% increase to Crayola’s YouTube tutorials. The Crayola Campaign for Creativity earned 6 billion impressions in its first year.
Now in the campaign’s second year, Crayola is focusing all on color. Its current initiative is dubbed “Creative Acts of Colors.” Crayola selected a 9-year-old child from Austin, Texas, Caydence, to create a drawing using its 64 crayons box. Her drawing is all about how she uses colors to express her emotions. Caydence also expressed how she hopes her drawing can make others happy.
Crayola sent a copy of her drawing to several creators, including a baker and a muralist, asking them to use the drawing as an inspiration to create something. The brand also is running a campaign on social media, encouraging the public to create something inspired by the drawing, such as a dance, song, recipe, poem or sculpture, and share it on social media by tagging @Crayola and using the hashtag #StayCreative. In August, Crayola will surprise Caydence with the creations her drawing inspired.
Goals for the campaign
The larger goal of this Campaign for Creativity is to build and reinforce the Crayola brand and what it stands for, as well as to increase sales of its products.
“Having an incredibly powerful dynamic relevant brand is a core underpinning for any sales or efforts that you do,” Lozano said. “Then there’s the more immediate conversion around creating more creative moments every day and using our products more frequently and driving the overall usage and purchase frequency for the category.”
The call to action for the campaign is for adults, parents, caretakers and educators to take time every date for creative moments to help nurture that innate ability in yourself and children, Lozano said. So far the campaign is resonating, she said.
“We just really, really believe that real emotional storytelling is a way to connect with people to have these important messages land and importantly create the kind of inspiration and conviction for people to actually act and to do something,” she said.
Back-to-school shopping season is Crayola ‘Superbowl’ for sales
The timing of this campaign over the summer is strategic, as back-to-school accounts for 40%-50% of Crayola’s overall sales, Lozano said.
While back-to-school shopping just kicked off, Lozano is pleased with the results so far.
“We are seeing really good momentum and mid-single digit positive trends in terms of folks beginning to really stock up and get the supplies,” Lozano said.
But other parts of the year are growing even faster than its back-to-school sales, she said. Crayola has 1,500 products, which include craft packages and toys beyond the staples of markers and crayons. Its products are often a top Easter basket filler and Christmas stocking stuffer, she said.
Crayola builds a global brand
As a chief marketing officer, Lozano has seen firsthand how marketing has evolved to become more personalized with an opportunity to created tailored messages to shoppers
About 10 years ago, Crayola made the strategic decisions to view its brand in the buckets of products, experiences and content, which has shaped how its marketing department operates, she said.
Crayola now has large, experiential attractions where the dwell time is 3.5 hours. It operates apps to provide a digital canvas to consumers and has digital content on YouTube and other social media platforms as a learning tool.
“We as a brand have very purposely changed our way of thinking,” Lozano said. “It’s not just products, it’s the Crayola ecosystem where it’s the product, it’s experiences, it’s content and it’s global. As we expand the brand, we expand the global footprint and really look at that as both a driver of our growth as a business, but also driver of our marketing strategy. Then that supports and underpins this broader view of the brand as well as its growth potential.”
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