Crayola and Ogilvy & Mather China explore child creativity with ‘Color Unlimited’ campaign

Children’s art supplies company Crayola has teamed up with a cross-discipline team from Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) China to re-introduce the brand to Chinese consumers based on the rich insight that children in China face increasing creative limits. The campaign, led by Ogilvy Public Relations (Ogilvy PR) and OgilvyOne, includes a qualitative and quantitative study, a fun online drawing contest that brings social brand engagement alongside online point of sale, and an experiential offline consumer and media event.

“At Crayola, we believe that creativity unleashes a child’s potential and that this is best nurtured through open-ended creative play. At the same time, the washability and safety of our products provides the peace of mind that means parents need to set fewer limitations for their kids as they’re creating,” said Kelly Tung, General Manager of Crayola Asia.

Looking at Insight to Build Local Relevance and Substance. To create a campaign with local relevance and substance, Ogilvy facilitated cooperation between Crayola and government organization China National Children’s Center to create the first China Childhood Creativity Study – a white paper that surveyed 400 Chinese families and involved the country’s leading child development experts in qualitative research sessions.

“Using The big ideaL™, O&M’s approach to identifying a brand’s higher purpose, the campaign combines the Chinese cultural tension of increasing creative limits with Crayola’s best self in an exciting way,” said Jeremy Webb, Associate Director at Ogilvy PR and Head of Social@Ogilvy, Beijing. “‘Color Unlimited’ is a message that challenges the status quo and gives parents the confidence to allow kids to create more freely.”

Creative, Social Execution

Social media content, packaged around the idea of “Color Unlimited!” was created around

the research with a series of short videos and graphics. Consumers engage with the brand

through its Tencent WeChat and Sina Weibo pages as well as with online key opinion leaders and digital media such as BabyTree.

The campaign culminates with an experiential event that takes the concept of “Color Unlimited!” to a world that allowed children to create with no limits – a real, physical white space that allowed kids to create as they wished. More than 100 Chinese children used Crayola products without the guidance of adults to create boundless art on the white walls, floor of the space, and specially designed white furniture.

Driving Sale

Through an online drawing contest the campaign asks children for their own interpretation of “Color Unlimited!” The children’s artwork is then displayed and incorporated into a Tmall-based gallery and in the store’s visual design. Select artwork will even be incorporated into Crayola’s product packaging. In this way O&M – which is responsible for managing both the consumer-facing Tmall site and back-end fulfillment (warehousing, logistics, etc.) – is able to drive brand engagement alongside online point-of-sale.

Billboard Kwok, Managing Director of OgilvyOne, Shanghai and Vice President of ECommerce for OgilvyOne, China, commented, “We’re fired up to see how the Crayola Tmall flagship store has improved significantly in terms of sales, search queries and repeat customers in the last three months since its opening. Our strategy of integrating social, public relations, events and e-commerce has proven to be a highly effective and engaging approach for Crayola’s China market re-entry.”

Credits:

Exposure: Online, social media, traditional media