While COVID-19 halted production for Hallmark Channel’s 2-hour daily lifestyle show “Home & Family” (H&F), Crown Media Family Network’s social media team pivoted quickly & successfully to produce new, original content from March – September 2020 to keep viewers engaged the entire time to ensure we didn’t lose their interest, and to attain high ratings when we launched our new season. This included a collaboration with sister company, Crayola, to support their craft ideas for families staying safe at home.
The social series “At Home With Our Family” (AHWOF) featured Family members cooking, gardening, crafting, working out and more alongside their own families in their own homes. It deepened connections and encouraged more engagement with our fans.
The social team ideated, produced, scripted & edited the pieces to be shared across Hallmark Channel’s group of social platforms. We also worked with multiple departments across the company to drive awareness & promote corporate priorities.
For Crayola, each week, the social team created original videos that were geared toward activities that parents and kids could do together using items they already had at home or could easily get.
We utilized H&F’s talent to drive tune-in to Crayola’s Facebook Live events, demonstrate how to actually make the Crayola crafts (CIYs) at home with kids, and highlight additional relevant CIYs that would be easy for families to do at home. All our content drove to Crayola.com/athome for more ideas.
TACTICS/EXECUTION:
- At Home With Our Family videos premiered daily at the same time, across H&F platforms (Facebook, Instagram (+Insta Story), Twitter & Pinterest) to create appointment viewing
- The time was strategically chosen to reach viewers (4pm ET/1pm PT)
- Crayola CIYs were woven in seamlessly 2x/month as one of the segments with our Family (Debbie, Maria, Larissa) demonstrating how to do one of the CIYs from Crayola’s website at their own homes (with their family members)
- Tune-in videos weekday mornings (9am ET/6am PT) with our show’s hosts Debbie Matenopolous & Cameron Mathison drove to on-air repeat episodes, the new social AHWOF segment & network initiatives
- 1x/week the morning videos drove tune-into Crayola’s social content on their pages or one of our CIY At Home Segments
- Crayola received CIY intro videos 2x/week that featured H&F’s hosts, Debbie or Cameron, highlighting a specific craft before the how-to video from Crayola to share organically with the H&F audience
- Having the hosts introduce the content provided higher engagement and impressions
- Our main Hallmark Channel platforms (Facebook/Instagram/Twitter) would then shareover tune-ins & AHWOF segments and Crayola CIY videos, extending reach to their audience of 6MM+ fans to further drive awareness & engagement
- Created a playlist on Facebook & dedicated hashtag for fans to easily search & find the content: #AtHomeWithOurFamily
- All Crayola content shared used #CrayolaCrafts for fans to find the content
- After the social debut, each webisode was distributed on H&F’s website to a dedicated module on the homepage & to our YouTube page, which allowed for monetization opportinuities
- Promos on our linear network drove to the digital/social series
- H&F talent shared & engaged on each other’s posts to further drive awareness
- Crayola shared tune-ins and the content to their pages with an audience of 4MM+ fans
- The hosts mentioned the series in press interviews – i.e. GMA & KTLA
- Show’s broadcast ratings lifted +17% YOY in the first week and lifted +64% YOY in the second week of the new season
- AHWOF content performed 4x better than traditional posts during a season
- 200+ original segments produced remotely, 50 featured Crayola
- Crayola posts lifted impressions 35% & engagements 50%
- The comments for the Crayola content were nearly 100% positive with an Extremely Positive sentiment
- Many of the commenters indicated that they were going to try the craft or were thankful that these ideas were made available to them
- Love the Crayola #TrueSelfies activity! I can’t wait to do this with my niece and students!
- That was pretty cool. My niece loves doing art work. I’m going to show her this and maybe try it with her. Thanks Cameron 😊
- My Granddaughter Gracie she made a string painting on top of an envelope to give with her card! She Loves Art -She is 11. Thank you!
- Awesome! Another great craft my grandkids will love! Can't wait to try this one!!
Quantitative Numbers
At Home With Our Family Content Overall
- Reach: 41.95MM
- Impressions: 26.9MM
- Video Views: 8.5MM
Crayola Content
- Reach: 7MM
- Impressions: 6.3MM
- Video Views: 1.5MM
Video for At Home With Our Family
