Objectives

The partnership between TheSoul Publishing and Crayola on YouTube was crafted with distinct goals, driving the campaign's creative direction:

1. Inspiring Creativity Through Digital Storytelling: At the heart of our campaign was the goal to weave Crayola's products into digital narratives that entertain and inspire. We aimed to enhance brand affinity by making these products central to stories that spark imagination and creativity, particularly appealing to families and children.

2. Fostering an Engaged Community: Our objective was to transform viewers from passive spectators to active participants. By creating content that encourages interaction, like tutorials and creative challenges, we sought to build a community where parents and children could engage together in creative activities.

3. Organic Growth and Brand Engagement: We set out to achieve substantial organic growth on Crayola's YouTube channel. This meant focusing on natural viewer engagement and subscriber increase, highlighting the brand's appeal through authentic viewer interactions.

4. Reaching Young Audiences Safely: A specific goal was to effectively utilize YouTube Kids (YTK) to reach younger audiences. We intended to create safe, engaging content that resonates with this demographic, contributing to overall viewership and brand engagement.

These objectives guided our campaign to not only enhance Crayola's digital presence but also to create meaningful, interactive experiences for the audience on YouTube.

Strategy and Execution

Our Overall Strategy:

Our strategy for the Crayola YouTube campaign was a blend of innovative content creation and strategic channel management, tailored to bring our unique vision to life.

1. Dual Focus on Creativity and Strategy: Our campaign stood out due to its dual focus on creative content and strategic channel management. This unique approach would allow us to seamlessly integrate Crayola's brand into engaging digital narratives, enhancing viewer engagement and brand affinity while also ensuring the content's strategic alignment with YouTube's platform capabilities.

2. Content Innovation and Diversification: We crafted original engaging content, balancing 116 minutes of long-format videos with 61 minutes of vertical YouTube Shorts content. This mix of long-form and short-form content was designed to keep the channel dynamic and appealing to a broad audience.

3. Tailored Content for YouTube: We crafted our campaign to leverage YouTube's unique features, such as Shorts and YouTube Kids (YTK). This bespoke approach ensured that our content was perfectly suited for YouTube's diverse audience and platform capabilities, allowing us to reach and engage viewers more effectively than typical one-size-fits-all content strategies.

1. Embracing YouTube Shorts: From May onwards, we placed a stronger emphasis on original #Shorts content, following promising results from various content tests.
2. Leveraging YTK: A crucial part of our strategy was getting a playlist featured on YouTube Kids.

4. Interactive and Educational Focus: Understanding the diverse demographics of Crayola's audience, we integrated interactive tutorials and creative challenges into our videos to shift viewers from passive consumption to active participation. This would make our content universally relatable, with a specific emphasis on appealing to both parents and their children, ensuring content suitability and maximizing engagement across various age groups and cultural backgrounds.

5. Channel Optimization for Organic Growth: In a landscape often dominated by paid promotions, our commitment to achieving organic growth on YouTube set our campaign apart. This organic focus involved optimizing thumbnails, enhancing metadata, and strategically timing our publications.

Challenges:

Content Saturation in the Digital Landscape: The digital space is inundated with content, making visibility a significant challenge. Our strategy to counter this was to continuously innovate in our content creation and delivery methods. 

We focused especially on YouTube Shorts, exploring various thematic approaches to create content that was not only unique but also highly engaging and shareable. This approach helped us stand out and capture the audience's attention.

Balancing Appeal for Children and Adults: Catering to a diverse audience that includes both children and adults presented a unique challenge. We overcame this by developing content that was educational, entertaining, and suitable for family viewing.

Conclusion:

Through these strategic actions and unique approaches, namely by focusing on authentic viewer engagement and organic subscriber growth, we aimed to bring the Crayola YouTube campaign to life through an innovative approach that relied on the inherent appeal and quality of our content, rather than on advertising spend, while setting new standards in digital brand engagement.

Results

The Crayola YouTube campaign achieved remarkable success:

1. Inspiring Creativity Through Digital Storytelling: Our campaign successfully wove Crayola's products into digital narratives that entertained and inspired.

We initially achieved a 1,471% rise in views compared to the previous three months before beginning work with Crayola. Subsequently, we drove viewership growth across 2023, achieving a 35x increase in organic views as compared to 2022.

Furthermore, the videos received positive viewer feedback, with a high like/dislike ratio, underscoring the campaign's success in inspiring viewers.

2. Fostering an Engaged Community: We transformed viewers from passive spectators to active participants through interactive tutorials and challenges, helping achieve a significant increase in viewer engagement, as seen in total watch hours, with a 35x increase as compared to 2022.

3. Organic Growth and Brand Engagement: The campaign achieved substantial organic growth, with 22% increase in subscribers in 2023 compared to 2022, highlighting the brand's appeal through authentic viewer interactions and reversing a previous subscriber churn.

Additionally, the strategic focus on YouTube Shorts paid off, with several videos going viral, notably the ‘Make Your Own Markers!’ short, with 9.6 million views.

4. Reaching Young Audiences Safely: Our content resonated with younger audiences, with the YTK-featured ‘Magical Winter Moments’ playlist resulting in nearly 3.3 million views.

Overall, these results highlight the effectiveness of our strategic approach on YouTube, emphasizing how creative content, combined with smart channel optimization and a focus on organic growth, led to significant impact.

Media