Crayola partners with Jaywing to spark inspiration

School pupils in the UK lost a third of education time during the pandemic, meaning it is more important than ever for children to be ready and excited to learn.

To encourage this excitement ahead of a new school year with fewer limitations and interruptions, we developed the 2021 back-to-school campaign for leading arts and crafts brand Crayola.

The campaign’s overall objective is to engage parents, who are preparing to send their children back to the classroom after the summer holiday armed with everything they need to encourage creativity and imagination.

To inspire a new year of adventures, friendship, exploration and endless creative possibilities, Jaywing approached Great Bedwyn CE Primary School and its pupils in Wiltshire to partake in the campaign. Working collaboratively with schoolchildren and leading creatives, the campaign reflects on the back-to-school season through the imagination of a child.

Using videos and images showing children colouring in a series of letters to reveal the phrase ‘Back to School’, the schoolchildren play a huge role in the project. As the creative focus, Crayola’s brand message around inspiring creatively alive children and giving them the tools to channel that creativity is emphasized, which sees the children create their own poems about back-to-school memories. The poems are used as the final voice-overs for the video, the content mirroring the artistry and ingenuity of the brand.

Estimated to reach over 3.5 million parents, the campaign has launched across Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

Over the course of their 12-month relationship, we have produced 36 craft idea videos with Crayola, with the intention of enhancing brand presence and product across social platforms. So far, the partnership has racked up over 3m views in total, with the highest-viewed video having just over 1m views.

Crayola’s brand manager Jade Childs said: “We worked with Jaywing to creatively execute our back-to-school 2021 social campaign to celebrate the return of school. As children have not had a taste of normality for a long time, we wanted to help parents get back-to-school ready with our comprehensive range of Crayola stationery.

“Jaywing was our go-to agency, having successfully created content for social media during lockdown, providing parents and kids with creative ideas to get crafty at home using Crayola supplies. The team are a pleasure to work with and create top-quality and thoroughly engaging content on relatively tight budgets and timescales.”

Brian Taylor, managing director at Jaywing, commented: “We are incredibly lucky to work with Crayola, being one of the leading brands in arts and crafts, and a global household name.

“This campaign is particularly rewarding for us as it highlights the importance of sustaining a child’s creativity and imagination when returning to the classroom. After a year of uncertainty and instability for many children, it’s heartening to be able to help encourage children to be children again, and to explore their creative curiosity.”