Crayola

Short & Sweet

The Ask: Create a collaboration between Crayola and another brand in a different industry. We chose Kate Spade

The Opportunity: Both brands have done work with mental health, but neither have any products tailored towards mental health in adults.

The Solve: the Alice Binney collection - a line of Kate Spade accessories with a paint by numbers design and supplied with Crayola paints.

The Ask: Create a collaboration between Crayola and another brand in a different industry.

We chose Kate Spade as our collaboration partner. This was a first-semester project, so I was still figuring out all the pieces of what makes a strategist. I wanted to include this project because I still love this idea and the business rationale behind it.

Initial Thoughts:

The creatives were really excited about a crayon box-shaped purse, but the professor said that would almost be expected, so we needed to push the idea further. Our group went back and forth (a lot) about what we wanted this collab to look like. I wasn’t sure what I pictured in my mind, but I was mainly focused on creating the business case for why it made sense. And that was still something that didn’t connect right away for any of us.

I was familiar with Kate Spade as we started this project, so I really wanted to lean into Crayola’s mission and values since I didn’t know much more than they made art supplies.

My Approach:

To get a better understanding of Crayola, I spent a lot of time looking through their Wikipedia page, website, and socials. I even read parts of this woman’s thesis paper that centered around Crayola’s history and relevance today (a great resource for links to other relevant articles).

From all of that research, I learned a number of interesting things:

Crayola’s mission is about raising creatively alive kids that will hopefully turn into inspired, original adults.
The company originally produced industrial colorants for barns and tires. It wasn’t until one of the founders' wives, Alice Binney, mentioned that her students' writing utensils were lacking in quality. That same wife also came up with the name Crayola.
From their Instagram, they had been focusing on the message of being kind to others. It showed up enough that I wrote in my notes “On Instagram, they showed the same ‘be kind’ post about 5 times.”
The website had a significant portion committed to their sustainability efforts.

Since these were the things that stood out to me about Crayola, as I shifted my focus to Kate Spade I wanted to see if there was anything that complimented them.

What stood out to me about Kate Spade:

Kate Spade has put mental health at the core of their brand for the past decade and reaffirmed their commitment in 2018 with the tragic passing of their founder.
They value experimenting with bold colors and patterns but also put an emphasis on details that create unique looks that are synonymous with joy. (This was pulled directly from their website.)
Their brand focuses and values optimistic femininity.

After all that research, what stood out to me the most was how instrumental a woman was to the success of Crayola. I pitched the idea that the collaboration be a celebration of female educators, and the group moved forward with that in mind. However, the business case still wasn’t clicking the way we wanted it to, so we made the decision to pivot the focus to mental health.

Mental health is a large focus for Kate Spade, and it was not completely out of left field for Crayola, so it made the most sense moving forward.

So how could we tie the two together?

From my work in healthcare, I was familiar with Art Therapy, but I still didn’t know much about the science behind it. From just a quick Google search, we learned that studies have shown coloring can reduce anxiety in adults. Coloring for 20 minutes or more is an effective way to lower your heart rate and decrease feelings of anxiety.

From this point on, everything just started clicking.

The Finished Product:

The big idea behind the collaboration is color-forward brands focused on creative expression.

We created the Alice Binney collection - a line of Kate Spade accessories that look like a paint-by-numbers craft. Crayola craft paints are included so that consumers have a quality paint that will hold up over time.

Reasons it works for Crayola:

Expanding products to adults.
Entering a new market of mid-tier fashion consumers.
Expanding on the work they have already done for mental health.

Reasons it works for Kate Spade:

A product specifically designed with mental health in mind.
A new way for consumers to interact with Kate Spade.
A lower-priced product to attract new consumers.

The paints with different box designs depening on what item you order.
Different designs would be offered so that consumers would be able to find one that aligned with their personal style.
We wanted to offer multiple types of accessories at different price points so that anyone who wanted to enjoy the collab would have a chance to.
We wanted all aspects of the collab to be customizable so consumers would also be able to paint the shoe box.
A glimpse of what the webpage would like.
Not only would there be different designs to choose from, but color palettes too.