Coloring Outside The Lines
As Black Friday winds down we thought we’d add a little bit of color to the start of the holiday shopping season and post about one of our newest clients, Crayola! Headquartered just 90 minutes outside of Philadelphia in Easton, PA with worldwide brand recognition, Crayola got in touch with us to help their brand commercialization team launch six new products in time for retail’s busiest time of the year. We were asked to create product demo videos in which kids would get their hands on the newest holiday products and make colorful real-life artwork and creations for the camera.
Crayola isn’t just a crayon company anymore. As the years have gone by their products have kept up with the changing landscape of childhood creations and have continued to expand into the “toys and activities” retail space. No longer is it enough having just a coloring book and big box of 64 crayon colors (although our favorite color was obviously burnt orange).
“Kids don’t want to just play with their toys, they want to experience them!”
So that’s exactly what our production team tried to bring to the table when we set out to create demonstration videos for these brand new product experiences.
All six products were new to market and had some kind of “wow” moment to them, whether it was a crayon melting or a marker airbrush spraying, we knew catching that moment of surprise and wonder was what would really create an effective marketing video for these unfamiliar products.
Just like with our recent projects for the Little League Softball World Series and Please Touch Museum, producing hands-on videos with Crayola products added an element of nostalgia that made the production process an enjoyable one. We were able to brainstorm and conceptualize a childhood bedroom setting in which the child actors could really interact with the products in a familiar setting. Coincidentally, over the last few years, our productions have become more and more kid-friendly, particularly because we were able to secure more work with clients who cater to young children in health and education systems. We love the energy an enthusiastic 8-year-old brings to the set and now with this Crayola project we were able to be work with child actors for the first time, all of whom turned out to be a fantastic group to work with.
We won’t get into too much detail about the set construction, but for a relatively small amount of money we were able to take a trailer full of raw materials and create a realistic bedroom setting complete with a wall of shelving, closet door and window. When outfitting the bedroom, our goal was to keep the wall and furniture neutral so we could accent the Crayola products with pops of color to draw the viewers into the actual demonstrations. We also knew that our bedroom would need to serve as both a boys and girls room for toddlers and tweens, so being able to easily swap out curtains, posters and other artwork was a must depending on the gender combination of actors.
The two-day long production would not have been possible without our studio partner, Bowstring Studios, and production crew that included our college professor, mentor and friend, George Cummings. George served as director on set and was great at bringing out the best in each of the actors. His vision helped drive our concept home when it came to getting authentic interactions with the products. It was getting those “wow” moments captured on camera that was exciting for the kids, our crew and the Crayola staff.
Each product demo took between 90 minutes and 2 hours to shoot. For the most part our shooting style was simply locking the camera down at different angles and depths, letting the kids be as creative as possible with their work. In post-production we cut 30-second and 90-second demos for various digital channels that included YouTube, Target and Amazon.
At the end of production we were very proud of the final product demos, as was Crayola. The video series is now approaching 200,000 total views on YouTube and we’re very excited to continue working with such a creative client in the future. Please take a few minutes to experience all of the products in our 30-second compilation piece.