The Campaign

We created a new product, Monster Crayons, which we sold nation-wide. All profits from sales of Monster Crayons help abused children to heal from their trauma. But Monster Crayons also bring to life the art therapy that we do with abused children: every time you draw with them, you draw away the monsters.

Execution

We created 10,000 packs of Monster Crayons and sold them in over 100 stores around Australia. Each pack contained four brightly coloured crayons characters, each based on a real child’s drawing. Even though Monster Crayons is primarily a product aimed at the general public, we still wanted abused children to be able to use them (generally, abused children have highly underdeveloped fine motor skills, so struggle with drawing). Through the design process, we worked with an occupational therapist to ensure the crayons are the right size and shape.

Tier 1: Monster Crayons earned a massive amount of high-quality, positive coverage around Australia. This included several stories on our national broadcaster, the ABC, as well as Channel 7 and Network 10, the Huffington Post and Sydney Morning Herald, the Brisbane Times and several local newspapers. From a media spend of less than $1000, we reached over 7 million people, Australia-wide. Tier 3: Through profit from sales or direct donations to the Monster Crayons campaign, we raised over $70,000 for Act for Kids (and counting). A massive amount for this tiny charity.

The Situation

Monster Crayons was a new product from children’s charity Act for Kids, launched to earn free media to compensate for our tiny marketing budget.

The Strategy

Act for Kids relies on parents of young children for the majority of their donations. Our strategy needed to overcome three key barriers to engage with this target market: 1) Because we are so small, most people are unaware of the good work we do. To overcome this, we needed an approach that would extend far beyond our tiny marketing budget. 2) For most people, child abuse is so repugnant they try to block out anything which tries to make them think about it. We needed to frame our message in a positive way. 3) Our target market suffers significant ‘donor fatigue’. So we needed a marketing solution that could double as an alternative income stream.