How Crayola Went from Concept to Cookie in 16 Days With OpenFortune

Crayola has spent more than a century turning wax into childhood. The brand is a fixture of American art rooms, kitchen tables, and backpacks, with a product lineup that now stretches well beyond the original 64-count box into markers, paints, kits, and the washable, color-it-yourself Scribble Scrubbie line.

Holiday gifting is the loudest moment in the calendar for any kids' brand, and the toy aisle has already turned into a free-for-all by Halloween. Crayola needed awareness specifically for Scribble Scrubbie, washable, color-it-yourself figurines designed for the kid who likes their pets covered in marker, inside that window, with the kind of attention parents still had bandwidth for after the eleventh "have you seen this" ad of the week.

The wrinkle: the team didn't have a quarter to plan it. They had weeks.

The campaign was built around a simple idea: give families something small surprise & delight moment to react to together. Front slips carried inspirational fortunes about creativity, adventure, and magic, including "The best holiday memories begin with a blank page," written to land for the kid cracking the cookie open and the parent reading it over their shoulder.

Back slips paired holiday-themed copy with Scribble Scrubbie product shots and a QR code under the line "Give the gift of imagination," turning a moment of delight into a gifting cue without forcing the handoff.

Pulling it off inside the holiday window required a turnaround OpenFortune had never attempted. Crayola gave the verbal yes on November 24th. Creative approvals moved through Thanksgiving week. Final sign-off landed December 3rd. By December 10th, the campaign was live in market, sixteen days end to end, made possible by a Crayola team that trusted the process, made clear calls, and didn't overcomplicate any of them. 

We needed four weeks from creative approval to execution. We did it in 12 days. That kind of turnaround doesn't happen by accident. It happens when both sides are fully committed, make decisions fast, and communicate clearly throughout. The client matched our energy every step of the way and that made all the difference.

The campaign landed at a moment most advertising never gets to touch. Around the holidays, families gather at the table, phones face down, kids within arm's reach, and quietly start thinking about the year behind them and the gifts ahead. It's one of the few stretches on the calendar when people are genuinely present, undistracted, and ruminating on what they want to give the people they love. Crayola met them there.

80% unaided brand recall, a number that suggests the speed of the turnaround didn't cost the campaign anything where it mattered. 24% of consumers searched for this Crayola product after their meal, the kind of intent signal a Q4 gifting campaign is supposed to generate and rarely does at this rate.

The social response told the story the metrics couldn't. "I had zero idea what to get my kid for Christmas, fate I know. Signs come from the most unexpected places," wrote one parent. Another posted about her son cracking open his cookie the night before: "He hasn't stopped talking about it. 'Mom, I want to draw Luna' (our dog). I've never seen my son so excited to draw something in his life."

Great partnerships don't take quarters to prove themselves. Sometimes they take sixteen days and a really good fortune.

If you want to learn more about how we can do the same for your brand, let's chat.