Binney & Smith Canada’s recent back-to-school campaign for iQ, its tween-targeted product line, has set a number of sales and category growth records within the international Crayola network.
The campaign, which consisted of tv spots and an in-store sampling program was supported with a ‘Be a Party Animal’ contest, awarding five trips for a family of four to SeaWorld.
According to Peter Sgromo, business development manager, the introduction of iQ contributed to the company’s colored-pencil business growing by 46%, with total marker sales up by 17%, year-over-year, for the August/September back-to-school selling season.
Sgromo says the company expected some cannibalism of its core business – washable markers, crayons and colored pencils for the three-to-seven-year-old group – when it repositioned some existing products under the iQ brand, but that didn’t happen.
In fact, he says the other traditional washable categories also expanded year-over-year for the August/September back-to-school period, resulting in overall growth of the company’s total children’s stationery business of 16%.
Sgromo was recently promoted to business development manager from product manager based on the success of iQ and the record-setting ‘Be A Party Animal’ promotion.
The company limited the entry channels for the contest to the Internet and old-fashioned snail mail. The result was 18,000 on-line entries and 14,000 mail-in entries, a record for any back-to-school promotion the company has ever had.
Sgromo says the on-line results were greater than any the u.s. has experienced, which he adds is surprising and gratifying for a market one-tenth its size.
He says last year’s Loch Ness Monster Hunt contest netted fewer than 4,000 entries by mail and 15,500 entries via a 1-800 phone line that kept jamming because it couldn’t handle the load.
Sgromo says both the u.s. and the u.k. are now looking at the eight-to-12-year-old demographic, a baby ‘boomlet’ he says is more prominent in Canada than in either of the other two markets.
