For more than a century, Crayola has been synonymous with colorful self-expression. Long before the first YouTube video ever uploaded, the brand’s yellow-and-green boxes were already teaching generations how to turn blank pages into something magical. In the digital age, that same spirit shows up on the platform built for video—and the results speak for themselves. In roughly a year and a half, Crayola grew its YouTube subscriber base by about 400,000 and crossed the one-million-subscriber mark. The channel has continued climbing since, settling comfortably above 1.2 million.
What stands out is not just the growth numbers. It’s how deliberately the team approaches the platform. Matthew Liotti, Brand Content Manager at Crayola, has described the approach in straightforward terms: the company is a 120-year-old brand that still feels young and relevant. They love to test and learn, especially with video. YouTube is the definitive home of video, the place where Crayola can take the content the brand has always produced and give it a social-first, video-centric spin.
Why a deliberate YouTube content strategy still matters
Plenty of brands post videos and hope for the best. Crayola treats YouTube as its own ecosystem. Consumer data reinforces why that matters. A significant share of people already maintain profiles on the platform, and many plan to use it more. A meaningful portion also expect to shop there. Yet the smartest brands avoid hard-selling. They invite audiences into a story and help them imagine what is possible with the product.
Crayola leans hard into inspiration rather than instruction. “At Crayola, we like to think outside the proverbial crayon box,” Liotti has said. “We don’t need to be prescriptive about how to use the product, but rather inspire.” The content speaks to both children and the adults who raise and teach them, supporting the broader mission of helping parents and educators raise creatively alive kids.
That dual focus shapes everything from concept to measurement. Primary metrics include viewership trends, total views, watch time, and subscriber growth. Secondary signals such as audience breakdown help confirm the right people are watching. The team constantly asks a practical question: is the juice worth the squeeze? Those numbers decide what gets repeated, refined, or retired.
Collaborative planning that actually scales
Scaling a YouTube channel is rarely a solo effort. At Crayola, social, content, and activation teams handle most day-to-day execution, while digital, website, and platform marketing groups contribute during planning. They work months ahead so that YouTube activity aligns with product launches and larger brand campaigns. One clear example is the Campaign for Creativity, an advocacy initiative that spans social, PR, digital, product, and brand marketing—with YouTube serving as a key distribution channel.
Most of the pipeline is created in-house after the company invested in its own video capabilities. Long-standing agency partners (some relationships stretch back decades) still play a role. Shared calendars keep everyone aligned across internal teams and external collaborators. The discipline of advance planning and cross-functional feedback produces work that feels authentic to the brand rather than fragmented.
Earlier partnerships, including work with content studios, also demonstrated the value of increased output. Periods of significantly higher video volume correlated with sharp rises in organic views and watch time, reinforcing that consistency and volume matter when the creative stays on-brand.
Experimenting across formats without losing the plot
YouTube rewards range. Short-form video continues to capture strong engagement, while longer pieces still perform well for deeper storytelling. Crayola maintains a balanced portfolio that includes YouTube Shorts, traditional long-form videos, community posts, and different aspect ratios. The team treats the platform’s full toolkit as available real estate rather than choosing one format and ignoring the rest.
Their Shorts work has earned industry recognition, including Webby, Viddy, Social Creative, and Golden Marcomm awards. At the same time, they refuse to abandon longer storytelling. The result is a channel that can capture attention in a quick scroll and then hold it for more immersive creative moments. That mix also supports the brand’s broader goal of reaching both kids and the adults who guide their creativity.
Optimizing for how people actually find and watch content
YouTube functions as both a video platform and a search engine—particularly relevant for younger audiences. Crayola does not heavily push traffic from other social networks. Instead, the team focuses on organic discoverability through thoughtful titles, descriptions, and relevance to what people are already searching for or talking about. Competitive research and social listening help surface emerging cultural moments (slime is a classic example) so the creative can meet audiences where their curiosity already lives.
The philosophy is simple: the more a brand commits to building a real YouTube presence, the more the algorithm tends to favor that presence. Half-measures produce half-results. Consistent output, format variety, audience insight, and brand-aligned creativity compound over time.
Lessons that travel beyond one colorful brand
Crayola’s approach offers a practical blueprint for other marketers asking how to scale a YouTube content strategy. Start with a clear purpose that goes beyond product demos. Measure what actually indicates health—watch time and audience composition matter as much as raw views. Plan collaboratively and far enough ahead that video supports larger brand moments. Treat Shorts and long-form as complementary rather than competing. Listen to the culture and optimize for search without forcing traffic from other platforms. And above all, stay true to the brand’s reason for existing in the first place.
A 120-year-old crayon company did not become a million-plus-subscriber channel by accident. It happened by translating the same creative impulse that fills classroom tables and kitchen tables into a native video language, then iterating relentlessly. The lines on the page may stay inside the coloring book. The strategy does not.
FAQ
In approximately a year and a half leading up to early 2025, the channel added roughly 400,000 subscribers and crossed the one-million mark. It has continued growing since and sits above 1.2 million subscribers.
Inspiration over instruction. The team aims to spark creativity in both children and adults rather than simply showing how to use products. Content supports the mission of helping raise creatively alive kids.
Neither exclusively. They maintain a balanced portfolio that includes Shorts, long-form videos, community posts, and multiple formats and aspect ratios. Shorts have earned awards, but longer storytelling remains important.
Multiple internal teams (social, content, activation, digital, and others) collaborate, often months in advance, to align with product launches and campaigns. Much of the production happens in-house, supported by long-term agency partners and shared planning tools.
Primary indicators include viewership trends, total views, watch time, and subscriber growth. Secondary metrics such as audience breakdown help confirm the content is reaching the intended viewers—both kids and the adults who support them.
