As the list of educational products grow, parents do more and more research to find the right back-to-school products, relying on trusted sources of information. Knowing that Canadian parents turn to Canada’s #1 parenting brand, Today’s Parent, we wanted to bring Play-Doh to life in its much anticipated back-to-school issue.

We started with the magazine’s cover showcasing the endless possibilities of the product – sculpting the entire thing out of Play-Doh! With 60+ years of positively impacting childhood memories, Play-Doh also had nostalgia on its side. Research shows that scents are especially effective as reminders of past experiences, so we looked to harness the iconic scent of Play-Doh to take the reader back in time to their own childhoods.

To dial up Play-Doh’s educational benefits we co-developed custom content with the Today’s Parent that championed the importance of imaginative and creative play.

We forged a strategic partnership with Today’s Parent to develop a custom content that reinforced the correlation between play and a child’s development. To drive impact and scale for the content series, we leveraged bold, ground-breaking elements. For the first time ever a brand earned the coveted cover model position – the magazine’s cover image and logo were sculpted entirely out of Play-Doh! It was an unmissable way to engage parents, pulling them into the custom content series. The adjacent brand ad, which included scratch and sniff featuring Play-Doh’s iconic scent transported parents back to their own childhoods.

Digitally, we tapped into Today’s Parent’s 2.3MM social followers to create awareness of the special edition. Through video, homepage takeovers and the multitude of social formats we talked about

Play-Doh’s 60th anniversary, showed how the cover was made all while weaving in our main message around the educational benefits of the product.

Play-Doh Sales shot up by +10% YoY in just 2-weeks of the program launching!

The featured fall product skews exceeded forecast for the key back-to-school period by +150%.

For the first time Today’s Parent changed their logo, and the medium was Play-Doh!

We put the Play-Doh brand and iconic scent front and centre with 1.8MM Canadian Parents!

We engaged parents in the Play-Doh brand, 98% watched the entire video! 22% higher than benchmark.