The Canvas Tour artist and creator program
Put the marker in the right hands and let the reach follow
The brief
A tour reaches the people standing in front of it. The bus drew seven million people who saw it live as it crossed the country, which is a real number and still a ceiling. The job of the artist and creator program was to get the tour past the fence.
The idea
We did not buy posts. We handed out markers. Everything downstream came from artists using a product they had chosen to pick up, which is why the content reads as work rather than as advertising.
The work
One thousand seven hundred and thirty professional artists were handed Sharpie Creative Markers to try, a group with a combined following of 241 million. Sixty-five creators, with 3.53 million followers between them, built the paid and gifted layer. Sixty-five celebrity musical artists took markers in hand, among them Sabrina Carpenter, Post Malone, SZA, 21 Savage and Farruko.
What happened
The creator push generated 28.7 million impressions. Sabrina Carpenter's shout-out alone put the brand in front of 44 million followers. On the ground, 81,000 people were turned into Sharpie advocates through an active demo and a shared selfie, which at an average of 150 followers each represents 12.2 million in potential social reach on top of everything the program bought or earned.
Why it mattered
The tour proved the claim in person, one hand at a time. This program is what made that provable at national scale without ever asking a stranger to say a line they did not mean.
How it was built
None of the three tiers was treated as media. Professional artists were handed markers to try, with no obligation attached. Creators got the product and the tour access. Musicians got markers backstage. What each group did next was theirs, which is the only version of this that produces work an audience believes and the only version that keeps a professional artist's name attached to it.
If your brand has a piece of work in it that has not been made yet, we would like to hear about it.
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