Coloring outside the lines: How Crayola turned social buzz into real-time insights

When a legacy brand built on creativity meets the whirlwind of TikTok trends and a fanbase from toddlers to trendsetters, the result isn’t chaos; it’s reinvention. With Emplifi, Crayola reimagined how their social team listens, learns, and creates in real time.

Where art supplies meet algorithmic surges

Crayola is a household name, synonymous with color, creativity, and childhood joy. For over a century, their innovative art products have sparked imagination in families, classrooms, and creators alike. Today, their social channels have become vibrant ecosystems, alive with fan feedback, playful engagement, and cultural trendspotting.

Creativity is at the core of everything Crayola does, including how they connect with their community. With millions of fans across TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, the brand needed a smarter way to listen, engage, and adapt in real time. Enter Emplifi Community: a platform that helped Crayola streamline responses and surface emerging trends faster.

A tipping point for the social team

Crayola’s growing digital presence brought a wave of new opportunities and challenges. Managing fan interactions across platforms like TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X demanded a platform that could keep pace with Crayola’s speed and scale. But the team’s previous tool lacked TikTok support and relied on slow, manual processes; especially during campaign surges or viral moments.

“We really needed to better monitor TikTok and streamline the way we handled incoming volume,” said Brittany Mehalick, Social Media Engagement and Trends Manager at Crayola. “Our old workflow meant it could take days to process what was going viral. We needed a solution that let us act in real time.”

The team wasn’t short on insight. They just needed better tools to surface it quickly and act. Beyond the platform shortcomings, the workflow was heavy, with labeling, routing, and trend analysis slowing the team down and limiting scalability.

From manual mayhem to real-time rhythm

What followed was nothing less than a structural shift. Crayola brought in Emplifi Community to rewire how their social team processes engagement, spots trends, and routes support. The goal wasn’t just to keep up. It was to create space for listening, creativity, and decisions grounded in real data.

One of the biggest breakthroughs was visibility. Suddenly, TikTok wasn’t a mystery; it became a monitored, manageable part of the daily flow. The team could see comments, track volume, and act in real time, instead of reacting a day too late.

“We used to triage viral content manually,” Brittany said. “Now we isolate and prioritize with a few clicks. It’s changed what we can focus on.”

With bulk labeling, automated routing, and smart dashboards, every part of the workflow became cleaner. Templates ensured a consistent tone. Plus, the integration with Emplifi Agent tightened the loop, letting the team move from detection to resolution without switching tools.

“The integration between Community and Agent is something we’re really excited about,” Brittany said. “It’s already improving how we manage incoming contacts, and it feels like the beginning of something much bigger.”

Insights that don’t sit in a spreadsheet

What began as a search for efficiency quickly evolved into something deeper. With Emplifi in place, Crayola’s social team became sharper, tuning into what their audience was truly saying.

One standout example comes from conversations about air-dry clay. What started as casual chatter revealed a clear pattern: customers were pairing the clay with specific paints. This insight, surfaced through Emplifi Listening, didn’t stay within the social team, it moved upstream to influence product strategy.

It also changed how Crayola approaches campaigns. When the brand reintroduced eight retired crayon colors, the team leaned into personality-driven replies, each color character answering fans in its own voice. The tone was playful, but the logistics were tight. Emplifi made it possible to maintain playful engagement without losing control.

Beyond day-to-day operations, the shift in responsiveness has had a ripple effect. Customer trust has grown. Global teams now receive region-specific sentiment snapshots. And reporting, which used to be a major time drain, is now just a few clicks away.