Executive Summary

Globally renowned brands such as Adobe and Microsoft have the credibility to drive large-scale conferences but for Australian start-up Canva, a creative conference of this magnitude was a world first. Previously known for its invitation and social templates we helped portray Canva’s desired positioning as a visual communications leader by launching their new Brand suite and Magic AI tools to a global audience of 1.5 million registered viewers and 2500 live attendees.

The challenge

Canva is set to make a massive pivot in their business, moving from a personal design tool that was great for digital creators and small businesses to an enterprise ready design suite built for brands to execute beautiful integrated content. But the problem was they were so well loved for how they were different to Microsoft or Adobe, for helping people's personal needs that no one was ready to believe they could play at an enterprise level. They needed to step onto the global stage and create a narrative that would draw enterprise in without alienating their existing audience.

The insight

Canva fans work everywhere and are pretty loud lot, but they have been shouting about their work. Using their love and scale we create an experience that shows them what they love at home, they can love at work. Launching a Brand New Era of design and drawing a clear narrative from personal to professional, that makes everyone feel included and empowered.

The idea

To land the momentous impact of the Brand New Era we developed an experience framework internally referred to as the “visual timeline” – a series of frames that could contain progression from one state to another, fresh future state as we unveiled each new feature.

This was mixed with the down-to-earth charm of Canva’s brand and layered through the overall experience, allowing us to show a continuous sense of forward motion and improvement that felt beautiful and designed.

The visual timeline allowed us make simple comparisons between what was, what was now launching and imagine an even more incredible future all while keeping the tone celebratory and exciting as the audience discovered each new moment in the launch or activation in the festival that followed.

Bringing the idea to life

Our keynote was built with broadcast in mind, considering our 1.5 million registered viewers and 2500 people live, the pressure was on for something transformative and different from what they had seen before. Something magic.

Creating a 60-metre stage from sustainable, re-purposable materials ensured we stayed true to Canva’s ESG goals whilst also reflecting the notion of our visual timeline. As a bonus, it ensured everyone could get close to the action with no one needing to sit too far back, perfectly aligned with Canva’s accessible mindset. The multiple focal points along the stage helped us create a show filled with movement and variation that deftly handled the huge array of product releases and performance moments.

Our broadcast included in platform integration that let people unwrap new features as they watched and get hands on with the product.

We delivered a 90-minute keynote and magical experience-driven streetscape and virtual broadcast experience that let people not only get the latest updates from Canva but start playing with the new features live as it was happening. Ensuring we were able to connect with our audience in a meaningful way that would translate to huge engagement both IRL, online and in media.

Moving beyond the keynote our experiential approach focused on bringing the brand and new features to life in a meaningful and engaging manner, that would generate tonnes of press and content. Introducing the Magic Streetscape;

·      Magic Assistant – A magic button that, when pressed, manifests exactly what you need at that moment to maximise your party readiness and recovery – mood-boosting supplements, costumes and treats.

·      Text to Cocktail – Real-time, AI-powered cocktail design to highlight their new Magic tools and show how AI helps you design everything faster. Scan the barcode, enter your prompt, and generate your one-of-a-kind cocktail.

·      DIY swag and Branded Tattoo Parlour – We gave the audience hands-on experience creating designs within Canva’s brand toolkit, both on their swag and on themselves! A temporary tattoo parlour where you create your own sleeves using Brand New Era elements.

·      Beatsync Stage – Showing off our new Beatsync functionality – the ability to magically cut videos to music – by creating a stage that does it in real-time with live artists Kinder and Client Liaison. We created ‘Brand Kits’ for each act – as each played, the LED arch around the stage pulsed with the music – as if by Magic!

The results

We stepped up to the occasion allowing Canva to launch onto the global stage and show the world why #canvalove is one of the most popular brand hashtags in the world. We embraced the challenge of producing a large-scale hybrid event as an opportunity to showcase Canva’s broad-spectrum creative innovation and innovative brand voice to their growing global audience.

Canva Create put them front and centre on the global stage, creating an unmissable drumbeat of press and coverage that ensured everyone heard about what Canva is launching. In a feedback survey issued on site and after the event we saw an 4.3/5 rating for the experience, we had belly laughs from the Founders as they saw the tongue-in-cheek copy that brought the magic streetscape to life and we saw over 1500 people happily dancing in the rain (and lightning) to the sounds of Kinder, Client Liaison and a DJ set to finish by Canva's very own, cofounder Cameron Adams.

Don’t believe us? Check out what Jimmy Knowles, Head of Experiential at Canva, had to say here.

KPIs

2023 Goals

2023 KPI

2023 Result

Increase the drumbeat of Canva on the global stage

Achieve coverage in key target publications

100 global headlines. Key coverage achieved in Bloomberg, Fast Company, Forbes, TechCrunch and The Verge. The overall sentiment is overwhelmingly positive with Canva’s strategic key messages shining through.

Attract global attention from community members around the world

350,000 registered for live stream and broadcast

1,500,000 registered for live stream
(exceeded KPI by 300%)

Increase community engagement

8k+ likes

350,000 video views

12k likes

512,000 video views

(Exceeded KPI by 50%+)

#canvacreate gets social reach of 21.7m
@CanvaLife, Canva’s internal tag had its highest engagement month to date in March.

+ 100k LinkedIn follows in the 9 weeks to April 19.

Credits

Internal credits

Executive Creative Director: Luke Clifton

Creative Director: Paul Cotton

Art Director: Ally Kellaway

Strategist: Damien Watson & Tran Nguyen
Content Director: Ari Manafi

Senior Content Creator(s): Tom Abood

External credits

Production Company: Jack Morton & Sightline