Back-to-school season is upon us, and smart marketers are accounting for today’s fast-paced culture and shoppable world through campaigns and activations designed to equip, inspire and engage students, parents and educators, alike.
Urban Outfitters in July unveiled the Gen Z-focused campaign, “Shift Happens,” touching every point along the college journey, from the Instagram scroll to the dorm room to the closet, and beyond. A cast of partners—from Oakley to BAGGU, Birkenstock to UGG, along with influencers and talent—is helping to amplify the campaign, which kicked off with a two-day experience in partnership with Pinterest at Chelsea Factory in New York City, featuring 10 spaces students used as inspiration to create their own “multifunctional sanctuaries.” The brand is also rolling out 20 “Campus Essentials” pop-up experiences at colleges in key markets featuring dorm essentials, apparel and accessories.
In this roundup of ideas and inspiration, we present seven past back-to-school campaigns targeting a variety of demographics that went beyond the “textbook” experiential activation.
Roll onto campus with something extraordinary.
To promote its recently launched Shipt Student Membership and same-day delivery services discount, the retail tech brand hit college campuses in the Southeast in fall 2023 with teams of brand ambassadors and the Shopper Chopper—a larger-than-life shopping cart with seating for six that made deliveries to residential halls around The University of Alabama and other tour stops.
“One of the things we’re excited about is having captured content on-site that we’re going to funnel into paid media in the future,” Allison Stadd, svp-brand, culture and media at Shipt told EM. “I think a key challenge as a marketer is figuring out how to capture content on-site at experiential activations that’s then going to be compelling for people who weren’t there. And so we’re excited about different things that we’re trying to address that challenge that we think we made some headway on this tour.”
Give families lasting memories of summer.
Leaning into Y2K vibes, Walmart last summer jumped on the nostalgic trend with a cross-country tour that invited adults to take part in all of the in-store activities their parents banned when they were kids. The Walmart Summer Rewind tour kicked off in Austin, TX, and hit store parking lots in 31 other cities to celebrate local communities and deliver moments of “childlike” joy—something the brand’s “GenZennial” (Gen Z and millennial) customers crave. Think: a freezer speakeasy, a life-size Barbie photo op, giant spin-art and Smiley icons.
Get the kids involved in the shopping.
Back-to-school involves pencils, papers and books, as well as shopping for lunch and snack items amid the vast packable pouch category. To help its fruit, veggie and yogurt blends make the cut—or cart, that is—GoGo squeeZ partnered with Crayola on special-edition, drawable packaging and then activated the concept at scale with a GoGo squeeZ x Crayola interactive mural installation that popped up on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, CA.
Make a meaningful investment in education.
Save the Children partnered with T.J.Maxx, SC Johnson and Nickelodeon to deliver backpacks filled with school supplies, educational materials and wellness items to 2,000 kids in underserved markets across the country. Throughout the summer, the brand’s 100 Days of Reading Campaign invited families to click or tap on Instagram posts to make donations toward the packs. Then at each stop, a full event popped out of Save the Children’s tour vehicle—a wrapped school bus powered by clean propane that vastly reduced the tour’s carbon footprint—including tents, games and, in some markets, food and beverages.
Consider what is at eye level.
KinderCare Education, a private provider in accredited early learning nationwide, created the Tiny Schoolhouse experiential tour designed to engage parents, children and prospective teachers at family-friendly locations, like state fairs and zoos. Inspired by the tiny house trend surrounding its headquarters in Portland, OR, the program also celebrated the brand’s 50th anniversary. Insight we loved: Inside the schoolhouse, which has the KinderCare red roof and bell tower branding, there were activity stations at eye level all around the perimeter for children, as well as information at adult height explaining how the activity below them tied into the KinderCare curriculum.
Think: Learning lab.
Intel technologies touch a variety of industries, but to showcase how its innovations can transform schools, the brand built a mobile classroom of the future dubbed the Tech Learning Lab. The multicity mobile tour in 2018 was part of the brand’s education platform on improving student learning through a technologically fueled curriculum, while preparing students for the modern workforce.
Built from a container that unboxed into an activation, the lab’s features were all powered by Intel technology to demonstrate how student outcomes can improve with the use of modern technology in the classroom. Onboard, students experienced VR demos and workshops on artificial intelligence, coding and robotics. At Bronx Academy of Letters, the experience included career sessions led by Intel instructors that covered life skills for tech careers, design-thinking skills, an introduction to AI, creating in VR and a lesson on coding drone flights with Intel drones.
Put students and parents to the test.
To celebrate the launch of its new “Explorer Academy” fiction series for kids, National Geographic created a recruitment center pop-up that offered interactive tests and activities, from a mini archeological dig to encountering live snakes to conducting experiments in a lab. The one-day event in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, celebrated the first installment, Explorer Academy: The Nebula Secre, in the seven-book series written by Trudi Trueit for middle schoolers.
Featured image: Courtesy of Urban Outfitters
