Daily Kids’ Art Contest Draws Huge Engagement; Launches New Brand

The Execution

Each morning on-air our KPRC team announced the art assignment theme for the day. Some of our themes have been ‘under the sea,’ ‘rainbows,’ or ‘dogs.’ We collected photos throughout the day and then, during the late afternoon newscast, we showcased a handful of entries.

Then, we repurposed the photos into additional station content, which also further promoted the campaign. Showcasing local children’s art is uplifting for our community and kids loved seeing their artwork on TV and on our website.

Each day on-air, we showcased a handful of art submitted from the previous day, both as an incentive for engagement and also to promote the next daily assignment. We’ve never done anything like this previously so we didn’t know what to expect. Our main goal was to provide a daily activity for kids and parents to enjoy for a few weeks.

While we wanted to provide a fun outlet for kids and families, we also wanted this to be a chance to grow our database. Each contest includes email opt-ins for our KPRC morning newsletter and our promotions newsletter.

We ran this art contest every day for over three weeks with great engagement from our audience. We decided to transition to a weekly themed art voting contest. We asked parents to submit their kids’ best drawing at the beginning of the week. Then on Wednesday and Thursday, they petitioned their friends and family for votes.

The Results

The response to this campaign has been terrific. Our daily contest consistently drew in hundreds of entries. Plus, we’ve grown our two email lists by thousands of users. During the first round of voting we received nearly 1,000 votes, and the second week had over 1,600 votes!

This campaign helped us jumpstart our new brand called KPRC 2 Kids. Not only are we featuring the artwork here, but we’ve really turned this into a resource for parents including educational resources, tips, and more.

This art contest demonstrated to us that the right call-to-action at the right time can be really powerful. The cross-platform approach from promotion to showcasing the winners was key in this campaign’s success.

The results of this campaign have us thinking how else we can use contests and interactive content as a call-to-action like this and what we can do with this initiative when school eventually gets back in session.

We’ve expanded on this campaign and launched our Summer Kids Program. We’re using this as a way to provide activities for parents to keep their kids entertained throughout the summer.

Each week we designate a theme. Beyond the weekly coloring sheet, we also share a local activity recommendation and a reading list all about that week’s theme. We have an online photo scrapbook and encourage users to upload a photo of themselves and their kids interacting with the weekly theme.

With this new Summer Kids Program, we’re excited to continue making our KPRC 2 Kids destination really useful for parents this summer.