The Best of Back-to-School Marketing

Back-to-school looks a little different these days, but one thing remains constant: the flood of ads urging parents to buy new clothes, school supplies, and sporting equipment for their kids as soon as the Fourth of July rolls around.

For marketers, it’s one of the most important times of the year, especially with parents expected to spend around $268 on school supplies per child in 2021.

As yet another school year gets underway, it’s time to look back at some of the best back-to-school marketing campaigns ever and see what made them so great.

1996: Staples says what every parent is thinking

Being a kid in the summer of 1996 meant dreading hearing the opening line of the Christmas classic song “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” In a genius move, Staples repurposed a well-known holiday tune for back-to-school season, perfectly capturing parents’ moods as their kids begrudgingly got ready to return to school.

Why it works: Unlike other ads that showed happy, excited kids gearing up for a new school year, this ad was a more realistic depiction of the back-to-school environment in many homes. If kids hated it, it didn’t matter — back-to-school shopping is mainly for parents who could relate to the dad gleefully tossing supplies into a shopping cart in front of two miserable children.

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2017: Staples (yes, again!) offers a social media challenge

A lot changed between 1996 and 2017, but one thing remained the same: Staples’ mastery of back-to-school marketing. This simple tweet from 2017 does a lot with very little, showing that you don’t always need a national commercial campaign to make an impression. The post challenges Twitter users to find the difference between two images, and the call to action then invites them to get discounts on the products they’ve been staring at for the last couple of minutes.

Why it works: It’s attention-grabbing, but not too complex — ideal for the bored-at-work crowd aimlessly scrolling through their Twitter feeds. It’s also hard to resist. It’s easy to scroll by an ad, but a lot harder to pass up a challenge.

2020: Walmart addresses the new normal

For many students in 2020, “back to school” meant transitioning to remote learning, a major adjustment for them and their families. Rather than ignore this new reality, Walmart chose to highlight it with a short video ad and the smart tagline, “However you go back, we’ve got your back.”

Why it works: It’s quick, to the point, and relatable. Kids (or more likely, their parents) can watch this and know that Walmart understands what they’re going through. There’s a good business angle, too — just because the kids are remote learning doesn’t mean they don’t need school supplies!

The marketing landscape has changed significantly since back to school became a major commerce event, but the message has remained relatively static. When late summer rolls around, it’s time to buy new supplies for the students in your household.

These examples all work for different reasons, but they’re variations on the same theme. Marketers should take note and use this as inspiration for their own back-to-school campaigns.