Canva unveils “Love Your Work” brand campaign, while facing backlash for massive price hike

Canva, the popular visual communication platform, launched its “Love Your Work” brand campaign to reflect the company’s increasing focus on the workplace and spark a dialogue around workplace culture. This comes with a brand-new strategic platform for the company.

The campaign, which will runs through Oct. 31, captures the magic of how Canva empowers people to feel pride in their work at a time when just 23% of employees globally feel engaged in their jobs, the company claims.

“Our goal with the ‘Love Your Work’ campaign is to inspire people to find joy and fulfillment in their daily work,” said Cat van der Werff, Executive Creative Director at Canva. “We spend so much of our lives working, but many of us aren’t enjoying it as much as we could. We believe Canva can help bring a little joy to work through creativity. Making design work easier, faster, and more fun is what we’re all about. This campaign is our invitation to teams everywhere to reimagine how creativity can help them fall in love with their work.”

The “Love Your Work” campaign comes after the long-standing, consumer-rooted “What Will You Design Today?” brand campaign, which ran in five different flights during the course of three years. While Canva’s message in the first decade was about revolutionizing design for millions of individuals, the “Love Your Work” campaign highlights Canva’s mission to define the next 10 years: to infuse the delight of easy-to-use design tools into work so people can shine.

The campaign showcases Canva’s workplace offerings within credible, high-quality media environments relevant to the workplace. The channel strategy includes:

• Streaming TV: :30 brand ads targeted to professionals across their favorite streaming platforms
• Live sports streaming: Bespoke sports-focused product creatives across a variety of platforms airing live during NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL games and highlights
• OOH: Targeting knowledge workers on their work commutes and within office building lobbies and elevators
• Digital display & video: Product-specific creatives running within digital content contextually aligned to the workplace
• Streaming audio & podcasts: Live reads from influential hosts of podcasts contextually relevant to the workplace
• Social: Extensions on YouTube, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn and Reddit to educate audiences about what they can achieve with Canva

Price increase backlash

About the same the campaign was launched, Canva also advised users of massive subscription price increases that has spurred customer outrage. The Verge reported some Canva users have received emails alerting them to an impending price increase for certain plans. Canva has attributed the increased fees to the company’s need to spend more on software development, including the company’s push into artificial intelligence (AI) design tools and features. Canva has also been on a buying spree, acquiring Generative AI startup Leonardo and U.K. software publisher Affinity for $1 billion.

As part of Canva’s price changes, the business-oriented Canva Teams subscription will shift from $15 per month for five users — $180 annually — to $500 per year. This is a nearly three times increase. This will be partially offset by a 40% discount for the first year but is still a sizable price hike.

Others have reported an even more considerable price increase, including Canadian Jenna Harding, whose subscription fees will go from $150 to $650, a more than four times price increase.

“I think I might be letting go of this service soon,” Viviana Castrillon Olave, founder of marketing consulting agency VICA Marketing, tells Financial Review. “I have been using Canva for as long as I can remember, and it’s a fantastic tool. Even though I’m not a graphic designer, I often need to create visual content to explain, brainstorm, and present the plans or strategies I develop for my clients.”

“I understand the reason behind the price increase, especially with all the new technology Canva is implementing, but the increase should be more gradual,” she adds.

In April, the company quietly changed its offering for new Teams subscribers to $10 per month for each user and set a minimum requirement for three users.