The Better Marketing Blog

Quick Summary

• Canva Create 2025 turned a product launch into a fully immersive brand experience for 4,500+ in person and millions more online.
• Every element—from set design to social strategy—served multiple marketing functions.
• Product rollouts were embedded in interactive storytelling, not siloed keynotes.
• The “Uncharted” theme framed feature releases as wish fulfillment, based on user feedback.
• The event was a masterclass in balancing scale, community, and strategic intent.

On April 10, 2025, Canva threw a party.

Not a product launch, not a keynote, not a conference—an all-out, stadium-scale celebration of creativity, community, and the power of design. 

Over 4,500 people gathered at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, entering a space transformed into a brand theme park: multiple stages, immersive zones, live musical performances, and hands-on creative studios. 

Giant LED walls pulsed with animations. Surprise speakers appeared in spotlight bursts. Design workstations were built like interactive exhibits. 

Everywhere you looked, there were cameras rolling, creators posting, and branded moments unfolding like scenes in a movie. 

The event, called Canva Create 2025, delivered a hybrid spectacle at the scale of a global tech company and the tone of a creative festival. 

Beneath the visual dazzle was a deeper message: Canva was granting wishes. 

The theme, Uncharted, reflected a roadmap shaped not by internal strategy decks alone, but by the more than one million ideas submitted by users each year. 

The brand positioned itself as a platform responding to its community—and throwing them a party to prove it.

Event Marketing as Strategic Infrastructure

Canva’s event did a lot more than look good. Every element was part of an experience-led growth strategy—carefully designed to serve marketing, product, and community objectives simultaneously. 

Canva Create 2025 succeeded because it treated its event as a full-funnel platform. One that generated demand, drove adoption, and delivered retention signals in real time.

Strategic functions embedded in the event

• Lead generation through product trials and live demos
• Brand positioning by reinforcing Canva’s identity as creative-first, community-led, and enterprise-ready
• Product education by letting users learn by doing, not just watching
• Content creation with every stage, zone, and activation designed to be shared

From Internal Culture to External Engagement

Canva Create didn’t begin as a public-facing experiential platform. It grew from “Season Openers,” an internal rally to align Canva teams at the start of the year. 

In 2022, Canva scaled what already worked for its people and invited the world in with the first Canva Create. 

The format was polished and purposeful: keynote presentations, product walkthroughs, and announcements that positioned Canva as more than a DIY design tool.

It followed the established playbook for tech launches—clear messaging, controlled environment, and tightly produced content. It did the job of signaling Canva’s platform evolution to a broader business audience.

But in 2025, the brand intentionally rewrote the playbook. Canva Create shifted from presentation to participation, transforming into a hybrid brand experience with live music, themed learning zones, real-time product demos, and spatial storytelling. 

The event became a working model of Canva’s brand in motion—not just what the product does, but how the company sees creativity, community, and customer input as strategic assets.

For marketers, the shift from 2022 to 2025 offers a valuable framework: Start with clarity, scale with character. Canva didn’t just grow the event—they grew into it. The more immersive the experience became, the more the brand’s core personality showed up. 

It’s a reminder that when internal culture aligns with external delivery, growth becomes a story people want to join.

Product Launches That Felt Like Use Cases

The 2025 event introduced major updates—Visual Suite 2.0, Canva Sheets, Canva AI, and Canva Code—but never treated them as isolated announcements. Instead of separating product from experience, Canva embedded its launches into live, real-world use cases.

How Canva structured product activation

• Canva Sheets was presented not as a spreadsheet tool, but as an AI-first visual data solution for marketers, educators, and creatives. Attendees saw Magic Charts and Magic Insights in action through role-based demos.
• Visual Suite 2.0 was showcased as a unified workspace where docs, whiteboards, and presentations connected seamlessly—solving workflow pain points without technical explanation.
• Canva AI tools were positioned as silent partners, appearing mid-task to auto-format, simplify, or create alongside users, demonstrating value without jargon.

Instead of introducing the new features through traditional presentations, Canva demonstrated in real-world scenarios that showed users exactly how to apply them in their work.

The message was, “Here’s what you can do with it, starting now.”

Experience Design That Invited Participation

The event layout mirrored Canva’s product philosophy: intuitive, visually rich, and designed for discovery. Canva partnered with experiential agency Public School to transform Hollywood Park into an explorable brand environment.

Key experience design elements:

• The Canva Learning Studio offered rapid workshops tailored to specific roles—CMOs, educators, team leads—blending how-to with hands-on.
• Design School recreated the feel of Canva’s digital platform in a physical space, complete with stations for product experimentation and user-generated content.
• Every environment was visually optimized for social capture, turning attendees into distributed content creators and extending the event’s reach.

Every station, room, and zone was built to drive action—on-site and online.

Community as Contributor

What elevated Canva Create from brand showcase to participatory platform was its emphasis on user input. 

Canva receives more than one million feature requests annually, and rather than burying that detail in a blog post, they made it central to the event’s narrative.

How community was built into the story:

• The presentation framed product announcements as responses to user requests, reinforcing Canva’s customer-first ethos.
• Customer stories were celebrated live, a clear message to the audience that users like them shape the brand’s direction.
• Feedback mechanisms were embedded into every product session and workshop, giving attendees a direct channel into the roadmap.

The experience went far beyond performative listening. It was a visible, intentional co-creation strategy that earned Canva trust and built emotional equity with its users.

Hybrid Delivery That Didn’t Feel Like a Compromise

Canva designed its livestream as a parallel experience, not an afterthought. The digital layer delivered the same sense of movement, activation, and discovery as the physical event, just in a different medium.

Hybrid execution insights:

• Livestream sessions were interactive, with guided prompts to test tools and submit feedback in real time.
• The virtual environment mirrored the themed zones of the live event, with digital learning labs and demo pods.
• Content was tailored by platform—LinkedIn emphasized professional takeaways, TikTok showcased creator stories, and Instagram carried behind-the-scenes footage optimized for shareability.

Unlike many brands that treat hybrid as a downgraded version of live, Canva treated it as an extension of brand experience, expanding reach without reducing impact.

Results That Spoke to Business, Not Just Buzz

Canva Create 2025 delivered measurable results across multiple dimensions, each tied to a specific marketing objective.

Event performance signals:

• 4,500+ in-person attendees across design, education, and enterprise roles
• Millions of digital participants with measurable product trial volume during the livestream
• Major media coverage from Bloomberg, Fast Company, Forbes, and more
• High-volume social engagement under #CanvaCreate, driving reach long after the event ended.

These outcomes were driven by an experience designed to convert interest into action.

Post-Presentation Strategy

At the end of the event, livestream viewers were given a “secret code” to unlock access to Canva’s new features. 

This moment extended the experience beyond the screen and gave participants a direct next step while interest was still high. The prompt was simple, immediate, and clearly tied to the product narrative that had just unfolded. 

It also built anticipation, as the new features were rolled out to a limited number of users at a time. Those who missed the first round needed to wait their turn, causing many users to check in repeatedly until they were granted access.

The post-presentation CTA reflected the same principles that guided the event design: eliminate friction, reward participation, and keep the experience moving forward.

Marketer Takeaways

• Design immersive platforms, not just events. Every touchpoint should deliver functional, emotional, and educational value.
• Build growth into the experience. Let product education and lead generation happen simultaneously through real engagement.
• Treat digital as its own environment. Remote audiences deserve tailored programming, not passive access.
• Use experiential design to unify goals. Product marketing, brand building, and community engagement don’t have to compete.
• Co-create with your customers. Community feedback isn’t just input—it’s narrative fuel and strategic direction.

Canva Create 2025 shows how immersive experiences can drive product adoption, deepen community trust, and elevate brand strategy. 

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