Dollar Tree
Spruce
Year
2025
Timeline
5 Weeks
Services
Art Direction
Strategy
Branding
Experiential
overview
The holidays are supposed to be magical. For Gen Z they're mostly stressful, overpriced, and chaotic. 56% of young adults report a holiday meltdown every year — and the outdoor retail industry had spent decades pretending otherwise. Dollar Tree already had the solution. It just needed a face. Enter $pruce $crimple — an immortal, two-foot-tall tree fairy and Dollar Tree's newest seasonal hire. Scrappy, endearingly chaotic, and absolutely committed to getting Gen Z through December with their budget and sanity intact. Not a mascot. A movement.
Dollar Tree needed to close a perception gap with Gen Z without abandoning its core value proposition. The challenge wasn't convincing young shoppers that cheap is good — it was making Dollar Tree feel culturally relevant, emotionally resonant, and genuinely funny. The idea had to work across broadcast, social, OOH, experiential, and in-store simultaneously, all anchored by a single character strong enough to carry a full campaign ecosystem — and a franchise worth returning to every year.
Silver | Q4 2025
Crowbar Awards
Art Director
Juan Osorio
Copywriter
Toby Schwartz
Cast
Spruce
