Reuters Insider - Hasbro puts new twist on old toys -Chief marketing officer

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20/02/2014 12:05

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 Source:             Thomson Reuters                                   
                                                                       
 Description:        Popular Hasbro brands like My Little Pony, Play   
                     Doh, Transformers and Monopoly are getting hi-tech 
                     face-lifts as the industry grapples with changes  
                     tastes, says Hasbro CMO John Frascotti.           
 
 
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Transcript (May be auto-generated)

 Toy Fair 2014 getting under way. We are here at Hasbro with their Chief 
Marketing Officer, John Frascotti. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. And so, 
what's going to be big this year? Well, it's an exciting year for us on two 
fronts. For girls which have become a big audience for us, we have some great 
new things coming. My Little Pony right now is one of the hottest brands in the 
industry. And we have a brand new collection called My Little Pony Pop coming. 
And what My Little Pony Pop is, it allows girls for the first time ever to 
customize and create their own ponies. And then in our Play-Doh business which 
has been a great business for us, we're introducing an entirely new way to play 
called DohVinci which is a new crafting experience for girls. And finally for 
girls with Littlest Pet Shop, we have restaged the entire brand and launched a 
new TV show and a whole new way to play with Littlest Pet Shop. But of course, 
what's been written about and talked about a lot for 2014 is our big boys lineup
because we have this, the beginning of a series of years of great movie 
entertainment coming. We have Transformers: Age of Extinction coming this summer
from Paramount Pictures. Mark Wahlberg stars in the movie, a great new film with
new Autobots, new Decepticons, and even Dinobots which are dinosaurs that are 
transformers. And then with our partners at the Walt Disney Company, with 
Marvel, we have three great films coming this year with Captain America, the 
Amazing Spiderman 2, and Guardians of the Galaxy. And then with Star Wars, we 
have a brand new television show that Lucas Film is releasing later this year 
called Rebels. And you mentioned all those tie-ins, the toy industry is having a
very tough time overall. Hasbro of course, holding its own but it's also being 
hit somewhat. A lot of the optimism about Hasbro at your last earnings was about
things going forward and these movie tie-ins. How important is that as a 
differentiator against the competition in these tricky times? Yeah, I think 
motion pictures and Big Ten pool entertainment always help to fuel new 
franchises. But a lot of the optimism for us coming into this year is the fact 
that we tried several new introductions last year with Equestria Girls from My 
Little Pony and Nerf: Rebelle for girls and they were quite successful for us. 
So even though the industry in the United States has been fairly flat, we were 
able to bring several new introductions to the fore that consumers really 
responded to. And a great thing about having partners like Disney and Lucas and 
Marvel is they are such great storytellers. So their storytelling combined with 
our own storytelling is that we found that content and characters and stories 
that emotionally resonate with kids are so important in our business because it 
gives kids stories that they can relate to, characters that they can bring to 
life. And so in many ways that entertainment is a strong engine behind our 
business. As the Head of Marketing, what's your sense of what the consumer- 
what's the pulse of the consumer these days? Because there is a lot of 
hesitation, it seems, from a lot of the economic data that we follow to really 
spend the money, and toys to some degree are, I mean, you may say they're 
necessary of course but they're discretionary. How do you get consumers 
motivated to spend that money? Well, it's a great question. What we find is that
many, in fact, probably upwards or 60% of our products are under $30 so clearly 
they're not outrageous. You know, they're not priced overly expensive. Thus, the
watchword though for consumers these days continues to be value in that our 
consumers are willing to spend the money as long as we're delivering value in 
the product and the product experience. And so what we found in the United 
States recently is that consumers are more interested in finding that value. 

Board games of all things have been hot sellers. How do you manage that? But 
also, try to adapt to the technology that's changing. Do you mess with those 
formulas a little bit? You know, how do you balance that? Well, what we're 
finding is that consumers want to experience our brands in multiple formats 
especially today's kids. They move very fastly between analog and digital world.
So with a classic board game brand like monopoly, we're able to deliver that 
digitally as well as in analog format and we find the kids don't want to be 
restricted to one media. And that's why with a lot of our games we've been able 
to bring them into digital expressions that kids love but by playing them more 
digitally, they actually want to play them more in the analog format as well 
because they love the game. Yes. Okay. Our thanks to John Frascotti who is CMO 
at Hasbro. I'm Bobbi Rebell, this is Reuters