Hasbro's in the P-O-P Game

When a product called "Mr. Potato Head" debuted in 1952, its prospects looked dubious at best. But the friendly spud became one of the nation's most beloved toys, due not only to its innovative inventor, but also to the innovation by its marketers: Mr. Potato Head made history as the first toy to be advertised on television. TV soon became an indispensable tool for marketing to kids, and the success of Mr. Potato Head made Hasbro -- then largely a manufacturer of stationery and pencils -- a major player in the toy industry. More than 50 years later, marketers at the world's No. 2 toymaker are beginning to see a change. Marketers and P-O-P supervisors at the Hasbro Games division, based in East Longmeadow, MA, discussed the company's shift toward in-store marketing."This industry grew up on television advertising," says Bill McCarthy, director of trade marketing at Hasbro Games. "But TV has changed. It's more expensive and it's more fragmented, and with TiVo and other devices, people are watching way less, and it has less of an impact."McCarthy says he was hired three years ago as part of the effort to fill in that in-store gap. "It's because we are very dependent on our retailers," he says. "We have four or five accounts that make up the bulk of our business, and so we want to make sure that when we have something on TV, we are also getting retail support." Jim Pagano, trade merchandising manager, added several new staff around the same time to help with his development of out-of-aisle product placement. In addition to bringing in new talent, Hasbro recently underwent a restructuring that combined its toys and games divisions sales forces, which had previously dealt independently with retailers. "Our understanding," says Mark Stark, vice president, marketing, "is that together we become the fifth largest vendor for Target, and we come in the top 10 for Wal-Mart. That's of all products: Coke and Pepsi and Unilever and Procter & Gamble -- everything." With that added power and convenience in their retail partnerships, Hasbro Games is seeing more success than ever selling in their in-store marketing programs. Their winning at-retail strategy involves making shopping easier on moms; spot-on promotions; bold displays that grab kids' attention and are practically indestructible; an exclusives program that is gaining explosive popularity with retail accounts; and packaging that is a display in itself.The Working StructureWith Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, Playskool and Tiger Electronics under its umbrella, Hasbro produces more than 400 games, including international favorites like Scrabble and Candy Land, versatile giants like Monopoly (which sees a licensed or updated variation nearly every year), and continuous new launches. "We have hundreds of projects that are in the works at any given time on a yearly basis," says Phil Smiley, senior vice president of retail execution at Hasbro's Pawtucket, RI, headquarters.Smiley, whose career at Hasbro spans 28 years, was recently given the responsibility of overseeing all P-O-P on both the toys and games sides. This marks a big change. "Before, toys and games were separate, with the way we would go to retail with P-O-P, and now we use the power of one, and we've combined the approach," Smiley says. New displays will be seen in stores starting this season, and plans are under way for spring 2007.Smiley oversees a newly combined group of three teams. The Trade Merchandising Organization (TMO), managed on the games side by Pagano, handles the creation of P-O-P. The Retail Merchandising Organization (RMO) services thousands of stores, making sure that Hasbro's displays are set up in its accounts. The third group, the Corporate Shows and Exhibits Team, works on international expositions where Hasbro has a presence, and this team generally uses the company's true P-O-P to showcase to buyers both the product and the setup that goes to stores.McCarthy, who originally had a greater hand in the creation of in-aisle and on-shelf P-O-P for games, now heads up the development of promotions for both games and toys, from the company's major pushes during the holidays to smaller efforts to keep products front-of-mind year-round.McCarthy now reports to Hasbro's vice president of sales. Mark Stark oversees all marketing programs for Hasbro's adult and DVD games. Jim Bremer, vice president, creative services, heads a 23-person team responsible for packaging the games, as well as for developing the graphics for each product's content, from game board to instructions. Yet, despite the staff shuffling, which occurred at the time of the interviews, the game giant's practical, innovative and dedicated approach to P-O-P remains the same.Getting to MomWith so many options on the shelf, making games easy for moms to shop is Hasbro's No. 1 in-store law. "If you look at the insights, moms shop by age group," says McCarthy. "Mom always says the following: 'I need something for my blank-year-old blank.'... I spend a lot of time in the store observing and talking to people, and moms will say, 'I'm looking for something for my four-year-old daughter.' And I'll say, 'OK, do you have Candy Land?' Yes. 'Do you have Chutes and Ladders?' Yes. 'How about Hi-Ho Cherry-O? No? OK, that's a good game.' I want to make a very easy setup, so that Mom can do that herself when I'm not there."Hasbro's answer was a categorization program, where every game is clearly marked with a name and age bracket. To clearly outline these sections in toy aisles, Hasbro produced lane signs to assure the shopper that anything she picks within the section is appropriate for the child she's shopping for. "We did this just about a year ago, and we've had some great successes," says McCarthy. "Kmart has adopted this, and Target has adopted this in their entire toy and game section."Hasbro repeats its age and level message on each game's packaging, in an easy-to-find icon that appears the same way on each box -- on both the lower right-hand corner of the front, and the upper right-hand corner of the back. And, under McCarthy's direction, the promotions now reflect the product groupings, too. When Hasbro runs a seasonal promotion, it's likely that the promotion will encompass just Kids' games, or just Family games. And the sales team encourages retailers to underline the message by running their own promotions in the same fashion: Instead of eight games for $10, for example, Hasbro wants to see retailers offer eight Preschool games with the reduction.Making the section easy to shop is the first step, but another driver is needed to secure a purchase. "We're working right now with our brand team and our consumer insight team to make sure we have a message to Mom that gives her a sense of urgency," says Pagano. To this end, McCarthy and his team introduce promotions like last year's successful "Games Make Great Gifts" holiday season campaign, featuring Mom-approved celebrity Jamie Lee Curtis.In another program, Hasbro recognized the untapped potential of Easter and offered up displays of products like Barrel of Monkeys and small puzzles dubbed "Easter Basket Stuffers," as well as TV spots showing the Easter Bunny stuffing games into kids' baskets, presenting moms with a welcomed idea for gifts that get kids active and playing, rather than eating unhealthy candy.Smiley points out that multi-level integration is key to making the company's promotional messages most effective. "I think it's really important that when consumers watch the TV commercial, then see the packaging, etc., it all links and ties together," he says. Adds McCarthy, "We try to hit them many, many times so that by the time they get to the shelf, they're ready to put it in the cart."Diorama-ramaWhile pleasing Mom, Hasbro faces the challenge of also attracting a generation of kids with their eye on more in-your-face entertainment. "We compete hugely against video games," says McCarthy. "So we want to make sure that our section is exciting, that it's not just a warehouse of boxes." The goal, McCarthy says, is to interrupt in ways that are pleasant, rather than obnoxious, and one of the best ways the company has found to bring the games to life is get them out of their boxes and into diorama displays.The diorama programs have been especially successful at Toys "R" Us, McCarthy says. One very successful setup involved Hasbro's popular "Heroscape," an exciting 3-D board game targeted at boys ages 8 to 12. Hasbro's team also experiments with sound. Leveraging some of its popular licensed properties in-store, Hasbro created wing signs featuring Dora the Explorer, Homer Simpson and Darth Vader that "speak" familiar phrases to kids as they walk past (Dora's likeness, for example, says "Hello" in both English and Spanish). "It's just triggered every 15 seconds, and it's not too loud," says McCarthy, "but it stops kids in their tracks." At the shelf level, there can be sound as well. McCarthy says shelf-edge P-O-P is a good way to reach consumers where they stand. "We started first doing danglers," he says, "but I noticed that people walking down an aisle don't really see a dangler." Instead, he grabbed attention by placing shelf talkers perpendicular to the shelf edge, so they stick out into the aisle. Most of these "shelf extenders" are not interactive, but the few that are have made cost- and space-saving alternatives to full dioramas for some products. One example is an interactive shelf extender from 2005's launch of Monopoly 70th Anniversary Edition, which showcases graphics and game pieces in a vacuum-formed styrene and PETG case that measures 10-1/2 inches wide by 4-1/2 inches deep by 6-1/2 inches tall. At the touch of a button, a 15-second voice recording of a 30-year-old "Mom" touts the enhanced Monopoly set as "perfect for the tycoon in your family." Getting Retailers ExclusivesReflecting a trend across all CPG categories, Hasbro has put a new team in place this year to deal with increasing requests from retailers for exclusives. Members of the new Customer Strategy and Marketing Team work individually with retail customers to monitor not only what happens at the account in terms of the Hasbro products they carry, but what promotional programs they run, from game demos to "Smart SKUs" (Hasbro's name for their promotional assortments of similar games) to exclusive products."Basically, the team is necessary because of how many special requests were coming in," says Pagano. "They were starting to come in by the hundreds." He uses for example a special assortment of vintage-style wooden-box versions of classic games that the company has been selling successfully in Target stores. "You can't make a wooden box Monopoly for everyone; they're not going to be special anymore. It became where even the smaller regional accounts, like Meijer or Kroger, want them, so it's a flood. Someone's got to filter that."The result of good exclusives is a huge boost in the preferential placement that Hasbro is after in its retail accounts. "When we have strong feelings about a new product, we work hard with buyers not only to get out of the toy aisle or the game aisle, but into the front of their store," says Pagano. "We don't always succeed, because our product is not something you need. It's not batteries or deodorant ... or a DVD that just got released. It's tough." Creative promotions, like a PDQ for Walgreens last winter that suggested puzzles as TV alternatives for kids and adults home during flu season, can sometimes gain the coveted front-of-store placement. In addition to their exclusive products, the team gains floor space by attending to retailers' specific needs. Toys "R" Us wants displays to be fun or silly, says Pagano, and they're most likely to take light-up and talking creations. On the other hand, Barnes & Noble -- who is working increasingly with Hasbro in terms of displays -- wants a sleeker, more contemporary look. "In Wal-Mart you want the shoppers to bump into [the display]; in Barnes & Noble you want to be more elegant," says Pagano. "Instead of bright red, you have dark maroon. Keep it slim, and sit it back farther to make it look more graceful. It's a totally different shopper." Getting placement in stores that aren't toy-centric, like mass merchants, is tricky but well worth the spend for the exposure. "People are going to those stores, especially Wal-Mart, on a regular basis, but they're not necessarily going to buy our stuff," says Stark. "We want to make sure that as they're making their way from health and beauty to food to wherever, they're passing our aisle, and there's something that will get them into it."Truck-Tested,Chain-ApprovedHasbro's major strength for pleasing retailers, however, is, literally, the strength of its displays. "Wal-Mart now considers us the template," says Pagano. "To a lot of their vendors, they say, 'You should do your pallets like Hasbro Games.' They're pleased ... because [the displays] hold up. There's rarely, if any, damage at all." To ensure the quality of their construction -- which is almost solely corrugate -- Pagano says his team ship-tests the displays. "We'll make a half dozen of them, take pictures and put them on the back of a truck. The driver goes out and has some fun taking sharp corners, then comes back and we open up and take a look at it," he says.But the real secret to the quality is that the displays are made to last even before they hit the retail floor. Hasbro works with TimBar Packaging & Display, Hanover, PA, along with Taurus Display Corp., Moorestown, NJ, and Rand Display, Teaneck, NJ, and other vendors for materials, fulfillment and some production, but many of the company's displays are printed and produced in the same on-site factory where they make their games and puzzles. "We often make our pallets months ahead of time, and we store them stacked three or four high," says Pagano. It Starts With PackagingThe toys and games industry has seen a category-wide shift toward packaging as a marketing medium, due to challenges like overcrowded stores and tighter retailer regulations on displays. "Sometimes packaging hits the shelf prior to advertising taking place," says Bremer. "That package is the only vehicle for communicating what that product is, and if it just sits on the shelf, the product may die before the advertising even kicks in.""We did shopping studies last year, and found that 75% of moms who picked up a game would turn it over... and spend three or four minutes reading the back," says Stark. "We get more impressions out of our packaging than anything else." Bremer likes to fill a shopper's four minutes with exciting graphics and clear copy that gets right to the point. If the product has copy on the front, Bremer tries to limit verbiage to 10 words or less. "Too many points of interruption dilute the message," he says. On the back of the box he allows more detailed copy, but still stresses simple wording that is more reliant on imagery. "Especially in a global marketplace, visuals cut through all the verbal messages," he explains. In a category replete with product knockoffs, packaging makes an important distinction between the brand and the commodity, says Bremer. He points to recent packages for the bestselling Connect Four, as well as one for Electronic Battleship, as examples. "Elevating the brand, creating a lot of own-able assets, iconography, visual images that build a brand... all of that is so important to keeping those products one step ahead of the knockoffs."Hasbro has been working with a modular packaging system designed in the '90s that allows the boxes to face front on standard retailer shelves. "People were shoeboxing our product, where it was flat on a shelf and you see a narrow panel facing forward," says Bremer. "By going to a modular system, we put all of our product on-shelf, and it required 15% less overall space. Any retailer will like that equation." The standardized system also saves production costs, he says.P-O-P often picks up new design directions from packaging, says Pagano, who has recently noticed a trend he thinks will carry into his work with pallets. "Some of our items are now coming out with more negative space," he says, noting the mostly white cover of the Trivial Pursuit Totally '80s, a hot-selling version of a classic. "If you look at the game aisle, packages have so much information, they are so colorful, so totally covered with ink, that if you go with a lot of white area, you stand out," he says. "I'm looking and thinking, 'How's that going to apply to merchandising?' Maybe next year, I'll start applying that to my displays as well."

Hasbro's in the P-O-P Game

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