Toy Tuesday: Which brand is most valuable?

I'm posting this entry from Los Angeles, home of the recent LA Auto Show, where this photo was taken featuring the Hot Wheels logo behind a Chevrolet Camaro. When I was responsible for marketing toy vehicle brands (Hot Wheels at Mattel, Matchbox at Tyco), we relied on the cachet of the Chevrolet Camaro brand to sell our mini vehicles. It looks like the tables have turned, with General Motors now relying on the Hot Wheels toy brand to sell their real cars.

Toy Tuesday: Taxpayer subsidized toy testing?

A little background

Shortly after started my first job with a big toy company at a big toy company (over 20 years ago), we received requests for samples from The Canadian Toy Testing Council. The Council had already been around for many years, and had a history of issuing toy reviews that were often highly critical of mass market and TV promoted toys. My boss was unequivocal in rejecting their request, and told me that they were just a bunch of Ottawa-based moms who lacked the qualifications to effectively evaluate and report on toys.

A year later at the same toy company, the Council called one of our dolls the worst toy of year. I remember the president of the company jumping for joy and accurately predicting that the doll would become the year’s hottest item in Canada. The doll had truly innovative features, a compelling play pattern, and aggressive TV advertising. On top of that, it was featured as the lead toy story on every news program in the country, and typified the expression “all publicity is good publicity”.

As a couple more years passed and management changed at the toy company. It was decided that we should cooperate with the Canadian Toy Testing Council rather than view them as the enemy. We spent a lot of time escorting them through Toy Fairs in Toronto and New York, but there really wasn’t any impact on the reviews our toys received.

It’s different today

20 years ago, there were few sources of product reviews available to consumers beyond the Toy Report issued by the Council. There was no internet, so there was no amazon.com, no toysrus.com, and no mommy bloggers. Today, obviously, things are much different, yet The Canadian Toy Testing Council persists.

And now...supported by our taxes

The Ottawa Citizen reports that the Council has received a grant this year from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, a taxpayer-funded organization whose mission is to build “healthy and vibrant communities throughout Ontario by strengthening the capacity of the voluntary sector, through investments in community-based initiatives.”

The Council issued its annual Toy Report last week, with a list of “Best Bets” that includes a variety of mass market and specialty toys. While I respect the motivation of The Canadian Toy Testing Council, I do question whether it’s necessary or meaningful, and firmly believe that our tax dollars are better spent elsewhere.

Toy Tuesday: Is Nukotoys the next wave in gaming?

Players in the colliding worlds of kids’ products and entertainment seem to be constantly finding new ways to enhance kids’ interaction with brands, leading to the emergence of completely new play patterns. An interesting example is that of Nukotoys, a startup company that’s trying to apply “Silicon Valley models” to its business with rapid prototyping, interactive technology, nimbleness, financial efficiency, and scalability.

The company is planning to make game cards with embedded chips, containing skills or tools that help players with their game. It’s an excellent integration of the play patterns that we see in both computer games and in trading card games. The social media like integration adds another dimension to the play pattern.

In games from Nukotoys, special trading cards will give kids additional powers or skills that they will be able to utilize in-world, as well as trade those cards with real-world friends, who will automatically become part of their in-world social networks.

Richard Garfield, who developed Magic: The Gathering for Wizards of the Coast, is credited with being the creator of the hugely successful genre of trading cards. He is designing the overarching card system for Nukotoys.

During the time I spent at Wizards of the Coast, we often speculated about what would be the next “wave” in gaming, with role playing games (Dungeons & Dragons), miniatures (Warhammer), and trading card games (Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon) being the first waves. With an intriguing concept and extensive cross platform integration, perhaps Nukotoys’ game system will be the next wave.

Read more about Nukotoys here.

Tasty Furniture? Lemon Scented Breakfast?

I'm all for developing line looks for packaging that are "on brand", but sometimes striving for consistency to achieve the same look in branded packaging isn't a good idea. I think Walmart ought to give a little more thought to how they approach packaging for their Great Value brand before someone makes their morning pancakes with furniture polish.

Franklin, Barbie, and Calliou - LIVE!

Live entertainment for kids' brands is often a key component of a solid marketing strategy. For leading brands, live shows in theaters and malls are a great source of revenue. For other brands, live shows can heighten awareness and appeal among kids and their parents.

By coincidence, I have worked closely on all the brands featured in ad in this weekend's Toronto Star for Toronto's Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. I started my career in the toy industry working on Barbie branded products. Franklin the Turtle was every kids' best friend when I worked at Nelvana for four years, and it was like he became my friend too. It appears that the Franklin live show is similar (identical?) to the "Franklin and the Green Knight" program that I worked on at Nelvana. Finally, I got to know Caillou as master toy licensee when I was Marketing Director at Irwin Toy.

It's nice to see how these classic brands continue to entertain kids and gratifying to know that I played a part.

Sesame Street's Grover as "The Old Spice Guy"

As someone who works in marketing and entertainment, I've also thought that one of the greatest honors is to be parodied on Sesame Street. An even bigger achievement is to have Sesame Street parodying a parody, which is exactly what they've done with Grover's take on the Old Spice Guy:

Toy Tuesday: Fill in the Spot with Lego

This cute video from Lego uses clever visual devices to show how you can build anything from Lego.

Build Anything from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

Just the Right Senses of Humor and Propriety

The Toronto Star’s current series on Canadian culture offers a fascinating overview of kids’ TV shows that are produced in Canada.

They quote many industry experts, including Cookie Jar’s Michael Hirsh, the BBC’s Adrian Mills, and Caroline Fortier from The Alliance for Children and Television.

The Star correctly points out that Canadian kids’ programming has wide appeal around the world because it seems to have just the right sense of humor and just the right sense of propriety:

• We have a good sense of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.
• Canadians have different values. We are a cross between the European and the American.
• Canadian kids’ shows score low on violence and very high on informal education, happy characters and scenes depicting social relationships, ecological behaviour and cultural activities.
• We have shared social and cultural values --a passion and deep-rooted respect for the audience.
• Canadian producers can bring an ‘American’ sensibility to a program — particularly in animation or live-action drama for older kids — but in a toned-down, safer kind of way which some consider more palatable than the undiluted product.

Children’s television in general, and animation in particular, is a real Canadian forte, and I feel privileged to work with several Canadian companies who bring great entertainment to kids around the world.

Check out the full article in The Star here.

Travel Thursday: Search by "Agony"

A new search engine for flights callled Hipmunk is online now.

According to Lifehacker,

Web site Hipmunk re-imagines flight search, translating the information you're most interested in to a user-friendly chart of possible flights.

Most popular flight search engines are cluttered, full of text, and difficult to understand at a glance. Hipmunk takes the most important flight information you'd get at any flight search engine—travel time, layovers, price—and organizes it into an actually useful visual (rather than all-text) interface. (It's sort of like a Gantt chart for flights.) Click on any flight for a closer look at the full details.

You can sort results by price, number of stops, departure/arrival time, and duration, but you also get an extra search category called agony, a combined function of price, duration, and number of stops—basically the total agony you'll experience in your butt and your savings.

I love the idea of searching by "agony," and will definitely use this website. On the downside, though, they don't seem to include flights for American Airlines, which is often my preferred airline.

Travel Thursday: Hang Up & Call Back

View from the Wing has a brief and insightful article about getting what you need from an airline telephone agent. It's particularly helpful if you have a good understanding of the rules, as some agents have less than full understanding.

Never argue with an agent. Never tell them how much more you know about ticketing than they do. Always thank them for being so helpful. Even when they’re not.

Instead, when you discover you’re working with an agent who doesn’t know what they’re doing, just hang up politely and call back. And I do mean hang up politely, or at least as politely as you can. Perhaps you have another call, or someone is in your doorway, thnak them for their time but emphasize that you have to go and will need to call back.

Check out the article here, and remember that the best piece of advice in travel is to hang up and call back.

Toy Tuesday: Lifesize Mousetrap

This is very cool! According to the designers,

The Life Size Mousetrap is the classic board game miniature turned into a life-size spectacle! "A colorful assemblage of kinetic sculptures fantastically handcrafted into a giant 25 TON Rube-Gold-berg machine!"

It's traveling to Detroit, Austin, New York, and Austin this year.

I don't suspect that Hasbro, as owner of the real Mousetrap game, has any involvement in this, but it's sure to generate memories of a great classic game and elicit incremental sales.

More photos and info here.

Marketing Monday: Regulation or Responsible Parenting?

The US government is to be commended for trying to improve the lives of its citizens, but with all the things they could do to make the country a better place, it hardly seems that regulating advertising on sugary cereals ought to be a high priority.

This weekend, the New York Times reported that the US government is stalled in its push to limit food ads aimed at children.

Government regulation shouldn't be the way to promote responsible choices by parents and kids.

Marketing Monday: Fair Skin & Facebook

Unfamiliar with cultural norms among men in India, I'm holding back judgment on the value of Unilever's "Vaseline for Men" skin whitening products. I will, however, applaud Unilever's clever marketing campaign, which includes this TV commercial (it's in Hindi -- I don't understand the words).

There's even a Facebook app that takes your current profile picture on Facebook and automatically lightens the skin color of the face in the picture.

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Web Wednesday: Dog Meets World

Carolyn Lane, founder of dogmeetsworld.org, has created an interesting website with an interesting purpose -- to lift the hearts of underprivileged kids and others by having travelers take photos of them with a little stuffed dog mascot, named Foto, and printing out a hard copy to give them on the spot. The goal is to help the subjects, who may have never seen a photo of themselves, 'see their potential more clearly and that they count.'

According to Carolyn,

My dream is to establish a movement to photograph the children of the world. To seek children in their own settings, print their image to keep for a lifetime. We have replicated Foto, the stuffed dog, to enable scores of world travelers to participate with this intentional project. The dream of Dog Meets World is to empower travelers to make real connections to people in other cultures, in essence to become photo-diplomats. A picture makes anybody a “somebody”. Dog Meets World clothes people in acknowledgment and affirmation and feeds their souls, which indeed is priceless.

The goal of the website is admirable, though it does cost money to participate, and you need a portable photo printer, not something most people take on vacation. Still, it's worth checking out.

Toy Tuesday: Happy Meals = Happy Kids

I've come across a lot of comments on The Center for Science in the Public Interest proposed lawsuit against McDonald's over their inclusion of toys in Happy Meals, that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. Whoever they are, they sure know how to get media coverage, but it tends to refute their point of view.


From Bruce Lund on Facebook:

Take toys out of Happy Meals? Whatever is the benefit of that? Toys entertain, inspire, educate and invite thinking and doing. Toys change the world. Frank Lloyd Wrights toy blocks inspired him to become an architect. What if those blocks had been a Happy Meal toy? or not?

Also on Facebook, Jennifer Strauss Richmond adds:

Sadly, McDonald's is able to quote a very high percentage of kids in the US and probably higher internationally that the only toys they have ever had are happy meal toys....

Meanwhile, The Consumerist quotes McDonald's CEO:

CSPI is wrong in its assertions and frivolous in its legal threats... CSPI's twisted characterization of McDonald's as 'the stranger in the playground handing out candy to children' is an insult to every one of our franchisees and employees around the world.

Time Magazine concurs with my view that the whole issue will probably boil down to parental responsibility.

After all, 5-year-old kids aren't driving themselves to the McDonald's pick-up window. Little Stevie and the "unpaid drone army of word-of-mouth marketers" are a powerful force, but should McDonald's be liable for their pestering ways? "The solution is not a lawsuit," says Wilson. "The solution is a two-letter word: no."

Toys make kids happy. It's perfectly appropriate that McDonald's calls them Happy Meals.

The last word should go to Bob Cutler of Creative Consumer Concepts, which makes toys for fast food restaurants, who correctly says "you can't teach a child about making good choices, if you just take away the choices."

Marketing Monday: Microsoft Recreates Online Scam

Just came across this very clever video from Microsoft, where they show how easily some people can share their personal information online, created a fake bank in the Manhattan area that worked just like any other online phishing scam.

Unsuspecting customers handed over their credit card numbers, SSNs, ATM Pin numbers and even their hair samples for DNA tests to the “fake” bank authorities.

Microsoft followed up with with another scam, an “inheritance store” that works like those Nigerian email promising millions of dollars in inheritance.

Their points about online security are compelling, and they try to tie it all to Internet Explorer 8. While Microsoft's story is strong and entertaining, the connection to IE8 eludes me. Still, it's fun to watch.

Marketing Monday: Oil Spills, Google, and You

The Consumerist reports that BP isn't too fond of people using search engines to check up on its Gulf of Mexico misadventures. The company has bought up some Google and Yahoo phrases in order to scuttle efforts to find news reports using such words.

Here's what they learned from a detailed piece from ABC News:

A simple Google search of "oil spill" turns up several thousand news results, but the first link, highlighted at the very top of the page, is from BP. "Learn more about how BP is helping," the link's tagline reads.

A spokesman for the company confirmed to ABC News that it had, in fact, bought these search terms to make information on the spill more accessible to the public.

I suppose I might have done the same thing if I was in BP's situation. On the other hand, I can't imagine that I'd ever be involved in anything like BP's situation. I'm proud of the ethical approach to safety that has been part of my work in product marketing from the very beginning.

Web Wednesday: Wordle

Here's an entertaining website that lets you express your creativity. Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

I quickly created this word cloud by asking Wordle to select words from this blog.

click to enlarge

Tip: To save the word cloud as a jpg, use "Print Screen" and paste into a graphics editor. Then crop to remove all but the word cloud itself.

Toy Tuesday: Unhappy about Happy Meals

Today's Globe and Mail reports that a Washington-based "consumer advocacy" group is threatening to file a lawsuit against McDonald's, charging that the fast food chain ‘unfairly and deceptively' markets toys to children through its Happy Meals.

As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing unfair or deceptive about McDonald's approach to marketing to kids.

Kids are bombarded with all types of messages from an early age, and with technological advances, the frequency and sophistication of these message is growing enormously and quickly. Early in my career, I learned to trust the judgment of parents in making decisions about the media their kids consume and the products they use. While there are no doubt some parents who don't always make the best decisions for themselves or their kids, we're fortunate to live in a society where governments, courts, and lawyers aren't usually making decisions for us.

Toy Tuesday: Monster High - A New Approach for Mattel?

An interesting story in LA Business Journal talks about Mattel's upcoming launch of Monster High, a new toy line and intellectual property that features characters based on teen children of werewolves, zombies and other creatures "which the company has described as 'Grease' meets 'Addams Family,' because it’s a combination of the gothic-inspired 'Twilight' movies and Disney’s tween-friendly 'High School Musical' franchise."

Mattel seems to have done a good job putting the program together, but I agree with industry analyst Sean McGowan that the line could be either a huge hit or a huge failure.

Interestingly, the article makes several references to the fact that Monster High is "the first in-house toy brand the company has launched since Hot Wheels in 1968." I don't know where LA Business Journal got their information, but I can remember several brands from my time at Mattel in the late 1980s and early 1990s that were developed in-house, though none of them exist today. Just to check, I contacted toy consultant Lynn Rosenblum, who is quoted in the article and worked at Mattel when I did. She verified that many brands from Cherry Merry Muffin (a small doll line) to Masters of the Universe (a hugely successful boys' action line) were Mattel in-house initiatives. Looks like somebody is rewriting toy industry history.

Cherry Merry Muffin

Masters of the Universe

Regardless of whether it was created in-house at Mattel or came from elsewhere, Monster High's success will depend on how it resonates with kids. By the end of the year, we'll all know if it's a hit or a miss.

Marketing Monday: Print ad simplicity, Print ad confusion

This week, I'm calling out two print ads, one for its simplicity and one for the confusion (deceit?) that it conveys.

First, the good:

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This ad from Modern Dog Magazine speaks for itself, does a great job of communicating features and benefits, and throws in a little humor too.


Now, the bad:

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This ad is typically of the types of information provided by many Canadian retailers. Even though the metric system has been in place in Canada since the 1970s, this retailer uses three different systems of measurement for the same class of products. Don't know if they're deliberately making it confusing or if they're just lazy. Is it just me, or is it difficult to compare the value you get with each of these products?

Toy Tuesday: This is What's Up, Doc!

Of all the brands I have encountered in the world of toys and licensing, Looney Tunes was one of the most rewarding, successful, and fun projects to work on. The New York Times reported last week that "Warner Bros. is embarking on a five-alarm rescue effort for Looney Tunes", the franchise often called one of the studio's crown jewels.

When I was a Senior Product Manager at Tyco Toys, we held the master toy license for Looney Tunes, and I was responsible for coordinating all the efforts across the program for all the different brand teams at Tyco who were developing and marketing Looney Tunes toys. It was both interesting and challenging to align boys, girls, games, activities, and mini vehicles in an organization where brand teams were accustomed to working independently.

click to enlarge

The Looney Tunes brand itself was challenging to market as toys. It doesn't have a clear focus toward either boys and girls, and while the characters have always been well known and well loved, they're not necessarily kids' favorites. Competing against other brands with humor components like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Spongebob Squarepants is a big challenge.

Despite these challenges, Tyco was able to achieve some success due to a well integrated retail and marketing program as well as a great working relationship with the people at Warner Bros. Consumer Products, from whom I learned what it is to be a demanding yet fair licensor.

The New York Times article implies that Looney Tunes is in trouble today, with worldwide sales of licensed products at "only" $1 billion. With new TV programming on the way, I sincerely hope that the entertaining and irreverent Looney Tunes brand regains the notoriety it deserves.

Looney Tunes toys by Tyco

Travel Thursday: Ten Days in a Carry On

While I've never successfully taken a ten day trip with carry on luggage, I sure would like to be able to do it. Today's New York Times has an article and slideshow that tells you exactly how to make it work. Still not sure that I could do it if I needed winter wear or a suit, but it's worth a try.

Marketing Monday: The Process

Came across this very funny video about the process of designing a stop sign that will mean a lot to ad agencies and designers. Not sure who created it, but it's clearly done by someone here in Toronto. Enjoy!

Toy Tuesday: Sophie la Girafe

Seems that everyone I know with an infant has a "Sophie la Girafe" toy. While I never learned about the toy from all my work in the toy business, I did learn something new today -- Sophie has been around for almost 50 years and was born in France.

Toysrus.ca sells Sophie for $21.99, and despite the toy's notoriety, it receives mixed reviews from parents.

Learn more about Sophie here.

Travel Thursday: Do You Really Have to Check Luggage?

Gadling, a travel blog, has a good article this week outlining six reasons not to check luggage:

1. Security has made checking bags a major hassle
2. The price of checking a bag
3. You can't trust the airlines (or the baggage handlers, the TSA, fellow passengers or the airport staff)
4. Retrieving your bags takes too long
5. The great unknown of where your bag goes
6. Why check when you don't have to?

In related news, The Toronto Star had an article yesterday morning about a cat missing because its cage was dropped by a Westjet baggage handler at Toronto's Pearson International Airport, validating my long standing decision never to take my dog on a plane.

Fortunately, things worked out for the cat and its owner, with The Star reporting last night that the cat was found, "a little greasy, a little dirty and a little worse for wear, but otherwise safe and sound."

Toy Tuesday: Chief Amusement Officers

MediaPost New's Marketing Daily website has an article today about Mattel's and Hasbro's Q1 performance. While the article isn't particularly interesting, the opening line is outstanding: "It looks like parents all over the world are relaxing back into their role as chief amusement officers".

With the proliferation of positions with titles like Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Technology Officer, etc., I love the "Chief Amusement Officer" title that accurately reflects the role of parents in their kids' lives.

Marketing Monday: Clever or Greedy?

Just renewed a one year magazine subscription, and received this notice from the publisher:


What is Canadian House & Home trying to achieve here? Why would anyone renew an annual subscription 11 months in advance in order to save $2.00 in tax? Will their direct mail piece generate sufficient response to encourage many early renewals?

Love the magazine, but my take is that it's a greedy move rather than a clever one. I would never bother my clients with an aggressive pitch that yields minimal benefit to the customer, and would counsel them to focus on benefits that are truly meaningful to the consumer that will genuinely enhance their relationship with a brand or product.

Travel Thursday: Your Own Amazing Race

Came across an intriguing program from Competitours, a US travel company that runs "The Amazing Race" type tours in Europe. According to the company,

Competitours is a team travel competition that pits your creativity, ingenuity, and wits against 16 other teams – picture "The Amazing Race^TM" without the stress, weird food, and extreme stunts. Over a 9-day trip, you will compete across 4 European countries, from bustling big cities to off-the-radar countryside. Along the way, you'll enjoy playful rivalry with the other teams by day, and cheerful revelry by night.

If their tours are as well thought out as their website, then they're something truly amazing, because the website does an outstanding job of anticipating every question or concern you might have about the program.

While I'm planning to travel in North America this summer rather than Europe, the opportunity to do what The Chicago Tribune calls "The Amazing Race for regular people" is definitely tempting.

Web Wednesday: Four Functional Fixes

I try to pay attention to security and privacy issues on the web, and also try to make my web browsing experiences hassle -free. Here are four tips that will help keep your online life running safely and smoothly.


1. Bypass mandatory registration on sites with free access like The New York Times. Go to bugmetnot.com and get a temporary username and password and avoid the hassle of registration. Doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's very helpful when it does.




2. Safely provide an email address using temporary email accounts, available from a variety of sources.





3. Conceal your password from hackers by following this great advice.







4. Evacuate PC dust bunnies by following these instructions. I cleaned my computer and was amazed by the performance improvement as well as how much quieter it became.

Toy Tuesday: The Next Generation

I've been fortunate to establish a relationship with Professor Susan Chuang at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, which is about an hour outside Toronto. Prof. Chuang runs an annual "Next Generation of Toys" contest in her Developmental Studies class, where about 200 students are challenged to create new toy concepts that are appropriate for children 0-24 months old.

My recent visit to the Guelph campus to see the toys being presented was both interesting and fun. In many respects, the students, who had no real background in toys, did a lot of things as well as toy industry veterans. In particular, there were some students who were excellent presenters and could have easily persuaded parents to buy their toys. Whether or not they could effectively persuade toy buyers, though, is another story, because the rules are quite different in that world.

The themes and play patterns among the dozens of toys presented met the course's objective of incorporating strong child development attributes. While there was a lot of repetition among the contestants, there were a few toys that really stood out with innovative form factors and play patterns, and that could be commercially viable. I'm excited to be following up with some of the students to explore opportunities to present their items to real toy companies, and am grateful to Prof. Chuang for her warm welcome. With some hard work and some luck, you may see some of these toys on the market some day.

Marketing Monday: Compelling Commercial

Entertaining. Eye opening. Effective.

Enjoy!

Marketing Monday: Benefits of Licenses

I'm a big believer in licensing and in pushing the boundaries of licensing for "commodity" type products, but a recent visit to a Walmart store in upstate New York left me somewhat perplexed.

I needed some vacuum bags for my old Eureka vacuum cleaner, and found that Walmart had two 4' sections of vacuum bags, each one with similar products, each one licensed, and each one with identical prices.

One section had 4 feet of Febreze branded vacuum bags from Home Care Industries Inc., with the claim that the product "eliminates odor and freshens as you vacuum". The other section had Arm & Hammer branded vacuum bags from Electrolux Home Products, marketed as "odor eliminating vacuum bags".

With identical pricing, both sections featured licensed products with identical consumer benefits. There were no generic vacuum bags available at all.

Obviously, both manufacturers are paying royalties to licensors, driving up the cost to Walmart and in turn to consumers. Vacuum bags are a low-involvement purchase and it's inconceivable to me that consumers would buy more bags or buy them more often because of the licenses. I fail to see how having two licensed brands and no generic product in a low-involvement category benefits Walmart, the consumer, or even the manufacturer. And even with two vendors in the category, Walmart's assortment still didn't include the bag size I needed, for which I eventually found a cheaper generic version elsewhere.

Can you explain Walmart's position in this category? Maybe it has something to do with their overall support of the Febreze brand and their close relationship with P&G. As someone who frequently develops products and programs for Walmart, I'm always interested in learning about how they strategize and plan their assortments.

Travel Thursday: Flying from US Border Cities

While I'm not necessarily an expert on the subject, I do closely follow airfares and deals, and am a big fan of checking US border city airfares against fares for flights from Canada. In fact, I was recently featured in this USA Today article on the subject:

With taxes, fees, and surcharges from Canadian airports, especially Toronto, being among the highest in the world, it often makes sense to fly from a place like Buffalo. Though there isn't nonstop service from Buffalo to a lot of US destinations, it's a particularly compelling option when direct flights are available. On the other hand, if I'm flying to a place like LA that has nonstop service from Toronto, I'm much more likely to fly from Canada.

My experience is that flights from Buffalo to any US destination are at least $100 less for a round trip than they are from Toronto, and that the ease of navigating through Buffalo airport (vs. Toronto Pearson) often means that it won't take any more time that it would from Toronto, even with the 1.5 hour drive from Toronto.

In order to save money, time, and aggravation, I'll continue to explore both Toronto and Buffalo options when traveling to US destinations.

Toy Tuesday: Barbie in the News - For Better or Worse

As always, Mattel and its Barbie product line are in the news, and as always, there’s a mix of positive and negative spin.

One of the very first product lines I ever worked on was The Barbie School Collection for Mattel Canada. It was a huge success at the time, and represented a real breakthrough in the “back to school” aisle with high quality TV-advertised product.

Barbie School Collection (Mattel Canada)

It’s good to see that Mattel Canada continues to run innovative promotions for Barbie, including their Barbie Academy that will be held next week in Toronto, featuring interactive stations that allow girls to "try on" different professions represented in the line including a surfer, veterinarian, race car driver, dentist, rock star and ballerina.

Barbie Academy (Mattel Canada, 2010)

Meanwhile, Business Week writes this month about Mattel’s foray into online sales direct to consumers, lauding the company for protecting its brand in an era where powerful retailers pose a rising threat with exclusive and private label products.

On the negative side, Baltimore’s ABC2 News presents a confusing report entitled “Black Barbie Sold For Less Than White Barbie”, in which they confuse a marked down black Teresa doll at an undisclosed Wal-Mart store with a full priced white Barbie doll. (For those who don’t know,Teresa is one of Barbie’s friends, and never sells as well as Barbie herself). The report outlines issues of “overcoming decades of racial and economic subordination”. It’s unfortunate that a marked down slow selling doll in one store causes this type of debate.

Marketing Monday: Banking by iPhone - Who Cares?

Most of the time when I see a TV commercial I can figure out the advertiser's objectives and strategy, but with CIBC's new commercials touting their iPhone app, I'm at a loss.

While Marketing 101 tells us that we should have a USP (unique selling proposition), CIBC's "the only Canadian bank to offer a mobile banking app for iPhone" may be unique, but I'm not sure that it's compelling.Who really wants to do their banking by mobile phone? Not me!

• It's difficult to find reliable statistics about iPhone penetration in Canada, but I'd be surprised if there are as many as 1 million users. Extrapolating from info provided by Rogers, the country's largest mobile provider, suggests that there may be even fewer.
• If someone doesn't have (or plan to have) an iPhone, would they think more favourably about CIBC because they are alone in offering mobile banking by iPhone?
• Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on prime-time TV advertising for a service that's likely to have such limited appeal?

This is one marketing program that presents me with more questions than answers, but maybe CIBC knows something that I don't.

Travel Thursday: Going the Distance to Save Money and Miles

Here's a simple but very useful tool for figuring point to point mileage (or kilometres). The Great Circle Mapper lets you enter two or more points, and it automatically provides distance between them. This is especially useful for figuring out frequent flyer mileage earning potential, or for pricing complicated round the world airfares with Star Alliance or oneworld.

It's not a tool that I use often, but it's sure helpful when I need it.

Web Wednesday: Life in Toronto

For a good selection of news about Toronto and beyond from a variety of different perspectives, I follow five RSS feeds, and they're required reading (or at least required skimming) for me every day:

1. The Star - reliable, predictable, and sometimes fun
2. The Globe and Mail - Toronto - some great content, but it's not updated as often as other sites, and the RSS feed doesn't provide good snapshots or summaries
3. National Post - Posted Toronto - a little off beat with points of view that are sometimes insightful and sometimes humourous
4. Toronto Life - a fascinating but often pretentious view of things that matter to some Torontonians
5. Torontoist - a slightly irreverant and somewhat quirky take on what's happening

RSS feeds that push content to my computer are very important for me to keep organized and on top of things. Don't know what is RSS? It delivers regularly changing web content (like this Playful Disposition) blog to whoever wants it! Read more about it here and let content come to you instead of looking for it yourself.

Toy Tuesday: Global Pricing -- Not in My Lifetime!

Richard Gottlieb, a toy industry veteran who writes the thought-provoking "Out of the Toy Box" blog for Playthings Magazine, asks "What is going to happen as consumers in various part of the world use their Internet connections to become savvy about retail prices around the world?" and wonders if the internet will ultimately force a sort of "global pricing".

As long as the world is made up of autonomous nations, I don't see global pricing or anything close to it happening in my lifetime.

Five reasons why:

1. Cost of running retail stores varies dramatically around the world. Wages, for example, are higher in Canada that they are in the US.

2. Countries like Canada and Sweden that have strong social welfare policies have higher taxes than places like China and the US, which ultimately impact product costs and in turn product prices.

3. Some markets (like the US) command economies of scale in everything from marketing to logistics, keeping costs and prices down compared to smaller markets like Canada.

4. Localization of some sort will always be necessary as long as people around the world speak different languages from each other.

5. Even if consumers can get better pricing from another country, the logistics and associated costs involved in moving products from one country to another are rarely worth the effort for the consumer.

Canadians are no strangers to shopping outside the country to look for better pricing. The term "cross border shopping" is a unique Canadian thing. If you ask any Canadian who has tried to order something online from a US retailer, you'll learn that many won't even ship across our border, and when they do, freight and duty charges mean that the "better" US price is no longer any better at all.

"Global pricing" is neither realistic nor desirable. Still, I'll continue to take advantage of deals I can get when I'm lucky enough to travel to places like the US and China.

Web Wednesdays: Creating Website Screenshots

Often, you want to save all or part of a webpage and the intuitive ways to do it (like "File/Save") don't get the job done. Here are some tips for easy ways to save images and more to your computer.


If you use Firefox, I highly recommend Screengrab! It's a Firefox add-on that lets you save visible part of window, the entire page, just a selection, or a particular frame of a webpage.

There are lots of other tools that also let you save screenshots. This list of 15 Ways To Create Website Screenshots shows you a lot of them.

Finally, when none of the tools seem to do the job, here's what I do:

1. On your keyboard, hit "Shift" and "Print Scrn"
2. Then do "Control C" to copy or "Edit/Copy"
3. Open a blank PowerPoint presentation
4. Do "Control V" to paste or "Edit/Paste"
5. Crop the image using PowerPoint's crop tool to get rid of extraneous junk.
6. Right click on the image in PowerPoint and select "Save as Picture".

Toy Tuesday: OK Go!

Today's Toy Tuesday entry reflects the interesting way that interesting stuff becomes a toy and can later take on a life of its own.Inventor Rube Goldberg's drawings depicted complex devices that perform simple tasks in indirect, convoluted ways and are now known as Rube Goldberg machines. One of the best known Rube Goldberg-like products ever is Milton Bradley's Mouse Trap Game, where players cooperate to build a complex mouse trap and then use the machine to trap their opponents' mouse-shaped game pieces. According to Wikipedia, "game designer Marvin Glass (and his company, Marvin Glass and Associates) refused to pay licensing fees or royalties to Rube Goldberg, despite Marvin acknowledging being inspired by Goldberg as well as the clear similarities between the game and a Goldberg drawing."

Today I received a Facebook post from Bill Goodwin of Goodwin Design Group with an incredible video that shows the idea of Rube Goldberg's contraptions taken to the next level. It demonstrates what can be done with an idea that's already proven to be great with adaptations that make it relevant and fun for today. Check it out here: This Too Shall Pass by OK Go.

Marketing Monday: Closing Ceremonies

As the Vancouver Olympics come to an end, it's likely that some of the great Olympics and Olympics-inspired advertising that's been running in Canada for the last few weeks will come to an end too. I recently wrote about official Vancouver Olympics merchandise and unauthorized "Olympics-inspired" merchandise. Some marketers have been active as official Olympic sponsors, while others have given us "winter sports competition inspired" advertising.

As someone who has done a lot of work on commercials for kids' products, I was very impressed with Wonder Bread's commercial and their accompanying website. They did a great job of making meaningful tie-ins with the Olympics and their product.

Wonder Bread commercial

Among the most patriotic Canadian commercials I've ever seen were some from a huge American multinational. Coca-Cola's commercials captured Olympic values and associated them with their brand.

Coca-Cola commercial

Air Canada's "Go Far" campaign has lots of Canadian spirit, and they've developed a campaign that has legs that will go beyond the Olympics.

Air Canada commercial

Of course, there are dozens of Olympic interlopers who don't have official sponsorship rights but have been capitalizing on the Olympics anyway. Interestingly, the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario), a government agency, is even doing it with in-store POP material and on their website:

LCBO website

Sad to see the Olympics end, but happy that the competition, entertainment, and even the marketing programs were around to show the great stuff that is Canada.

Travel Thursday: Toronto to New York Best Options

My travel to New York for Toy Fair this year went remarkably smoothly. After traveling to and from New York in mid-February for over 20 consecutive years, I have definitely had my share of snowstorms, canceled flights, delays, and hassles.

Two things made the trip go smoothly this year, and I'm sharing my experience so that others can benefit:

1. I flew on Porter Airlines from Toronto Island Airport (YTZ) to Newark (EWR) and avoided the expense and hassle associated with Pearson International Airport (YYZ). My trip from my home in Riverdale to midtown Manhattan was an amazing 4 hours door-to-door, and my return was about 5 hours.


2. I traveled to and from EWR with Airlink Shuttle. I had a lot of luggage and wanted to avoid the many stairs and escalators associated with taking the combination of airport monorail, NJ Transit, and a cab to my destination in midtown. For $18 each way, it was a wise decision. Even though the Airlink Shuttle made multiple stops, it was still faster and easier than taking the train from EWR, and far less expensive than a $75 taxi.

Web Wednesday: What's Your Type?

A fun article in The Globe and Mail directed me to four simple questions posed in a playful video by the English design firm Pentagram, where "you can finally hook up with the style of print for which you were destined."

According to The Globe and Mail, thousands of enthusiasts have taken Pentagram's What Type Are You? test, searching for the elusive connection between human character and stylized alphabetical shapes.

Visiting the site at www.pentagram.com/what-type-are-you, I took the test and learned that my typeface is Archer Hairline, "a modern typeface with a straightforward appearance but one that has tiny outbreaks of elegance and tiny dots of emotion only apparent on closer examination."

Archer Hairline

What type are you?

Marketing Monday: Focus Group Etiquette

Had dinner this week with a friend who works in consumer products marketing for a company that sells products through department stores. The company strives to have great partnerships with their retail customers. For upcoming focus groups where consumer will be comparing competitors' products against this company's products, they have invited their key retail buyers.

I was surprised when I heard about it, and as a marketer who likes to tell the truth to retailers in a controlled way, felt that this was a foolish and very high risk way to go. On the other hand, I recognize that in today's world of social media, successful communication between companies and their customers goes both ways.

What do you think?

Little Sponges

At the Kidscreen Summit in New York today, I attended a great presentation on media development for preschoolers by Stacey Matthias from Insight Research Group. Talking about preschoolers, she accurately pointed out that "For little sponges, all media is educational."

As gatekeepers, parents control the preschool content watched by their kids, and there are three ways they do it:

1. PROHIBIT inappropriate content
2. PERMIT entertainment (to keep their attention)
3. PROMOTE education + entertainment

For success in preschool programming, PROMOTING education + entertainment is key. While a lot of this seems obvious to those of us who work in the industry, Stacey did a great job of distilling and presenting it. I'm looking forward to the remainder of the conference over the next couple of days.

Travel Thursday: Veuillez répondre en anglais

Arthur Frommer's Europe on $XX a Day got me through my Europe backpacking trip when I was in university. I still like reading what he has to say, and enjoyed his recent observations on US entry requirements for foreigners.

"The new Electronic System for Travel Authorization, which went into effect last month, requires that those desirable foreign tourists who are permitted to enter our country without a visa (mainly from western Europe), will nevertheless have to send us an e-mail three days in advance of arrival requesting the right to come (see https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov). Such tourists are presented with numerous questions they must answer, which they can access in any of 20 different foreign languages. If they click the word "French," and receive the French-language translation of the instructions, they are then asked: "Veuillez répondre à toutes les questions en anglais" (Please respond to all questions in English). If they click the words "Spanish", they are asked: "Por favor reponda todo en inglés" (Please answer everything in English). And so on."

Frommer has more to say about it in his blog post. While Canadians visiting the US are increasingly faced with more stringest security requirements, we are fortunately exempt from the need for a travel visa.