Retail event specialist Splatter Group thinks it can help toy retailers create a buzz around new products... by Lewis Tyler
FIELD MARKETING firm Splatter Group is taking its unique brand of retail events management to the toy industry – and is already preparing some top-secret events with toy companies.
Splatter describes itself as ‘an entertainment specialist field and online agency that helps raise the awareness of retailer products.’ Jonathan Dunnett, client director at Splatter Group, said: “We feel that the toy industry faces the same challenges that our current clients do – products and marketing need to be merchandised correctly to give sales every chance, we need to get messaging of the product out to
COUNTER INSURGENT
This month, something is bugging our mystery columnist. Dispatches from the retail front line...
The recent very high profile appearance of a Hexbug knock-off on The Apprentice
really did piss me off. In fact, I didn’t get annoyed with those idiots trying to outdo each other quite so much as the producers of the programme, who not only endorsed a substandard (crap) product, but kept banging on about how little the things cost. I bet you that all our customers now think a Hexbug cost us less than a pound and we are making a small fortune on each one we sell.
One thing it did do was
create a lot of excitement around the Hexbugs, but with very little sales. All I heard was “let’s go and look on the market.” Even a sign saying we only sold the original Hexbugs and did not stock cheap knock off products didn’t make any difference.
JUNE 2012
While I am sure that sales will come back, the longer-term damage is the perception that the public will have that we make a massive mark up on each one we sell. It wasn’t just the endorsing of knock offs that got to me, but they made it sound as if we all make
massive profits as retailers. As Del-boy says “No Income Tax, No VAT” and no bloody shop rent or rates either. What it does do is throw fuel on the fire for the ‘Rip Off Britain’ brigade. You would have thought that with so many big names going under in
recent years, the public would realise that most of every pound in the till goes towards anything other than my pocket. For trade in general, Moshi Monsters is flying and Monster High would be if we had it. The football season is over and now with the London 2012
Olympic Games to look forward to we have to wonder what effect it will have on trade for those outside of the event’s geographic reach. Hopefully it will create a buzz and a general feeling of goodness, which as we all know can lead to a little more spending.
stores and consumers and we need to ensure that each and every store we visit shows an increase in sales, which they do time and again through
training and
demonstration days. “We are very cost effective and can tailor campaigns to budget and we
provide what we feel is a fantastic service for this including online reporting tools and market intelligence. We are also very re-active to client’s needs and can turn on large scale campaigns within a few days.” Splatter offers services such as product training, promotional teams, merchandising, promotional tours, demonstrations, logistics, warehousing and focus groups, coupled with the online promotions, hubs and market intelligence. The company’s clients include big names from video games and technology industries like Namco, THQ,