SECTOR GUIDE SPECIAL: VIVID/DRUMOND PARK
Vivid’s marketing director Mary Wood tells Billy Langsworthy how Vivid and Drumond Park came to join forces and what it means for both fi rms
How did this merger come about? Vivid is always looking for new brand opportunities to strengthen its position, not only in the UK but on an international scale. We like to work across all sectors
in order to obtain a balanced portfolio and be able to off er our customers strong brands in all these sectors. Our experience with Crayola demonstrates that not only can we manage the high profi le licences, but we also know how to take a brand with heritage and build it into a long- term profi table proposition. We identifi ed we wanted to add another more stable, core business to our portfolio to help balance some of the more fashion infl uenced brands. When the opportunity to work with Drumond Park came up, we knew that it fi tted the bill.
What benefi ts does this merger bring Vivid? Drumond Park brings a really solid core business to Vivid and allows us to be a lead player in this sector. Drumond Park is a brand that has real heritage with games that run across Adult, Family and Children’s titles so it off ers a whole portfolio in a variety of price points.
What does it bring Drumond Park? Claire McCool and Sandy Duncan have worked tirelessly since the inception of Drumond Park. What they love more than
anything is developing new products and working on the creative side of the business. When you also have to work on the day-to-day operation of the business, it can detract from doing what is in your heart to do and this is one of the main reasons why the merger took place. Claire, Sandy and their team at Drumond Development will continue to do what they love most – i.e. develop products – while Vivid can focus on building the Drumond Park brand.
MATTEL
Joining Mattel’s top selling game brands like Scrabble, Pictionary and Uno this year is the fi rm’s new launch, Bounce Off . Bounce Off , supported with TV advertising, sees players turn over a challenge card to determine a pattern. They then race to recreate the pattern by bouncing balls into the grid. The fi rst to complete the pattern wins the card and
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the fi rst to earn three cards wins the game. 01628 500 000
Union J fans can also claim to
the independent trade still supported by the previous Drumond Park agent team. Behind the scenes, the Vivid customer service team is dealing with all order processing and management, and here at Vivid we have set up the Drumond Park showroom and recruited a new member into the marketing team – James Ratcliff e – to further support the brand. In order to maintain continuity,
and proceed with the great work being done on the PR side, we have retained the services of Ray Hodges from Langshot Communications.
know the most about the band by taking on the Union J Game (£9.99) or piece together the chiselled features of the group with the Union J Puzzle (£7.99). Vivid also has a range of
Peter Rabbit games and puzzles including oversized Game Cards (£3.99), a Vegetable Patch Dash game (£9.99) and a box of three Jigsaws (£4.99) containing puzzles of 12, 16 and 24 pieces and each shows the three starts of the show – Peter Rabbit, Benjamin Bunny and Lily Bobtail. Drumond Park is launching two new board games during the 2014
GREEN BOARD GAMES
Green Board Game’s best selling ten-second memory game BrainBox has been developed into a board game. The BrainBox
Board Game features 160 cards across eight different categories – including entertainment, sports and pot luck – and as players move around the
board, the aim is to collect one card from each category and return to the centre. There are also
squares where gamers can try and get more than one card, steal them from others and challenge a player.
01494 538999 September 51
What has changed logistically? Vivid has taken over all the day to day management of the Drumond Park business. All customers have now had their accounts re- established with Vivid and we are already delivering stock. From a customer perspective, their sales contacts remain the same – with Ross McDonald and Dave Howard continuing to front the national account business and
Can you talk through your portfolio? Vivid has a range set to get fans of One Direction and Union J foaming at the mouth. The One Direction Game (£19.99) sees Directioners test their knowledge of the band by either performing an action, carrying out a dare or answering a trivia question. The fi rst person to complete their game card and get the backstage pass wins.
pre-Christmas season in the form of Shout and LOGO Grab. Both will have their own TV ad campaigns, and each title benefi ts from a press, broadcast and online/ social media PR, promotional and sampling programme. Shout is a new team game that sees players shouting out answers to range of general knowledge questions, picture puzzles, word searches and acronyms. The centrepiece of the game is the specially created multi-use 60-second timer stand which displays the Challenge Cards to the ‘answerers’ and allows the ‘askers’ to see the answers and keep score. The latest game in the LOGO series, LOGO Grab, (£14.99) twists the classic LOGO gameplay as once each round’s nine card grid has been laid out, and four of the eight ‘letter dice’ provided have been rolled, everyone tries to match a dice letter with a LOGO card, but it’s the dice they lunge for, not the cards. Two of the dice have bells inside, and if the dice rings when it is shaken, the player loses a card. Finally, the Articulate For Kids board
game (£19.99) has had a makeover in content and presentation. 01483 44 9944
My favourite game…
Mary Wood, Marketing Director, Vivid
“Monopoly was a favourite at home but it would inevitably end in a fi ght as my brother would always cheat. But the fi rst game I can remember specifi cally asking for as a Christmas present was one called Treasure of the Pharaohs which I saw on TV and had to have. I think that could have been the start of my career in marketing and the lure of advertising.”
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