underthespotlight The blogger phenomena T
oy World recently attended a workshop, held by miCommsPR’s Cody Crook and Emma Burgham, which looked at the use of social media in the toy trade. Cody and Emma shared with us how companies in the toy industry
can work with mummy and daddy bloggers, with recent examples including Flair’s successful Twitter parties for Jungle Junction and Tree Fu Tom. Also in attendance were
BinWeevils.com’s Yinka Akindele, Emma Hook from The Entertainer, and Hy-Pro’s Kishan Tosar. Having discussed the social media landscape, it became clear that it all comes down to determining what content is most appropriate for your target audience, and the channels which best deliver your message to them. For example, Emma Hook, online marketing executive at The Entertainer, told us why the toy retailer is looking into working with bloggers: “Mums trust other mums, and this puts them in a great position to offer a real and trustworthy opinion on our toys. We know this because lots of mums are keen bloggers and have embraced social media, and it’s a great way for friends to discuss how much they like certain toys.” Other brands, we discovered, benefit from other
forms of consumer endorsement. Kishan Tosar, marketing executive at Hy-Pro, told us how the company uses brand ambassadors to reach older children: “Sponsoring a team of riders allows us to continuously engage with our fans through video uploads, photos and competitions. Facebook and Twitter are great social media platforms for targeting the stunt scooter market.” Looking beyond the day at miCommsPR, John
Crane recently announced that the company is to reintroduce its Ambassador Programme which it ran in 2012. Amy Russo, John Crane’s PR and marketing assistant, said: “Bloggers have a great fanbase on their social media platforms that companies often can’t reach through their being too corporate.” The mummy blogger ‘phenomenon’ certainly got us all talking back at Team Toy World, so we decided to investigate the pros and cons of working with bloggers. It certainly has its attraction as a low-cost option, but low cost can equate to low quality – it usually involves working with amateurs , after all, however well intentioned. Here are a few things we discovered, plus a few points on what to look for – as well as what to look out for. DKL started using mummy bloggers last year, when the company launched its social media strategy. Toyin Oseni, DKL’s sales and marketing administrator, said: “We use around six bloggers a month on a rotating basis to reach our target audience of mums, and to build awareness of our brand.” I asked her what she looks for in the bloggers she works with: “We look for bloggers who do good reviews, not just a few lines – I could do that myself – and I always check first for how detailed they review products.” Toyin also pointed out: “It’s hard to measure how effective it is, but it’s good for our brand awareness.” miCommsPR uses a stringent list of criteria when
recruiting mummy bloggers, looking for interesting content, a strong social media presence, impartiality, and bloggers actively sharing competitions and reviews on high-traffic consumer sites such as Netmums and Money Saving Expert. Their reviews must also be relevant to their own family, not just about anything and everything. With this in mind, I asked Claire McCool, co-founder and marketing director at Drumond Park Games, about her communication strategy when using bloggers. She said: “As with any other media outlet, we target our approaches to our online contacts with extreme precision, so that their profile matches the appeal of each product. We check every blog for content and creativity before we work with them, and keep very complete and constantly updated information and analytics on each one of them, including the ages of their children.”
Although bloggers can help to enhance consumer communication for suppliers and retailers, as a trade title we have to ask ourselves whether mummy bloggers really are an appropriate marketing tool for communicating with the industry. While bloggers can have their strengths, there is no evidence to suggest they have had any success in business-to-business communication. Bloggers have even begun to attend trade shows,
but by the time the finished product comes out it has changed so much and the buyers have already made their decision. If you think about the lifecycle of a toy, from its conception to its purchase, at what point do you really want consumer opinion on the product? I would say it’s only as product hits the shelves that mummy bloggers come into their own, considering they are consumers themselves. Surely there is no major buyer in the country who would take into industry professionals utilising traditional focus groups instead, (should they require additional input into their decision making process)? Bloggers are consumers, so they come in at the end of the process long after a buyer has ordered or not ordered a product. I asked Claire McCool at what point in a toy’s
creative cycle she thinks bloggers have the most impact. She told me: “We only supply finished product to our mummy blogger and parenting website panels, and the timings are very carefully strategised to a particular month of the year or creative concept.” There is also the question of editorial integrity; staying impartial while working with a brand that gives you free product must not be easy for a blogger, with some companies looking specifically for mums who will write a “good” review. I recently watched a vlog of a mum reviewing a product, who recited a
Bloggers continue to polarise opinions in the toy trade, with many companies pondering “how”, “when” and even “if” to use them. Kayleigh Conway reports.
press release we have received in our own inboxes at Toy World, almost verbatim – so when you know a mum is reading from a script because she’s been given some free stuff or been treated to an all expenses paid day out, does this really carry any weight? This then throws into question the duty a blogger has to their followers to be upfront and honest. While it may not be a legal requirement in the UK for mummy bloggers to disclose they have received a product for free, I would argue this is the equivalent to a magazine running an advertorial, which, by law, magazines should disclose.
And what about the ‘mummy blaggers’? With a heavily saturated market of bloggers out there, miCommsPR told us a very interesting fact: 75% of Tot100 parent bloggers have received free products from a brand in the past year, and 82% say they want to work with brands. I’ll bet they do! Claire McCool, having whittled the list down from over 100 bloggers to around 40 “really top ones”, said: “We have only very rarely experienced cases of bloggers who ran nothing and were just after freebies – this is probably because all the arrangements we make are followed up very thoroughly, and it would be difficult for them to get away with it! Our bloggers have been selected because we like their writing style and presentation (a good proportion of them are journalists taking time off to have children), and we can rely on them to put honest, sensible and positive reviews together.” With more and more bloggers attending trade
shows alongside buyers and fellow journos, it would certainly be nice to see companies working with bloggers with a background in journalism or the trade; after all, to have the ‘average’ mummy blogger given the same status as a trained journalist is debatable. So should mummy bloggers be considered a valid
part of a toy company’s communication strategy? That is the question, for which we hope we have given you some food for thought. Of course, the use of bloggers and/or brand ambassadors, like a plethora of other decisions, is one for individual companies to make for themselves. What is most important to consider is relevance and suitability to your brands and products. In my opinion, while the use of bloggers can enhance your consumer communication, the quality of return is so unreliable that it should by no means be considered a replacement for other channels.
Toyworld 15
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96