Spin Master knows good marketing

The New York Times has a great article on the Spin Master toy company. It starts with how they marketed their newest (and now hit) toy by driving around to where the kids are and demonstrating the game in person. The game itself is innovative. You have these little plastic toys that roll into a ball. When you roll them over your playing cards, a magnetic interaction makes the toy pop open. It adds a bit of fun physicality to old-school card and dice based games. Spin Master has gotten very good at figuring out what type of marketing works for the type of toy and audience.

They pioneered an infomercial approach to selling toys to parents of kids. They’ve also figured out that a half hour cartoon based on their toys is a huge marketer - “content is king” as they say. And lastly, they’ve figured out that flooding the market with their toys is not the right approach. By limiting inventory, they create a treasure-hunt environment where kids hunt for toys, trade, and collect. To top it off, they’re a relatively small toy company, and they stay nimble by doing marketing in-house and by being open to product ideas that come from people outside the company.