From the business side of Hasbro comes an Ad Week article about their transformation into a modern toymaker and advertiser.
Details gleaned from the piece include:
The company has, during the last four years, incrementally grown sales by nearly $1 billion, hitting $5 billion in 2016 for the first time in its 93-year history.
Hasbro’s makeover has involved plenty of social, running ads and creating audiences on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat. What’s more, it’s ramped up its content game online and offline.
For the upcoming release of Transformer: The Last Knight movie, it’s working nationwide with Walmart to create experiential store tours as well as digital activations.
For social, Hasbro has largely focused on Facebook, and its seven core brands—Transformers, G.I. Joe, Nerf, Monopoly, My Little Pony, Magic: The Gathering and Play-Doh—have used a series of interactive campaigns to attract 20 million fans.
How do you think that Hasbro is doing with its overall marketing? Do you participate in Hasbro’s Facebook campaigns? Join the discussion on the 2005 boards!
Shin Densetsu
I think Hasbro is slow to adapt to the times when it comes to marketing, especially on social media. If they weren't, then most fans would be content going to Transformers.com, the TF FB/Instagram pages and Hasbro Pulse. Do they? No, fans instead come here.
News travels fast on the internet. They want more of a reach through social media? Reveal stuff we haven't seen before. Reveal stuff way ahead of schedule. Beat the Weibo leakers to the punch. Post an in depth look at a figure months before anyone overseas can even access a test shot and sell it on TaoBao. Don't wait until something is out to post a behind the scenes video. No, release a video months ahead to build up hype! For example, MPM Optimus. I bet we'll see John Warden or someone introduce it via video on Hasbro Pulse or the TF FB page 2 months after it's sighted at TRU.
Why not release a video about it….NOW while the hype is possibly at its zenith? Or maybe it's too late and a fan overseas already made a video and it's launching soon?
There's a reason why fansites like this drive more traffic and activity moreso than a corporate gimmick like "Ask Vector Prime". Weibo probably had more hits once someone leaked a test shot of Onslaught months back more than any of Transformers sites combined during "Reveal Your Shield".
Things don't seem to have changed much since the early 2000's honestly, hasbro marketing still strikes me as behind.
ZapRowsdower
It's this part that bothers me, though!
List of Transformers TV series – Wikipedia
I understand the Japanese studios butchered his "good" ideas, but without access to those actual ideas, I can only imagine how liberal they were. The fact remains that the cartoons MAY have been slightly better if they had stayed within the established G1 continuity, AND it's hard to argue against this being another new executive wanting to make a name for himself by REBOOTING a series.
Go ask Michael Bay.
Anyway, his bold move to RE-WRITE the entire G1 series…. well, it didn't work out. And the captain goes down with his ship; he does not sit around pointing fingers and taking no credit for the failures under his leadership.
Also, the NEW Hasbro struggles with fiction. The fact remains: the original G1 series was so good that it continues to influence and set the tone for future TF programming. Despite the immense success of G1 (both then AND now), Hasbro has historically (thanks to Archer) been against embracing its fictional origins. By that I mean how they COULD re-tell the G1 story (with tweaks), but that they always choose to re-write the series entirely, with few (if any) G1 pieces.
Compare this to Batman or Spider-man. Every TF series is arguably distinctive enough to be its own universe, whereas other popular franchises don't re-invent the wheel with every new generation. This can be likened to how Japanese software makers fell behind Western studios because they wasted so much time re-inventing their game engines for EVERY RELEASE. And, as already mentioned, you can also compare this to all Hollywood reboots – the director always feels compelled to re-tell/re-write the story to HIS TASTES, because he has the golden vision. Unfortunately, these reboots seldom succeed BECAUSE of the extensive re-writes.
If you take a risk, like Archer had, you can be wildly successful or horribly fail. He took a risk: we got Unicron Trilogy. I wanted to like it, I swear. But it's literally THAT BAD. And I guess the next important thing to say is that Archer didn't have any say, or a television set, at the time… but… I mean… you can't sell these toys to kids without a strong television program!
knoted
TLDR.
Regarding the article : Whatever.
I think they're doing relatively well – albeit, I would like them to remember this life lesson : Be Yourself.
Forcing oneself to stray so far from your roots is rarely a good thing.
Personal opinion : this world is already too reliant on all things digital and and if Hasbro would have less than one foot in the physical toy world left, they might regret losing sight of their toy origins.
RKillian
Don't confuse the abortion that was the anime with the toy lines that it was supposed to sell. It's great to have the classic characters back but lots of decent toys came out of AEC. Hasbro really struggles with fiction and that more than anything is what makes their push to become a media company so weird.
ZapRowsdower
After all, he was behind the wonderful Unicron Trilogy, so clearly this is an asset Hasbro is poorer for losing. I, myself, strongly regret we will not find out what happened to Kicker and Rad and…OOOOHHHH!!!! IT HURTS TO REMEMBER!!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!!
signals3
Hasbro cheaps out on paint apps, and makes a billion dollars, no wonder Archer left.
ZapRowsdower
Hmmmm… numbers!
I guess we can measure the growth, but can we measure the misses?
Certainly, it'd be interesting to get a good comparison between Hasbro and other toy makers (or companies, in general). 20 million fans/subscribers? Is that a good number or an average number?
I think, from the TF fan side of things, we've seen a lot of cost cutting and focus shifting (i.e. 1-steps), and we have some strong criticisms of those actions. That said, the new focus is indicative of a general decline… and possibly a positive shift in their strategy. But with artificial boosts from the movies (which look to be temporary and inconsistent), it's hard to say how well Hasbro is doing. And you can look at Hasbro from different points of view: their girl toys division is doing much better than the boy toys! And then there's the gaming division (both board games AND digital).
If anything, the growth is from Hasbro changing its focus and adapting to toy market changes (a good thing), but it doesn't necessarily help the TF brand in a relevant way. Therefore, I submit the idea that Hasbro's overall success is irrelevant to the success of the TF brand (our primary concern), in that Hasbro can succeed without TFs in the future (although, Bay's movies have clearly pushed the company up).
But if one were to invest in Hasbro over the long term, I think watching the gaming and girls toys segments are much more important than watching the spikes and drops from the TF side of things. And specifically with TFs, I think Hasbro needs to make the brand much more relevant than the occasional Summer explosions movie by Bay. Some suggestions: toy-to-life, collectible card games, more media adverts, more promo campaigns and tours, live-action TV programs with popular young actors/actresses (ask Disney which one sells better, Live-action or cartoon! ), etc.
AzT
News Post: Adweek: Inside Hasbro’s Digital Transformation Into a Modern Toymaker and Advertiser – Transformers News – TFW2005