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Toy Trade: The Next Generation

Richard Gottlieb -- Gifts and Dec, 3/3/2011 6:28:57 AM

RICHARD GOTTLIEB is president of Richard Gottlieb & Associates LLC.IN SEARCH OF THE BEST, THE BRIGHTEST... AND THE YOUNGEST The next time you are at a toy show, look around. What is the average age of the people you see? There's no way to actually know without checking I.D.s, but it seems to me there's an absence of people who are fresh out of college.

DON'T GET ME WRONG, I AM ALL FOR EXPERIENCED PEOPLE. I'M ONE OF THEM. In general, if a person has experience they are more patient and better educated about their products, industry and themselves than people coming right out of school. They are also, however, further removed from childhood. If you are in the atomic energy business, this is not an issue; if you are in the toy business, it may be.
Doesn't an industry based on creating wonder need those who still feel some of it, remember it, miss it? Don't we need fresh eyes to see what we are missing and creative minds to create products that fill the void?

Why Youth Matters
     Remember Scrabulous, the game that Hasbro would like to forget? It was the brain child of brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. A virtual game played on Facebook by millions, it was also a blatant copy of Scrabble.
     It was in many ways similar to a video game version of Scrabble that was marketed at the same time by EA under license from Hasbro. It was, however, far more popular. Because it was played on a social network site, anyone could play anyone else anywhere in the world at any time. About half a million people played the game every day.
     Why was Scrabulous so much more popular than the EA version? Because these two young men knew that their generation wanted to use the game to socialize as much or more than to compete. They included the ability for players to communicate with each other via typed messages as they played.
     The Agarwalla brothers knew something about their generation that Hasbro and EA did not.
     At the time I wrote, "smart toy manufacturers are going to have to make sure that they have people on their payroll who don't just understand the Internet but who live on it and breathe its virtual air. In short, toy manufacturers need to find the ‘pirates' before the ‘pirates' find them. Once found, co-opt them by employing them.
     If manufacturers do that, they have the makings of an organization that protects its own by g iving this new generation of consumers what they want, how they want it, when they want it, before someone else does."

Can't Get There From Here
     Since writing these words and more on the challenge of finding younger people, I have received numerous responses from people who are frustrated about the challenge of finding a job in the toy industry. Here is what one person wrote:
     "There are simply no positions for entry level designers/marketers in the toy industry. [...] These companies demand 3+ years experience, and most of the time they don't even let you submit a portfolio sample. How can they tell how good or bad I am if I can't even show you what I am capable of? Just because I'm not employed yet doesn't mean I don't understand the industry or don't have good ideas.''
     As we move beyond the Internet to multiple platforms for play and an even more wired generation on the way up, we need to employ these people before they lose their sense of what is current.

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