Have you gone through kids products lately, especially their books and toys?
My brother and bhabhi recently picked up 4 imaginative, interactive products for our 2 yr old niece and 8 yr old nephew.
These kids products were utterly simple and common sensical, yet not that common. Their obvious appeal, while also checking off the educational aspect, got me thinking.
How did these creators manage to consistently create educational, informative products for a TG like kids, notorious for having attention spans of a goldfish, or less?
Any of us who have spent any length of time with a child, especially toddlers, would know how difficult it is to keep them entertained and engrossed WHILE teaching them invaluable life skills.
If we can pick up some of these lessons and apply them to the creation and marketing of other products, I am sure it would work wonders for our offerings.
Let me share my learnings from not just seeing these kids products in action but also from my interviews with experts from the industry i.e. Rashi Gandhi, Founder, Cocobear and Sharat Chandra Kondela, MD and CEO, Butterfly Edufields
8 Marketing Lessons from Kids Products Industry
1. New product development? Listen to the Experts first, TG later
Sharat’s Butterfly Edufields makes innovative educational solutions for children. He said that, usually, the starting point for new product development is interaction with and active listening to the Experts of the field or as I like to think, Decision Influencers of the TG.
For e.g., if Butterfly Edufields is working on the next line up of STEM related toys and solutions for middle school kids (The Users), they will first listen to the needs professed by the teachers, coaches, parents (The Experts).
These Experts will share concepts they find difficult to explain and those become a starting point for Sharat’s team to figure out a solution in the form of games and toys.
This took me by surprise. Conventional marketing wisdom says speak with the customer/ user. Understand your TG’s pain point and then work on a solution.
But what if there is hidden gold in first identifying the set of people influencing your TG’s decision and speaking with them before you even approach the TG?
You may be surprised to spot such an expert or influencer in indirect competitors of yours.
Let’s take a tea brand for example. Indirect competitors would be non-alcoholic drinks or nutrition experts (who might say “don’t have tea, have smoothies”). So before you develop your next set of innovative teas, you may want to speak with a nutrition expert and understand what would make them give “tea” the same level of recommendation as a “green smoothie”?
There is scope for more businesses, even B2B businesses, to follow this approach during product development.
Of course, it also depends on your industry. If you are in an impulse buying industry, you may need to focus mainly on the User. But if your offering is a planned purchase, then you may want to see if there are any experts or influencers who can help you design a much more robust solution.
2. Packaging and product should be designed for the User
When Rashi Gandhi from Cocobear works on a new kids book, she is very clear that even though the concept and research will come from the Experts and the Buyers; the packaging and final product shall be designed keeping mainly the User in mind.
Cocobear has a series of safety books that have a lot of concepts around body safety for little kids. So the content is critically important and a bit heavy but the whole format is very easy to take in. It is in a comic book format which kids generally enjoy reading. It also has activities in it so that a child will not just learn but ENJOY in the process.
3. Start the concept stage with what you want the end user to achieve
This learning is also a part of Design Thinking. Before you craft the concept for a new product or service, first think of what you want the end user to achieve from that concept. Everything will flow more seamlessly from that.
E.g. This is called Busy Book for toddlers. As the name reveals, the aim of the book is to keep the toddler HAPPILY busy.
Another e.g. if you are thinking of new concepts for microwave ovens, you may define your end user’s expected reaction thus ‘I want the end user to find this microwave so simple yet necessary that she uses it as intuitively and frequently as she would a spoon. Without worrying about possible side effects’.
4. Aim for FUN and INTERACTIVITY. You will earn ‘Engagement’ as a by-product
Look at this book. It did not need to add the magic light and ‘find the dinosaur’ in the book. Words and illustrations might have been enough. But they consciously aimed for something to add a fun quotient and interaction within an already interesting book. This earned them quite a bit of engagement. Nice by-product to have, right?
This lesson is more crucial for industries normally never associated with fun or interaction or engagement. Like B2B industry or industrial products.
Say you are selling heating systems to commercial buildings. Suppose you consciously aimed to bring in some element of FUN and INTERACTIVITY. That may spark off ideas such as giving graphical, vivid looking temperature options like ‘Light Snowfall’ or ‘Beachside Sun’ or ‘Breezy Garden’ in the accompanying app.
With accompanying GIFs and sounds.
Throw in some mood lighting integration, for FUN. If you select Beachside Sun setting for the HVAC, the mood lighting around the vents changes to warm daylight glow. Works, right?
5. Aim for Zero Side Effects
Any brand making kids products takes extra care about every single raw material (e.g. BPA free plastic) used. They try to ensure it is not going to have any side effects on the child, today or in future. They will be extra cautious about every aspect of design (e.g. no sharp edges, cannot be swallowed) to ensure it will not harm the child irrespective of how they play with it.
This approach, if adopted by any brand in any industry, will give it a unique value proposition, different from everyone else. All you have to do is evaluate every single element that goes into making up your service or product to ensure it is not going to have any toxic or long term negative side effect.
Lesser, the better (in case of such elements).
Is it any wonder that brands like Plum have been making a dent in personal care products by talking of ‘Nasties Free’ products?
6. Activate as many Senses as possible
Look at this book for toddlers. It not only has visuals but also has sound and touch.
Almost all kids products activate multiple senses and that is what makes them educational, engaging, engrossing.
Irrespective of your industry or product, if you actively ponder over ways to render your product or service idea in a way that activates as many of the 5 senses as possible, you will land with a true innovation.
Let’s go back to the example of a tea brand. Tea has traditionally been about smell and taste. Now we are seeing a growing number of teas innovating with ‘Sight‘ such a ‘blue tea’, ‘pink tea’, ‘bubble tea’.
Harney and Sons try to capture an additional sense i.e. the sense of Touch by offering ‘Bubble Tea DIY Kits’.
7. Reduce points of distraction or disengagement
If despite your best efforts, there is no scope to incorporate fun or interaction in your offering; you must at the very least work towards identifying all points of distraction.
As Sharat from Butterfly Edufields explained, during the pilot phase, they give their prototypes to children and observe how they are playing with it. They keep an eye out for the points where the child starts getting distracted or disengaged and then make an effort to reduce these points as much as possible.
This would work especially well in B2B products or services where every touchpoint or interaction can be broken down, documented and studied.
Normally, we think ‘value enhancement’ means ‘value addition‘. But innovation can also happen when we ‘subtract or delete’ in order to create value.
8. Raw materials can also be a source for new product ideas
Last marketing lesson I gleaned from the kids products industry is that even raw materials can be a source for new product ideas. Sharat explained that sometimes launch of a new material can also become the inspiration for new toys.
Raw materials can often be overlooked since they are ‘raw’ and buried within numerous processes. But no harm dusting them off and looking at them to spot innovation opportunities.
Raw materials would cover any input that goes into the backend of your final offering to the customer, be it the product, packaging or creation of the experience, etc.
Done. This covers the main learnings according to me that the kids products industry has for marketing.
You may also find it interesting to hear the discussion I had on this topic with fellow speakers on Mentza. You can hear it here.
