Toy Movie Gold Rush!

In the halls of toy companies that have successful product lines there is a phenomenon occurring that has been driven by the runaway entertainment success of the Barbie movie. Toy brands have become the hot commodity that studios, streamers, producers, and creators are seeking to attach to. Something caught fire with the audience that brought them into theaters in big numbers to watch the story about the generational doll with the tiny feet.

With the financial woes and change disruptions that have recently been so frequent throughout entertainment, anything that seems to have additional success insurance associated with it will rapidly become the focus for investment and greenlight. Legacy IP, sequels, Animation-to-live action redux, spin-offs, and now toy brands.

Not just any toy brands, but those that have legs, big marketplace success, and/or multi-generational appeal. ?Generally, this can become very good news for the toy business as it has been going through hard times of its own. Getting these development and distribution deals has never been easier.

However...let’s not get the cart out in front of the horse. Big deals from big partners who show up at your door are very attractive, and for good reason. A major motion picture, episodic streaming show, big game, or any other major form of entertainment can raise the awareness of your brand and holds the potential of driving big increases in sales of the core product and expansion of your licensing program. It is also good optics. The Street loves announcements of big deals.

But, like all stories, getting exactly the success you seek is dependent on how well your story is crafted and how it performs in the marketplace. Doing a deal before you are prepared to understand how to shape that deal can have a huge impact on how effective and brand-driving the entertainment becomes.

You want the entertainment to be relevant and future-forward but in a way that fans of your toy brand recognize and feel further inspired to go deeper. To best understand how to find these perspectives with which to shape your deal and participate in the creative process, we look to the experiential narrative. These are the stories created by anyone who is playing with, or using, your toy brand. Kids imagine stories and build relationships with your toys through their play and through processing your characters and idea through their own storytelling engine. For that matter, so do adults who collect and use the toys and who play video games. With massively successful play brands, the experiential narratives mass up to shape a broadly shared story. It is powerful because it is quite personal and has included rich agency for the player.? Run counter to that story, or discard it altogether, at your own risk. Fans don’t take kindly to what feels like betrayal of play that has become deeply meaningful to them in their own stories. Get it right and even expand on it, and the upside can be equally large.

Mattel did a very credible job of working with the movie’s creators to bring the experiential narratives up front and center in the story. The movie is literally just that. Mattel also left lots of elbow room for the creators to make it fresh and of a singular vision.

What this suggests is that if you are a toy company, you should avoid simply partnering with a big name and turnover your brand for a carte-blanche development. I want to stress that big entertainment can reset the expectations and feelings about your brand. If that reset builds on what you have then it’s all upside. If it damages what your fans believe then it’s a problem.

For my clients, I always like to suggest doing some of their own internal narrative dives before agreeing to deals, to understand the exploration narratives and to get perspective on what makes any of it relevant for today’s audience. This is often where the evolution can and should happen. Even with beloved fan expectations, there needs to be constant evolution to maintain relevance for the widest possible audience.

I will close on another very significant consideration relative to the entertainment interest that is knocking on toy company doors. Deals such as those we are talking about here, always have associated costs in capital, management, and opportunity. We live in a rapidly evolving entertainment landscape that shows YouTube, Roblox, and other digital sandboxes pulling way out ahead in terms of kid-engagement. Hollywood hellos can be sexy, but be sure to evaluate the costs and ask yourself if a concerted and funded effort in the hot kid engagement frontiers might not be a stronger use of those costs that you will surely experience. There is real benefit to be had from movies, streaming and other forms, but unless you have strong efforts in the big kid-driving formats, you might want to approach the gold rush differently.

Cheers all, Kevin