Asia is certainly one of the fastest growing markets. Retail in Asia recently met with Peter Broegger, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Mattel Asia Pacific at the Shanghai Licensing Show to learn more about their branding strategies for the region and how they work with their own-brand products and licensed products.
Mattel has had a presence in Asia for many decades both as a manufacturer of toys as well as the marketing and licensing of consumer products. They are now looking at specific tailor-made approches to expansion in the region evolving from a pure toy company to one with a growing and very interesting portfolio of consumer products having licensed out their key brands and working with strong licensing and retail partners to offer babies, boys and girls a wide array of consumer products.
RIA: Mattel has a large manufacturing base in Asia. Can you elaborate further on your sales and marketing presence in the region?
PB: We have a deep-rooted and very committed relationship across the region and in key markets like China, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia from a manufacturing standpoint and have a small but very focused regional leadership team in Hong Kong as the regional hub for Asia. I lead the team and Claire Gilchrist leads our consumer products business for Asia. We have offices in Japan, Korea, China, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and India, and they then manage either their marketplace or their distributors across the region.
Another important piece of what we do is licensing brands. We work with partners like Disney where we bring consumer products to the marketplace.
RIA: Do you have different approaches in how you market to the consumer in Asia or do you adopt an international approach?
PB: One size will never fit all. One of the most important things we need to do is step back and look at the importance of play and what role-play takes in the development of a child. Research shows that play is an integral part of any development and if a person is to reach his or her full potential you need to have an engagement of play. It’s the lens through which children see the world. And this is also our corporate philosophy and mission – “Creating the Future of Play”. That is very universal.
When it comes to the parenting piece of the equation, Asian parents tend to be looking at the functional benefit as opposed to just pure play. They would like their toys to teach their children. We are well positioned to respond to this rooted concept amongst parents in Asia.
RIA: What brands do you have currently and how do you promote these brands in different markets? And how do you make your products locally relevant?
PB: We exhibited a little bit of everything on our booth at the Shanghai Licensing Show. We have the brands that we have given birth to: Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher Price, which we continue to grow and expand and we have products like Max Steel and Monster High that are newer brands to our portfolio.
A few years ago, we launched Monster High developed by designers inside Mattel. We asked ourselves, how do we go out and make this more than just a toy? How do we make it a brand? How do we make it a franchise? As a result, Monster High has been probably the most successful new launch in the toy business for a very, very long time. We took that experience and adopted it for Max Steel, which is a phenomenal brand in Latin America and has strong growth in Asia.
RIA: How do you make the toys and the consumer products look more universal?
PB: As they make their way around the world, quite often the toys are very alike. We have the benefit in this part of the world of developing specific product lines for consumers in China and in Asia.
RIA: What is your retail strategy and do you do your own social media campaigns?
PB: Everything has a 360-degree approach. We look at what are we doing to support the brand and what are we doing to get the message across. For Fisher Price there is advertising to Moms. We don’t want to advertise Hot Wheels the same way we advertise Fisher Price. Still, Moms are an incredibly important piece of the equation. So, take Fisher Price as an example. You would want to advertise to the moms both traditionally and with social media and websites. We have Fisher Price Malls, online malls and online sites. But when you come to the in-store environment we would build our in-store presence, even in-store theatres, to tell the consumers what this is all about.
RIA: Mattel is also launching dedicated stores for your major brands. Is this also your strategy for Asia?
PB: We’re just rolling out a new series of Barbie shops across Asia. In Japan, we have rolled out 12 new Fisher Price stores within Toys-R-Us. Our licensing partners and our retail partners are playing a very important role to help us round-off our complete formula – that is, our holistic approach in creating the best well-rounded experiences for our consumers.
RIA: You have moved into pre-teen fashion such as Barbie t-shirts and apparel. Is this a new trend?
PB: Recently, we have signed a deal with Li & Fung, and since then we have worked together to develop a whole new line of apparel for Barbie – targeting young girls and young adults. They are so trendy and style is the new currency for young kids. As we are rolling out Barbie concept stores at major department stores across China – both in tier-one cities and also in tier-two cities, this new Barbie apparel line is getting really good feedback from our customers. This clearly has been one of our recent success stories in terms of strengthening our consumer product business here in Asia and China.
RIA: Regarding your licensing business, how do you police the copyrights? Asia is notorious for counterfeits.
PB: We spend a lot of time and a lot of resources protecting our brands. I don’t think you can hire enough lawyers to protect them. It keeps popping up in places where it’s not supposed to pop up. We work with the authorities and with our legal teams to clamp down on those who infringe on our intellectual property. We also work quite often with our competitors in making sure that we communicate the importance of safe toys and the importance of safe products to the consumer. A lot of what we do is educating consumers.