New TrendHunter Report for Members: Pop-Ups and Brand Events

January 30, 2018 | TrendHunter.com’s latest free monthly report for Toy Association members explores how engagement marketing strengthens a brand’s presence and relationships with consumers.

“In today’s marketing world, it’s important to cut through the clutter and find innovative ways to connect with consumers,” says Anne McConnell, senior director of market research & data strategy at The Toy Association. “This new report gives toy companies a sense of how brands, both within the toy industry and in other industries are creatively reaching – and interacting with – customers and fans.”

The following trends are highlighted in the report:

• Toy Activation – Toy brands are marketing their products via targeted pop-up stores. With adult consumers highly receptive to interactive marketing, it is only fitting that the interactive nature of toy stores is packed into more personalized experiences to better market to children. Primo Toys’ coding pop-up encourages kids as young as three years old to hone their coding abilities.
• IRL-stagram – Brands are creating experiences explicitly tailored to be social media-friendly – recognizing the increasing importance consumers place on their digital image, but also to increase their own social presences. The Museum of Ice Cream in Los Angeles featured suspended bananas, melting popsicles, life-sized gummy bears, and an interactive pool of sprinkles visitors can dive into, making for an experience too colorful not to photograph.
• Exploratory Hospitality – Tourism and hospitality brands are leveraging the low cost of virtual reality pop-ups to communicate their value in a visceral way. Travel mobile apps, such as “See Thru Thailand,” promotes tourism in the country by allowing users to compose pictures that combine real scenes with virtual reality and augmented reality content to give users a new perspective of the country.
• Activating Personalized – Brands are hosting pop-up experiences that invite customers to co-create custom products. Doing laundry is not the first thing that people think of when attending a pop-up store for a luxury scarf brand, but that is exactly what Hermes offered in a temporary establishment under the moniker “Hermesmatic.” Shoppers picked a color and a dyeing program on a machine in order to customize their scarves and put them in a special dryer for a personalized end product.
• Escapist Event – Brands are tapping into millennials’ wanderlust. To celebrate the launch of its Steak Doubledilla, Taco Bell Canada teamed up with Airbnb to treat one lucky fan and three friends to a one-of-a-kind “SteakCation.”

This value-added report is the latest in a series from the research company offering in-depth perspectives and trends in various areas related to the toy industry. For additional relevant trends, toy companies may click on the report’s consumer insights examples, scroll down, and click on the images for further information.

Next month’s report will explore kid-friendly branding. Members are encouraged to send topic suggestions for future trend reports to The Toy Association’s Anne McConnell.

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