Q&A: Spin Master Executive Talks Retail-tainment

Jeffery Cunningham is a senior vice president and team lead for Spin Master, the Toronto-based toy manufacturer. After graduating from Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, he started his career with Sears Canada, then went to Vita Health Products, the Canadian pharmaceutical and nutraceutical company.

He joined Spin Master in 2009 and has been leading the six-person team in Bentonville since 2012.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal at Spin Master’s toy-laden office, Cunningham talked about the importance today of ecommerce, digital engagement and “retail-tainment.”

What exactly is retail-tainment and how is it used to sell toys? 

 “Retail-tainment is simply the concept of adding entertainment to the retail experience. For Spin Master and our partnership with [Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville], it’s bringing the toy to life, physically and in-store, as well as online, in digital spaces and on social media, to really create an entertainment experience for the customer.

“It’s very different marketing, merchandizing and presenting toys than items in other consumer product categories. While parents and kids are motivated to purchase toys with different considerations, requiring discretionary income investment, it is important to deliver a quality product and deliver on the promise of fun and entertainment. In order to really engage the consumer on what this item is and its promise to the child, who will ultimately be interacting with it, you need to bring the toy to life. We do this through traditional investments in TV commercials and radio and print, but also through executions in store that present that toy in a way that the customer understands what it’s going to deliver as an experience in the home.

“Walmart is one of the best at this sort of thing, and doing it in a way that is really interesting and engaging and fun. They do a great job of synthesizing information that is being delivered to them through content and creating stories that are relevant to their customers. It can be done in many different ways, like dioramas, video shelf talkers, pallets, end caps and video engagement pieces.

“Will the toy surprise and delight a child? Is it on trend with what this child is looking for or with what this child’s interests are? All these elements in the retail-tainment space are designed and implemented to help the customer answer these questions about a particular toy.”

You’ve talked about the importance of in-store presentations. Is it important for both suppliers and retailers to have a strong online presence as well?

“Absolutely. No doubt that is critical, because that is how mom is shopping today. She’s shopping in both the physical and online worlds. In some cases she’s doing it simultaneously, where she’s ordering online, or she’s checking out items online and how consumers are feeling about the product and how the product is resonating in the marketplace before she buys in store.

“And it’s really important that you have an omnichannel presentation to mom so she feels as though it’s one store. It’s one story. It’s one experience.

“With ecommerce, it’s also really important, and a unique opportunity for Walmart, to help customers connect the purchasing experience with the delivery experience. Walmart offers customers an opportunity to buy online and pick-up in store. They can also buy online and ship from store. Or they can buy online and have it delivered to them if they achieve a certain value in the shopping basket. So they have a lot of different options for their consumers, to help them to make the most of their trips online and their trips in store.”

What have you found to be the biggest difference between selling toys and selling pharmaceuticals?

“One of the biggest differences is that in pharmaceuticals, your product range is pretty static. You may have 5-percent innovation, in terms of new products that come into the line every year. In the toy industry, you are changing your product range by almost 50 percent every single season. That has slowed down a little bit with regard to the spring season, but you still have practically a complete changeover in product every year, just to keep up with trends in products for kids: changing interests, changing themes and changing technologies. It’s a massive challenge.”

How do you keep up with these rapidly changing trends?

“Spin Master has seven innovation centers around the world. We pull from all the technologies that are available all over the world — the Far East, Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa — and then we bring all of that thought, all of those ideas, all of those concepts, into an innovation funnel. We ask, how would you commercialize that? Does that fit with something we are currently doing today?

“We also do a ton of research with kids and moms. We’re constantly working with kids and working with moms, and constantly talking to them, watching kids play and understanding play patterns and what they value in a toy to deliver on a great play experience. We’re also very much involved with research into global trends, what’s happening in other markets, so we can anticipate things that are happening with kids in North America or Europe or wherever.

“One of the things that l love the most about Spin Master is that if we don’t have a brand platform that a toy naturally fits into, we will continue to pursue, if we think kids will think it’s cool, and mom will approve. Spin Master has done an amazing job preserving its entrepreneurial spirit. Its vision is to ‘Make Life More Fun,’ and so if we have a really novel, fun idea, we’ll figure it out in some way. And we have terrific relationships with the inventor community. Over 3,000 inventions are presented to us from independent inventors every single year. Generally speaking, not all these ideas are fully formed and ready to market, so through significant collaboration we make tweaks and work with the inventors on their ideas to make them commercially viable. The inventor may have an awesome idea and we’ll make it even more awesome in partnership.

“A great example of this is Zoomer, which was originally an idea for a robotic dump truck presented to us by two amazing inventors. And through significant collaboration it evolved into a robotic Dalmatian puppy. It has been a huge success.

We develop our own ideas, and we crowdsource others, and pursue all cool ideas no matter where they come from.”