A Dealer's Take on Marketing to Kids
SDavid
Posts: 1,584 ✭✭
This was taken from bob brill's blog at kckings.com. Note that it wasn't taken by Brill himself.
KIDS ARE NOT WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR IN HOBBY TV ADS
THE FOLLOWING IS AN EDITORIAL AND WE WELCOME EDITORIAL RESPONSES FROM RESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS. EMAIL US AT brillpro@prodigy.net if you wish to respond. Thank you,
Bob Brill
Publisher
The Brill Report
First of all before you start throwing things at me let me state “I love kids” and if you ever come into our hobby store you will generally leave believing we are one of the best places a kid would ever want to be. We treat them very well. So when I start talking about how we need more than kids and how the powers which be in big league sports licensing want to talk about targeting nothing but kids, don’t start throwing rocks.
The fact of the matter is very few people who live in those ivory towers at MLB, MLBPA, NBA, NHL and NFL have ever been in a hobby store let alone understand the dynamics of the business at the street level. Don’t get me wrong. Some have been in a hobby store. None have ever worked in one or owned one. There may be a few suits who’ve been there but they went over to the other side once the corporate paycheck was cashed.
You are going to see lots of TV commercials (Finally after years of pushing for this!) from the powers that be. These commercials have a fun, nice little focus attempting to get kids, youngsters involved in collecting trading cards. Nice idea but money NOT well spent. What gets kids excited about trading cards is the same thing which gets adults excited about trading cards --- value!
When do non-collectors even think about trading cards?
1. when they hear of a card selling for $10,000, $25,000, $85,000 or even $1 million.
2. when some scumbag dealer rips off some little kid of his Babe Ruth card his grandfather left him by giving him $20 for the $3000 card.
That’s it. Not much else gets their attention. So having Alex Rodriguez talking about how he collected trading cards or whatever isn’t going to get their attention. Having Alex Rodriguez tell them how he plays Baseball on his video game will get them very excited. Kids love video games because they do stuff. Baseball cards don’t do stuff. They do nothing.
Except they do, do something for the collector. And who is the collector? He is the guy or girl with what I believe is a “collecting gene.” No one has done a study on this but if they did I really believe they will find a gene which causes people to collect stuff. We used to call them pack rats. Today we are collectors.
Put it this way; If a kid’s room is very messy but he knows exactly where that yellow marble with the small chip on it is, behind the half painted toy soldier in a little brown box in the third drawer down where he keeps his sox --- that kid will be a collector. I guarantee it.
Now if the kid is neat, his room is in order, and he throws trash away? Well he won’t be a collector. He may be a speculator and make more money than any of us by collecting pictures of dead presidents, but he won’t be a collector.
This is because collectors are born, they are NOT made. You can’t make someone collect if they aren’t a collector. They may join the fray under pressure from their friends but they’ll bring those cards back in later on and try to sell them. They don’t want them and will likely take pretty much anything for them.
Now let’s get back to the Powers that Be at the big league level. They are well meaning folks but until they realize the way to bring people and kids into the hobby is to talk about values; the dollars they are spending will be fruitless. They are requiring the manufacturers to spend millions on kid promotions and killing these card companies by limiting the brands with a lot of the brands being “kid friendly” cheap packs.
Folks, the kids don’t want cheap packs! They want value. If they can’t pull something cool they won’t be back, unless they are already a collector and in that case you don’t have to spend too much money to keep them coming back. If you want new collectors you need to emphasize value.
The state lotteries realize this. When do people buy lotto tickets who don’t buy them regularly? When the jackpot is enormous is the answer. The same principle applies to cards, to new fads, to gaming products, new trends in clothing. It is all about value and to a certain extent image. You gotta be cool, you gotta look cool, you have to have it because it’s cool therefore making you cool.
And in the same breath why are you spending millions on getting kids into collecting? Adults are who is keeping the industry going and alive. Adults who spend hundreds of dollars a week. Sure the collecting base is getting older and we need new blood. New blood needs to come from adults with disposable income who are not collecting now. Target them as well as kids and you bring in the mix.
As a hobby store owner I have some children who collect sports cards. We have few who collect gaming cards because we don’t target them. We lose out on some cash by not catering to gaming but we chose to concentrate on our adult and young adult (in that order) sports card collectors.
If we did wholesale gaming with tables and tournaments my adult sports collectors would stop coming. They did during the Pokemon days and it took us a long time to get them back. They want to collect and collecting with kids isn’t their cup of tea for the most part. That is unless the kids are well behaved and collectors as well. Then they are very appreciative and will pass on their knowledge of collecting to the younger age group. We see it all the time.
Spend a lot of that TV money on attracting adult collectors who want value. There are a lot of “fans” out there who previously collected cards. Winning them back with mainstream TV ads is important. To be honest no hobby store can survive and make an honest living catering to mainly to kids buying inexpensive packs of sports cards. If we don’t sell $1000 a day on the average we won’t be around for very long, and you don’t get that selling $1.29 packs of cards.
I have for years heard from licensors all about “little Johnny collector.” There is no “little Johnny collector.” He is a figment of your imagination, he does not exist. What exists is every kid under the sun. They ride skate boards, they fantasize about girls, they steal, they play sports, they eat candy bars and swallow bubble gum, they try to curse and be macho and in today’s world more often than not they spend way too much time getting, expecting to get but not nearly enough time giving. They are savvy on the Internet, they play video games and they talk a language most parents couldn’t figure out if they tried.
In short, they are kids just like the kids 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago. There is one exception however; technology. You can’t compete with technology in the trading card business and technology doesn’t even work in trading cards, it’s been tried.
What you can do is to appeal to what motivates every person in the world; the Dream! The Dream to be the best player in the world, the Dream to make it in Hollywood, the Dream to be an Astronaut. Dare to DREAM you can pull the greatest card in the world. The cut autograph of Babe Ruth or a piece of Mickey Mantle’s jersey or even a card signed by Cal Ripken.
These are the things kids need to hear if you want them to collect trading cards. Talk about value, talk about something concrete and yes in the trading card business Dreams are concrete. There is a much better chance of you buying a box and pulling a Babe Ruth autograph than there ever is in winning the lottery.
Put it in perspective.
KIDS ARE NOT WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR IN HOBBY TV ADS
THE FOLLOWING IS AN EDITORIAL AND WE WELCOME EDITORIAL RESPONSES FROM RESPONSIBLE INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS. EMAIL US AT brillpro@prodigy.net if you wish to respond. Thank you,
Bob Brill
Publisher
The Brill Report
First of all before you start throwing things at me let me state “I love kids” and if you ever come into our hobby store you will generally leave believing we are one of the best places a kid would ever want to be. We treat them very well. So when I start talking about how we need more than kids and how the powers which be in big league sports licensing want to talk about targeting nothing but kids, don’t start throwing rocks.
The fact of the matter is very few people who live in those ivory towers at MLB, MLBPA, NBA, NHL and NFL have ever been in a hobby store let alone understand the dynamics of the business at the street level. Don’t get me wrong. Some have been in a hobby store. None have ever worked in one or owned one. There may be a few suits who’ve been there but they went over to the other side once the corporate paycheck was cashed.
You are going to see lots of TV commercials (Finally after years of pushing for this!) from the powers that be. These commercials have a fun, nice little focus attempting to get kids, youngsters involved in collecting trading cards. Nice idea but money NOT well spent. What gets kids excited about trading cards is the same thing which gets adults excited about trading cards --- value!
When do non-collectors even think about trading cards?
1. when they hear of a card selling for $10,000, $25,000, $85,000 or even $1 million.
2. when some scumbag dealer rips off some little kid of his Babe Ruth card his grandfather left him by giving him $20 for the $3000 card.
That’s it. Not much else gets their attention. So having Alex Rodriguez talking about how he collected trading cards or whatever isn’t going to get their attention. Having Alex Rodriguez tell them how he plays Baseball on his video game will get them very excited. Kids love video games because they do stuff. Baseball cards don’t do stuff. They do nothing.
Except they do, do something for the collector. And who is the collector? He is the guy or girl with what I believe is a “collecting gene.” No one has done a study on this but if they did I really believe they will find a gene which causes people to collect stuff. We used to call them pack rats. Today we are collectors.
Put it this way; If a kid’s room is very messy but he knows exactly where that yellow marble with the small chip on it is, behind the half painted toy soldier in a little brown box in the third drawer down where he keeps his sox --- that kid will be a collector. I guarantee it.
Now if the kid is neat, his room is in order, and he throws trash away? Well he won’t be a collector. He may be a speculator and make more money than any of us by collecting pictures of dead presidents, but he won’t be a collector.
This is because collectors are born, they are NOT made. You can’t make someone collect if they aren’t a collector. They may join the fray under pressure from their friends but they’ll bring those cards back in later on and try to sell them. They don’t want them and will likely take pretty much anything for them.
Now let’s get back to the Powers that Be at the big league level. They are well meaning folks but until they realize the way to bring people and kids into the hobby is to talk about values; the dollars they are spending will be fruitless. They are requiring the manufacturers to spend millions on kid promotions and killing these card companies by limiting the brands with a lot of the brands being “kid friendly” cheap packs.
Folks, the kids don’t want cheap packs! They want value. If they can’t pull something cool they won’t be back, unless they are already a collector and in that case you don’t have to spend too much money to keep them coming back. If you want new collectors you need to emphasize value.
The state lotteries realize this. When do people buy lotto tickets who don’t buy them regularly? When the jackpot is enormous is the answer. The same principle applies to cards, to new fads, to gaming products, new trends in clothing. It is all about value and to a certain extent image. You gotta be cool, you gotta look cool, you have to have it because it’s cool therefore making you cool.
And in the same breath why are you spending millions on getting kids into collecting? Adults are who is keeping the industry going and alive. Adults who spend hundreds of dollars a week. Sure the collecting base is getting older and we need new blood. New blood needs to come from adults with disposable income who are not collecting now. Target them as well as kids and you bring in the mix.
As a hobby store owner I have some children who collect sports cards. We have few who collect gaming cards because we don’t target them. We lose out on some cash by not catering to gaming but we chose to concentrate on our adult and young adult (in that order) sports card collectors.
If we did wholesale gaming with tables and tournaments my adult sports collectors would stop coming. They did during the Pokemon days and it took us a long time to get them back. They want to collect and collecting with kids isn’t their cup of tea for the most part. That is unless the kids are well behaved and collectors as well. Then they are very appreciative and will pass on their knowledge of collecting to the younger age group. We see it all the time.
Spend a lot of that TV money on attracting adult collectors who want value. There are a lot of “fans” out there who previously collected cards. Winning them back with mainstream TV ads is important. To be honest no hobby store can survive and make an honest living catering to mainly to kids buying inexpensive packs of sports cards. If we don’t sell $1000 a day on the average we won’t be around for very long, and you don’t get that selling $1.29 packs of cards.
I have for years heard from licensors all about “little Johnny collector.” There is no “little Johnny collector.” He is a figment of your imagination, he does not exist. What exists is every kid under the sun. They ride skate boards, they fantasize about girls, they steal, they play sports, they eat candy bars and swallow bubble gum, they try to curse and be macho and in today’s world more often than not they spend way too much time getting, expecting to get but not nearly enough time giving. They are savvy on the Internet, they play video games and they talk a language most parents couldn’t figure out if they tried.
In short, they are kids just like the kids 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago. There is one exception however; technology. You can’t compete with technology in the trading card business and technology doesn’t even work in trading cards, it’s been tried.
What you can do is to appeal to what motivates every person in the world; the Dream! The Dream to be the best player in the world, the Dream to make it in Hollywood, the Dream to be an Astronaut. Dare to DREAM you can pull the greatest card in the world. The cut autograph of Babe Ruth or a piece of Mickey Mantle’s jersey or even a card signed by Cal Ripken.
These are the things kids need to hear if you want them to collect trading cards. Talk about value, talk about something concrete and yes in the trading card business Dreams are concrete. There is a much better chance of you buying a box and pulling a Babe Ruth autograph than there ever is in winning the lottery.
Put it in perspective.
0
Comments
No way! I remember ripping packs as a kid(I'm only 20 now, I remember when I was big in ripping ANY packs!) and literally sitting there with some friends ripping packs we bought at the local k-mart. We didn't care about value, we traded cards right then and there for the Teams we liked or players we liked or in the off chance we were trying to complete a set, just like kids from the 40-60s did. Now of course there are a lot more things in cards, but don't think us youngins didn't make our bikes in motorcycles with cards either!
Mark Mulder rookies
Chipper Jones rookies
Orlando Cabrera rookies
Lawrence Taylor
Sam Huff
Lavar Arrington
NY Giants
NY Yankees
NJ Nets
NJ Devils
1950s-1960s Topps NY Giants Team cards
Looking for Topps rookies as well.
References:
GregM13
VintageJeff
<< <i>"You are going to see lots of TV commercials (Finally after years of pushing for this!) from the powers that be. These commercials have a fun, nice little focus attempting to get kids, youngsters involved in collecting trading cards. Nice idea but money NOT well spent. What gets kids excited about trading cards is the same thing which gets adults excited about trading cards --- value! "
No way! I remember ripping packs as a kid(I'm only 20 now, I remember when I was big in ripping ANY packs!) and literally sitting there with some friends ripping packs we bought at the local k-mart. We didn't care about value, we traded cards right then and there for the Teams we liked or players we liked or in the off chance we were trying to complete a set, just like kids from the 40-60s did. Now of course there are a lot more things in cards, but don't think us youngins didn't make our bikes in motorcycles with cards either! >>
But that's this guy's point; he's not talking about you, because you were going to collect no matter what.
I think this article is just bang on, and I'm really glad you posted it. No kid is going to want a couple packs of MVP if he's sees the SPX and SP Authentic packs right next to it. It's just NO FUN, plain and simple, to buy the inferior stuff; no matter how old you are. And certainly not by the time you're 9 or 10, and have a pretty good feeling of what packs could hold a big pull and which one's won't.
The central problem with the modern market is simple; it costs too much to bust a box. For every one collector who's willing to kick out 150$ for a box of cards that has, on average 30$ worth of stuff in it there's probably two dozen guys like me; guys who would like to break boxes, and who certainly remember doing it as a kid, but who are simply unwilling to pay $120 for the pleasure. Until this changes you aren't going to see much growth in the modern market, no matter how many dollars you pump into advertising.
Buying modern packs is a gamble with terrible, terrible odds; so bad, in fact, that I can't think of a single other proposition that offers such a wretched negative value. The daily numbers? The house edge on those is about 50%. Keno? Again, usually between 20-30%. You can scour the gambling houses in Vegas and you will not find a bet you can make that has offers a 20% return. It just doesn't exist. But step foot in a hobby shop and these 'bets' are everywhere. We talk a lot here about how some scammer on Ebay could 'turn someone off from the hobby', and what a bad thing that is. Well, along those same lines think about the guy who buys a box of the 2006 SP Authentic hockey product (a terrible break, from what I can gather), and discovers he was 15$ worth of cards after the break? That guy is, as Ernie Harwell would say, "loooonnnng gone'. And I bet this happens dozens of times every day all across North America. People don't pursue collecting any further, or at least not breaking boxes, because they can't justify the cost of doing so.
If I was UD or Topps, here's what I would do. First off I would quit the ridiculous price targeting. Some of that is necessary, but I wouldn't have 1$ packs and 500$ packs being produced by the same manufacturer. Second, if you must put crappy autos into boxes then at least take a minute and separate these common autos by team and put the lousy ones only in boxes that are going to the region where that team plays. If somone has to pull a Tim Salmon auto he might as well be in LA, of if you just have to put Miguel Cairo autos in your product then restrict yourself to puttting them in boxes headed for NY. If it isn't feasible to this completely then at least make some kind of effort at it. I recognize that this would complicate things for dealers with nationwide distribution, but you could separate your boxes into 'home team' boxes and 'regular' boxes and give dealers some of each. And third, I would make fewer sets but give each set more parallels. Make it a real challenge to complete a master set of Bowman Chrome or SPX, so that people can really feel like they've accomplished something if they put the whole set together.
I love how this article stresses the importance of value, but unfortunately that 'value' just isn't there in the majority of the products being released. And until that changes I don't see the hobby growing by any appreciable margin, no matter how many dollars the card companies spend trying to get 10 year olds to spend their allowance on Ultimate Victory.
Thus, with all this said, here's a decent forumla for a popular base-level release:
1) A decently large but still attainable set, say 300-400 cards, with approximately a quarter of the set consisting of rookies.
2) One insert or parallel per pack. Shortprinting rookies is OK, but only mildly.
3) Have 3-4 inserts and a similar number of parallels. Parallels of inserts is an option but only if it makes the cards distinctive (refractors or die-cuts would qualify, a slight color variation of the foil would NOT!
4) Could we have some pretty inserts and parallels? There are ways to do this that make the adults as well as kids go oooooh-ahhhhh; concentrate on aesthetic appeal, not the latest gimmick.
5) Hard-signed autos on the cards would be nice, but don't make them the focus of the box (how about NOT putting an autograph or memorabilia card in every box for once?
6) Make memorabilia cards worth noting; use decent-sized swatches, or at least multiple swatches (AKA the Donruss/Playoff route). Again, don't make memorabilia/auto cards the focus of the box
7) Just to stress this: MAKE THE CARDS LOOK NICE! Use high-quality photography, classy lettering and borders, etc. This is a far better investment in a product than a couple hundred star autographs, and one that everybody can enjoy
Yes, I collect shiny modern crap
All your Shaq are belong to me
As far as I'm concerned, kids can do better things with the money they have than buying cards. Smart parents make their kids put as much money away as possible for college. This holds true especially when it comes to busting wax. Busting wax is a form of gambling. Since kids can't legally enter a casino, I'm not sure why they should be allowed to bust wax. The time to enter this great hobby is after a person graduates from college, starts making good money, and has set a good foundation down for himself and his family/future family.
Rich