How Hasbro Created New Buyers for Old Products

The traditional gaming industry (think board games) has challenges like no other. Board games have lost their glamour to high-tech offerings such as the Xbox and hand-held video games; consumers don’t go out and buy a new Monopoly set unless they’ve lost the deed to Boardwalk or the thimble; and two-thirds of the year’s sales come during the fourth quarter.

“Brand awareness is not a problem with board games; 97% of the people we’ve polled tell us they’ve heard of Trivial Pursuit,” Mark Blecher, senior vice president of marketing for Hasbro U.S. Games, said during a session at The Conference Board’s Marketing Conference on Nov. 9. “The problem is a large percentage of people already own these games. Demand for new board games lasts for maybe one or two years, then they sit on the owner’s shelf.”

So Hasbro generated new customer interest by modifying and reinventing some of its classic games. By adding low-tech gadgets, finding new audiences, partnering with celebrities, and incorporating mobile marketing tours, Hasbro reinvigorated two of its classics, Twister and Trivial Pursuit.

Here’s what Hasbro did to reinvent its classics:

Twister

• Hasbro research showed that while six- to nine-year-olds still enjoyed playing Twister, 10- to 12-year-olds had abandoned the game for technology and music. So in 2003, Hasbro launched Twister Moves, a “cool, hip dance toy for aspiring tweens,” per the company. Players have to emulate dance moves shouted out by a DJ during the 100 dance tunes included on CDs. Bonus tracks by teen idols Nick and Aaron Carter, Nick Cannon, and Jesse McCartney added “street cred” to the brand.
• The Carters performed at New York’s South Street Seaport to build awareness of the game. Dancers performed onstage on the Twister Moves boards.
• A mobile tour brought Twister Moves to spring break, where students on the beaches of Florida took part in the game. Though college students are older than the game’s target demographic, stories and photos from the event made publications such as “Teen People,” which is an influencer for the tweens.
• Between 2000-2002 and 2003-2005, the Twister family of products saw a 100% increase in brand awareness, ownership, and affinity, according to Belcher. Because Twister Moves cost twice the price of the original Twister, the brand saw revenue growth of 300%.

Trivial Pursuit

• Invented in 1982, Trivial Pursuit had an 87% brand awareness by 2001, but only 31% of households actually owned the game, according to Hasbro research. So when Hasbro released a 20th anniversary edition in 2002, it included updated trivia questions that were “for me” instead of “for MENSA.” The launch included a guerilla campaign in Times Square that had icons from the past 20 years (Kato Kaelin and Dennis Rodman look-alikes, for example) telling passersby about the new game. Hasbro targeted 18- to 39-year-olds again—the same age group it had targeted two decades earlier–to get a new wave of gamers playing.
• In 2003, Hasbro launched a pop-culture version that required playing along with a DVD player in order to see the visual clues for questions such as “Which 7-foot-5 Houston Rockets center is standing next to 2-foot-8 Verne Troyer?” (The answer was Yao Ming, by the way.)
• The 1990s edition of Trivial Pursuit debuted in 2004. It came in a metal box resembling a time capsule containing everything from “Tammy Faye to Y2K.” TV spots for the game had a boy dig a hole, find the time capsule, and have ’90s celebs such as Rodman, Kaelin, Keri Strug (carried by coach Bela Karolyi), and the Taco Bell dog climb out. A mobile tour brought the time capsule shown in the commercial from Seattle to Washington, DC, making PR stops along the way, where local celebrities were interviewed for regional and national news shows. The brand also sponsored the VH1 series “I Love the 90s.”
• \ Between 1999-2001 and 2002-2005, the Trivial Pursuit brand saw a 380% increase in brand awareness, household ownership, and brand affinity.

“Old brands can be resuscitated,” Belcher said. “It all comes down to creating a new audience and, whenever possible, leveraging technology.”