Mattel Gives Max Steel Action Figure New Lease on Life

So when Mattel decided to revive its dormant Max Steel line of action figures in the United States, it had a rare opportunity to re-examine the old marketing strategy for the brand. In doing so, it decided this time to shift its focus to multimedia, and let the toys follow.

“We have put focus and discipline around franchise development and content development,” said Tim Kilpin, the senior vice president for global brands at Mattel, the world’s largest toy company based on revenue. Plans for the Max Steel brand include an animated television series, a live-action short movie, an online hub, mobile games, graphic novels and, eventually, toys and other products.

“If there is a new normal, it’s that there is not just one way to reach an audience,” Mr. Kilpin said. “You’ve got to reach them and engage them through all that’s available.”

When Max Steel was introduced in 1999 as a line of boys’ action toys, it found modest success in the United States. But after the terrorist attacks of 2001, it drew scrutiny from its parent.

“There were some themes that we were very concerned about,” Mr. Kilpin said, “so we did not pursue the range of opportunities in the United States.”

Max Steel faded away in this country, but it continued to sell in South America, where it eventually became a blockbuster hit, outselling Mattel’s top lines, Hot Wheels and Barbie. More than a decade later, when Mattel was looking for a new line to start in the United States, it found one in the back of its own closet.

“We stepped back and looked at why it was so successful in Latin America,” Mr. Kilpin said. Mattel found that boys loved the idea of someone who could unlock his potential and become a hero. Mattel tweaked the original concept, making the character Max younger and easier for boys to relate to, and it began to plot a campaign to bring the brand back to the United States.

But times have changed, and children are much more media-wise than they were in the late ’90s. To market the revived brand, Mattel took a page from its Monster High franchise, which was introduced in 2010 as a line of fashion dolls, with an emphasis on multimedia, including young adult novels and a Web site that used videos and games.

Mattel’s focus on multimedia is no surprise, said Sean McGowan, an analyst at Needham Company. “Mattel is a pioneer for creating toys with media property,” he said, citing He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, a boys’ action franchise Mattel started in the 1980s.

Other toy companies have established similar strategies. Hasbro, the No. 2 toy maker, created a production studio in 2009 and worked with Discovery Communications in 2010 to start a cable television channel called the Hub. Last year, the toy maker Jakks Pacific worked with a subsidiary of Dentsu, the Japanese advertising giant, to produce its first animated television series, “Monsuno,” which was supported by a line of toys and other products.

Toy makers are looking for ways to shore up their revenue. Retail toy sales in the United States declined slightly last year, to $16.5 billion from $16.6 billion the year before, according to the NPD Group, a market research company. Mattel is scheduled to report its fourth-quarter earnings on Friday.

Mattel would not reveal the marketing budget for the reintroduction of Max Steel, but Mr. Kilpin said it was “significant.”

“The best way to put perspective around the scale of it is to say it is a major new franchise launch for the company, much like Monster High was,” he said.

Like Monster High, Max Steel will start with a Web site, maxsteel.com, which will begin at the end of February and include games, character biographies and other features. The campaign will include an animated TV series, Mr. Kilpin said, because Max Steel is better suited to episodic television than was Monster High.

In FremantleMedia Enterprises, Mattel found an experienced producer of children’s television entertainment that it said could generate excitement for Max Steel around the globe. The show will have its premiere on March 25 in the United States on the Disney XD channel. Then it will be introduced in more than 100 markets.

The intent of the wide distribution is to create viral marketing on social networks, said Bob Higgins, the executive vice president for children’s and family programming at Fremantle. “Around the world, kids will start hearing about this,” he said. “Kids want to do what their friends do. If they are watching Max Steel, they want to be a part of that party.”

The marketing campaign will also include graphic novels, which help immerse boys deeper into the storytelling, said Elizabeth Kawasaki, senior editorial director at the animé publisher Viz Media.

“There has been always traditional publishing with media tie-in stuff,” she said, but children’s properties once consisted primarily of early reader books and sticker books. “The market has really changed now.”

Other consumer products will follow, including toys that will appear in stores in August. By then, Mattel said it hopes the brand will be embedded in the hearts and minds of boys.

“The first way that they are going to experience the brand is through those storytelling mechanisms,” Mr. Kilpin said. “Marketing ground zero for this franchise will be maxsteel.com.”

“We believe we are experts in play, not just in making toys,” he said. “That’s what our job is today.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/business/media/mattel-gives-max-steel-action-figure-new-lease-on-life.html?partner=rss&emc=rss