KIDSPLAYTEST™ – OCTOBER 2014 Research Session KIDSPLAYTEST™ offers a budget research service to companies in the kids entertainment space. We regularly test toys, games, apps, TV/film content and anything else in this area. The main concept behind this proprietary methodology is to deliver commercially savvy consumer insight at an amazingly affordable price. By testing several…
Author: Steve
Our CEO, Steve Reece, recently chaired a panel at the inaugral Toy & Game Inventors Workshop, run by leading Toy industry trade magazine, Toy News. The panel looked at the toy & board game businesses from both a retail and consumer perspective. Steve and his fellow panelists were able to robustly answer even the wildest,…
Dissecting Consumer Drivers Of The Loom Band Craze – Consumer Research Report We recently conducted a study into consumer drivers/motivators relating to the massive hit craze of loom bands. This craze has swept the UK toy market this year. This is far from the first such craze we have researched – going back as far…
BBC Radio Interview With Steve – Explaining Frozen Toy Shortage Kids Brand Insight CEO Steve Reece, as an acknowledged toy and kids entertainment industry expert, was recently interviewed by Stephen Nolan on BBC Radio 5 Live as part of a piece looking at the current shortage of Frozen toys and merchandise. Steve was pleased to give…
6 Reasons Why New Kids Animated TV Properties Should Be Audience Tested… Producing animated content is not a cheap business. In fact it’s an inherently expensive and risky process. The need to validate / reduce risk with a new cartoon series is one of the primary drivers for commissioning qualitative research with children. We’ve conducted…
Kids Entertainment Brands & Embracing Pester Power The term ‘Pester Power’ has been used for decades to describe the persistent pestering approach which children adopt when seeking to persuade their parent/s to purchase something they want for them. Anyone reading this with their own children will know the power of persistent pestering! For those without,…
Kids Brand Insight – Toy Consumer Research Bootcamp A special one off industry event will be held in Central London, U.K. on Wednesday July 23rd. The Toy Consumer Research Bootcamp will help people in the industry understand how they can use consumer research to test and improve their products, and to reduce the risk of…
Market Research With Children – Actionable Findings One of the major gripes we hear about market research with children from clients with less experience of consumer insight is that they were expecting the children to tell them more. Our experience suggests that often ‘less is more’ when it comes to children’s market research…in that it’s…
Actions Speak Louder Than Words…Why Kids Research Should Focus On Observation As Much As Conversation Have you ever had a long conversation with a child of around 5-6 years of age? Not very likely that you have. The developmental progress of a child at that age does not give them the wherewithal to have a…
The Phenomenon Of Toy Stockpiling & What It Means For Toy & Kids Entertainment Companies One of the largest, but largely under highlighted trends we are seeing with today’s children is toy stockpiling. In previous generations, toys were limited in quantity for the vast majority of children. Each individual toy was therefore more cherished and…
New Consumer Research Agency Focused On Kids Entertainment Brands Launches For release: 1st May 2014 Kids Brand Insight officially launched today to deliver qualitative research for brands in the toy, gaming and children’s entertainment sectors. The company has already worked with leading brands to combine consumer insight from children and their families with a refreshing…
How Kids Find Freedom In A Cotton Wool Environment… One of the major changes in how children play these days versus times gone by is the level – or lack of – physical freedom. The older generation regale us with stories of how they didn’t have to lock their doors in times gone by, or…
Reality Check: Children Play How They Want To, Not How Designers Intend Them To… One of the most enjoyable parts of our work is seeing creatives and designers be inspired by consumer insight with children. The vast majority of people involved in the creation of media content and physical products for children don’t regularly test…
Bridging The Gap Between Client And Consumer Research Agency One of the most prominent complaints clients make regarding consumer insight agencies is that they are so far removed from the client business and the realities of the commercial world they often deliver reportage of what consumers said versus analysis of what that means from a…
The Critical Essential: Dexterity Testing Toys There are some factors in the success and longevity of toy products and brands which are so overwhelmingly fundamental, that it is pure folly to ignore them. One of these factors is matching the functionality of the toy to the dexterity capability of the target age group. This is…
The Difference Between Thinking You Know Something And Actually Knowing It In any successful Toy company or kids entertainment business, matters relating to products, advertising and brands are discussed and debated with a great degree of vigor, opinion and counter argument. Many times we see groups of people sitting in a meeting room discussing something…
Screen Time, Backlash & Contradictory Trends Kids are spending more time on screens…fact! There has been an accompanying growth in parental screen backlash i.e. turn off that TV, tablet, phone, computer etc. and go and do something else instead. So how can we have two opposite trends at the same time? Simple…in scientific terms, sure…
Understanding Children’s Toy Product Preferences – Hierarchies Of Toy Appeal One of the most immediately apparent insights our clients get when we conduct focus groups/play-testing research with kids and the client’s toy products is the hierarchy of product appeal by type of product. In other words, the client quickly finds out if the product category/categories…
Why Focus Groups Remain The Most Effective Way Of Testing Toys With Kids We’ve done the big quantitative studies, in fact we’ve done them for some of the biggest Toy companies in the world across multiple territories, and they did yield some insight. In particular, we conducted a huge quantitative tracking study on a major…
Four Reasons Why Toy Companies Don’t Conduct Consumer Research We thought it worth highlighting the common reasons why so many Toy companies don’t conduct consumer research: 1. Too many other inputs/pressures/stakeholders in process to complicate by adding another – this is one of THE most common reasons we find…especially in bigger companies. By the time…
