Toy Marketing

Toy marketing is one of our specialties and we were very excited to lead the marketing efforts for The Zomlings. The Zomlings In The Town is a collectible blind bag series that was created by the Spanish toy company, Magic Box International. The line was picked up by toy industry veterans, Dave Brewi (TRU) and Bob Grey (Mattel) who formed Whatnot Toys to sell highly successful international toys for distribution in the U.S. market.

Whatnot Toy’s goals were to get retail placement for these products and also to generate consumer interest and purchases.Grey Matter Direct was tapped to drive the marketing for this compelling brand.

Magic Box had already created a rich graphical look and character set for the Zomlings, which we were able to leverage into strong creative elements for B-to-B and B-to-C initiatives.

One of our first steps was to build out character videos for many of the Zomlings to engage children and to drive interest in the brand. These are original animations that our team created with the goal of them being fun and to promote virality of the brand.

These videos were very successful and drove significant numbers of views and brand engagement.

YouTube influencers were an important part of the success of Zomlings. We were an early partner of Ryan, who was the number 1 child influencer at the time. While this video cost Whatnot big money, it generated over 15 million views and 20K likes!

In order to promote the Zomlings, we also worked with a large number of free YouTubers. These influencers generated a wide range of views for their videos. In total, we were able to generate a huge amount of interest on YouTube for this brand.

Grey Matter designed Whatnot’s trade show booths for the New York, Dallas and ASTRA toy shows. These shows offered important opportunities to meet with major retailers and popular online influencers.

Email marketing was a critical element for the Zomlings launch. We created dedicated emails for both consumers and retail partners. These emails proved to be very valuable in creating brand demand and driving sales.

Social media is an integral element of any marketing launch in the digital era. This was especially true of the Zomlings where we were trying to reach both kids and moms.

We created exclusive items and gear for retail partners like Learning Express so that they could do their own in-store promotions.

In this promotion, we were able to engage kids and parents in fun Zomlings games that had prizes and giveaways.

The result? Lots and lots of sales!

If you want to turn up the volume on your marketing, contact us today!