#especially when Hasbro has already shown that they don't understand what will piss off fans

[heckyeahponyscans]

The Licensing Letter has an article that includes an interesting interview with Claire Gilchrist, the Vice President of Hasbro.

You may recall that Hasbro's previous CEO, Brian Goldner, tragically died of cancer in 2020, so they have a new CEO, Chris Cocks.

“We are really going through a transformation,” Gilchrist told me, as she was flanked by gigantic Peppa Pigs and Transformer characters at the Hasbro booth. “Since the arrival of Chris Cocks as our new CEO about 14 months ago, we have undertaken a very significant, deep dive into which brands we should be focused on. “So we’re really driving what Chris calls a ‘fewer, bigger, better’ strategy. The idea is let’s focus on the smallest set of core brands, which means we can grow them to be much bigger and better brands. And we’ve selected eight brands and we want to make all of them billion dollar US brands.”

The eight core brands are Transformers, My Little Pony, Peppa Pig, Dungeons & Dragons, NERF, Magic: The Gathering, Play-Doh, and Hasbro Gaming / Monopoly.

The idea at Hasbro now is to focus on that smaller number of brands that is clearly getting the most bang for the buck, and to veer away from the brands that are less successful, even while they burn up money and staff time. Gilchrist says everyone at Hasbro understands that the most important job is to create a strong story around each brand, so the company is not so much selling a product as it is extending aspects of the story line to a fan base.

Very interesting. I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I agree that storytelling is more important than ever in selling toys, especially since kids get out of toys younger than ever (and into digital instead).

On the other hand, how can they build new brands with this strategy?