Marketing Factoids

  • Fewer than 10% of the London Financial Times Stock Exchange Index companies have marketing directors on their boards source ›
  • Of those people that recently made consumer electronics purchases in a store, 80 percent visited the store's website first. - Nielsen Online survey source ›
  • V users watch more TV than before (127 hrs, 15 min per month) and also spend 9 percent more time using the internet (26 hrs, 26 min per month) than they did last year source ›
  • more factoids ›
MAY 29

Fisher-Price Game Plan: Pursue Toy Sales in Developing Markets†

Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2008 — In developing a line of talking toys aimed at children in China, engineers at Fisher-Price had to struggle to perfect the Mandarin "Sh" sound, which involves a soft hiss that was difficult to encode on sound-data chips embedded in the toys.

Developers finally solved the problem of recording the phrase "It's learning time!" in Mandarin, but new challenges are ahead. (Listen to the phrase.) The company will soon be examining the LCD screens on learning toys to determine whether Chinese characters can be displayed clearly.

Getting such details right is increasingly important as Fisher-Price and its parent company, Mattel Inc., try to attract more customers overseas.

Category: Marketing Strategy
Tags: Fisher-Price, Mattel, China, Emerging Markets, Global

Add Your Comment

(required)
(required)



(to prevent comment spam)
 


Any HTML in your comment will be removed upon submission. All comments are moderated, and it may take up to 24 hours for your submission to be approved and published. The BackPocket editors reserve the right to edit or remove comments at any time and for any reason.

Subscribe to comments on this article