Hasbro President and COO Eric Nyman on bringing joy via product diversity, consumer appeal, and employee development

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Introducing Wondersuite from bluehost.com. Website creation is hard, but now with Bluehost, you can answer a few simple questions about your business and get a unique WordPress website or store right away. From there, you can customize your design, colors and content.

And Bluehost automatically helps you get found in search engines like Google and Ving. From step-by-step guidance to suggested plugins, Bluehost makes WordPress wonderful for everyone. Go to bluehost.com/wondersuite.

SPEAKER_2 (0:32)

Are you looking to take your media strategy to the next level and make impact with millions of customers? Walmart Connect harnesses the massive reach of America's number one retailer. They can help you connect more meaningfully with Walmart's 139 million weekly online and in-store customers to find the right audience for your message. They use Walmart's proprietary customer purchase data to help you precisely target even niche audiences at scale.

Visit walmartconnect.com today to see how they can help you find the customers you want at the scale you need.

Eric Nyman (1:06)

At our heart, we have a real mission to connect people, bring joy to people of all ages through our entertainment or our products. And it is special. There's very few things that can unite different age groups where a preschooler and their grandparent can laugh and enjoy a moment over a game of hungry hippos or two strangers on a playground can unite in a game of Nerf or two kids can unite playing magic or playing My Little Pony. And those experiences and the joy that it brings people are things that really unite us as a company and keep us going to create new and different ways to tell stories and make products.

Sarah Hofstetter (1:47)

Welcome to today's episode of BRAVE COMMERCE.

Rachel Tipograph (1:49)

I'm Rachel Tipograph, the founder and CEO of MikMak.

Sarah Hofstetter (1:52)

I'm Sarah Hofstetter, president of Profitero.

Rachel Tipograph (1:55)

And this is a show that talks about what's relevant in e-commerce for the world's biggest brands. By https://otter.ai Sarah, what's on your holiday wishlist?

Sarah Hofstetter (2:29)

Sleep, is that acceptable? Oh, I like that one for you. I have to say, that is definitely when I hope to catch up on most of my sleep. But I do love me some board games and some quiet time. I mean, especially being Sabbath observant. For me, I always like getting new games. They could be board games, they could be card games, like just things that I can do with my family, age-independent, just like not heavy thinking, a little strategic, a little competitive. How about you?

Rachel Tipograph (2:38)

Are you a Wordle person?

Sarah Hofstetter (2:39)

I am not because I have addiction issues. Like my husband, he's Wordle.

Shoot, I forgot what the double word is. And then he's like, he does like set a quarter. Like it's like 32 at the same time. My family is like so into words that I know if I get into it, I'm never coming out of it. But when I heard Hasbro was coming out with Wordle the game, I'm like, oh gosh, if I get this for my mother, it'll be great. If I get it in my house, it's going to be a disaster.

Rachel Tipograph (3:09)

Yeah, I think it's going to be a go-to party game this holiday season.

Sarah Hofstetter (3:13)

No doubt, no doubt.

Rachel Tipograph (3:15)

It's wild to think about toys, gaming, maybe you could even group in like hobbies into that and think about how mature it is when it comes to digital commerce. I read a recent report from eMarketer that said around 46% of all purchases within that category happen online, so nearly one out of every two people.

Sarah Hofstetter (3:38)

On the one hand, like, holy cow, that is deeply penetrated. On the other hand, what's been very interesting about that is that it's not one of those things that happened because of COVID.

You look at a lot of CPG and CPG moved from, you know, almost exclusively brick and mortar to really just accelerating the digital purchasing, but toys and games, there's so much further ahead on that adoption curve from a commerce perspective because it's something that people have been doing for quite some time. I mean, remember E-toys?

Of course. So it's just one of those things that because people, consumers are used to either researching online and buying online or researching online and buying offline, the whole idea of both digital conversion as well as digitally influenced sales has made it more mature, which means that companies in the toys and game space almost represent the future for those who are a little bit lower penetrated, those verticals a little lower penetrated for us to look at and say, huh, what can we learn? What were the things that worked or didn't work? And how do you get that unfair advantage going forward?