When Music World Entertainment launched its first line of toys, the company’s publicist, who had no experience reaching out to moms, turned to Child’s Play. Due to time constraints – Music World came to us in November for holiday publicity -- our focus was exclusively online outreach. We quickly implemented our proprietary Web Mom Directory program, which reaches mom-focused Web sites, and has since been updated to include blogs, podcasts, electronic newsletters and e-zines targeted to moms.
CVS, the country’s largest drug store chain with 6,000 locations, asked Child’s Play to launch the retailer’s new Playskool Baby Care line and to position the line as available exclusively at CVS stores. We implemented a full array of tactics, including an intensive online focus.
Not that long ago, yo-yos were passé. Duncan, the word's leading yo-yo manufacturer, asked Child's Play to help turn back the clock. The agency didn't have much time: Yo-yos are a seasonal product. Child’s Play determined that the best way to generate widespread excitement was for parents and kids alike to see a young yo-yo expert demonstrating his skills on national TV.
Child's Play Communications was selected as the public relations agency of record for the Centennial Anniversary of Gund, the nation's leading soft toy manufacturer. Our task: to keep Gund in the public eye throughout its Centennial year and highlight the quality of Gund products. To accomplish these goals, Child's Play devised a strategy that included intensive, ongoing contact with both trade and consumer media, and a series of creative events designed to generate major media hits on a continuous basis.
Child’s Play was asked to reposition this small toy manufacturer, to launch its new products and to build interest in its existing lines. As media tend to favor the best known names when writing about toys, creating interest in an unknown such as Kid Galaxy posed a real challenge. Through a careful strategy that focused primarily on national parenting magazines and television placement, Child’s Play generated coverage in media such as Parents magazine, the Today show, The Early Show and The Late Show with David Letterman. The day after the Letterman placement, hits to the Kid Galaxy Web site increased 25-fold. Since the agency began promoting Kid Galaxy – during which there was no advertising or other marketing outreach – sales significantly increased. Here’s what Kid Galaxy’s senior vice president of marketing had to say about Child’s Play:
A leader in music for kids and tweens, this entertainment company asked Child’s Play to launch four new projects -- a talent search, a revamped Web site, a national stage show and the company’s latest CD – and to create broader visibility and positioning for Kidz Bop as a whole. Our approach was to reach out to media both for articles on the individual projects and for broader corporate stories that featured all developments within one piece. This was a particular challenge as High School Musical 2, which targeted the same audience, was being launched at the same time and we were up against powerhouse Disney in generating coverage of kids’ music.
K’NEX Brands is one of the world’s largest construction toy companies. While K’NEX has always prided itself on its U.S.-based manufacturing facility and the contribution that it makes to the local economy, the company never used it as a selling point. When the news hit about the widespread recall of Chinese-made toys, Child’s Play immediately contacted K’NEX to propose responding to industry-negative articles by highlighting the company’s Made in America roots. We prepared talking points to address the crisis from regulatory, business, marketing and consumer angles.
Parents magazine is the nation’s premier parenting publication. For the past five years, Child’s Play has been responsible for promoting the publication’s line of toys for infants and toddlers. While Parents unquestionably has the advantage of a prestigious brand name, when it came to publicizing its toy line to other media it also had a major disadvantage: No other national parenting publication would promote a competitor. With this as our challenge, Child’s Play launched a very aggressive effort to generate visibility in every other category of media that would reach moms.
Primrose was a child care company with approximately 80 locations across the U.S. Prior to selecting Child’s Play, Primrose worked with two different communications agencies: one to support Primrose’s corporate marketing efforts, and a second to handle the company’s franchisee/local school PR. After a trial period, the company appointed Child’s Play as its agency of record for both programs, with a mandate to reposition Primrose as the leader in early childhood education, launch its Balanced Learning curriculum and, later, promote its 20th anniversary and the opening of its 100th school. Child’s Play was involved in every aspect of the relaunch, from contributing to design choices for marketing collateral materials to, most significantly, identifying the key factor that distinguished Primrose from its competitors: a focus on character development.
In its eight years as a Child’s Play client, Samsonite, the world's leading luggage manufacturer, had a variety of objectives. While the overall goal was always to generate as much visibility in the media as possible, different product introductions required different tactics.
Media giant Warner Bros. hired Child’s Play Communications specifically because of our expertise in reaching moms via both the Internet and traditional media. Our role was to re-launch the Banana Splits, the hit 1960s-era, toddler-targeted music and comedy group and TV show. There were two immediate challenges. First, the moms who remembered the Banana Splits from their own childhood had children much older than toddler age, while mothers of toddlers were too young to have heard of the Banana Splits. Second, the brand was being introduced not as a TV show or consumer-friendly product, but rather simply as interstitials – comedy shorts that appeared on TV without a specific schedule.
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Marketplace section, and USA Today, which featured a story on the front cover of the Money section. Soon, K'NEX became the company to include in any "second day" story about the recalls: Bloomberg News ran a story internationally and, nationally, Fox Business Network ran a lengthy interview with K'NEX's president. Numerous local media also responded to Child’s Play outreach, including the Philadelphia Business Journal and Philadelphia's FOX channel, which incorporated safety, K'NEXperts and a fabulous display of K'NEX toys. TV news shows from as far away as Florida also began requesting tours of the Hatfield, PA factory. The Associated Press, meanwhile, was among the national media that attended the K'NEXpert event, resulting in more than 200 print and broadcast stories around the country. There was also individual print and broadcast coverage of the event in the winners' hometown media. Additional K'NEX product and corporate coverage appeared throughout the year in media such as Brandweek, The New York Times, USA Weekend, the Associated Press, Reuters, United Press International, and on the Today show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. In addition, the company reported a sales increase of 20%, directly attributed to safe-toy status. 
