Viewpoint

Tristan Brooks - Tristan is head of Client Services and managing partner at Azure Media, a leading youth and family specialist media agency. He can be contacted on tristan.brooks@havasmg.com

Key themes for the year ahead in advertising

Looking ahead at how the media landscape for 2022 is likely to develop, here’s what companies should take into account, in order to maximise their advertising strategy.

Be prepared for the unexpected If recent times have taught us anything, it’s to be prepared for the unexpected, and this is certainly true for toy advertisers. It’s important to make sure that within your campaigns you have the flexibility to be reactive and amend your plans at short notice as required. Your agencies should have built flexibility into your plans for the coming year, giving the ability to adapt to changes with minimal disruption and cost. On the flip side of this, you should also be prepared to take advantage of opportunities like soft pricing in the market if advertising demand suddenly drops.

Think digital first

Move away from starting campaigns from a kids’ TV perspective. As kids TV reach continues to decline, this may well limit your approach and ability to invest effectively where your audience is. It was refreshing to hear from a new toy client of ours that it’s a ‘digital first’ company. It’s a statement of intent from a toy company that’s empowering, relevant and embraces the present and the future. Through this mentality, it’s the learnings that will be captured that will help shape its future marketing campaigns and ultimately aid growth.

Don’t isolate, collaborate

Delivering an effective and engaging campaign requires a 360 approach with your marketing partners. Collaborate and integrate more by bringing the right people together from different disciplines at the right time, to give your campaigns the best chance of success by widening the creative input. Egos and conflicts of interest will need to be left at the door. This is easily done if you agree the role of your agencies based on their competencies to best deliver the campaign objectives. If your agencies are working with your best interests at heart, this shouldn’t be an issue.

YouTube is THE Kids TV channel

Your approach to YouTube may well make the difference this year for the effectiveness of your campaigns. This channel is central for kids yet still it doesn’t have the same level of investment as kids’ broadcast TV. Pricing is comparable, it offers highly focused targeting, can be optimised faster, the reach is higher and the ability to engage with longer advertising messages is unparalleled. Advertisers need a balanced approach to YouTube that maximises the engagement potential of the platform whilst being cost effective.

Creating connected content journeys to conversion

Digital video platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Facebook and Instagram offer to drive both engagement and direct traffic to retail, giving advertisers the ability to connect the path from exposure to conversion. Creating the right content journey, for the right audience at the right time is crucial to building an effective content strategy that connects across the customer journey not just delivering upper funnel awareness.

2022 is the year of cinema

As long as cinemas remain open, 2022 is set to be one of the strongest years in kids’ cinema in with Minions: The Rise of Gru, Lightyear, DC League of Super-Pets and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 to name but a few of a stellar release line up. So far, since cinemas reopened, footfall has been strong so maybe this is one to have on the plans - but be prepared to reinvest budget elsewhere if they are forced to close.

Data, data, data

There’s an ever-growing amount of data available to advertisers across the customer journey. Agencies should help you unpack the insights from this data to give you a greater confidence in investment decisions and how you’re going to measure success.

Innovate

And finally, try and test something new. Innovation in an ever-evolving market is a fundamental to learning, evolving and ultimately driving growth. Think about the present and the future, don’t get bogged down by the past and you’ll already be going in the right direction.

Good luck!

Matthew Thorpe Matthew is global account manager/ business development manager at MTS/Eurofins

He can be contacted on Mat@mts-uk.co.uk

Changes to toy safety and compliance

Matthew Thorpe brings readers up to date on the very latest from the world of toy safety.

The effects of Brexit are starting to shape the compliance landscape for toys and will become more pronounced next year, however the good news is that not everything is changing. The general approach to compliance remains the same in terms of information gathering, technical files, safety labelling and so on.

The date for the mandatory application of the new UKCA compliance mark has been extended by a year until 1st January 2023. Until then the CE mark is still acceptable, providing that the EU requirements remain aligned to the UK. This shouldn’t affect the toy industry too much except where Type Examination is required, but is a big help to industries where mandatory 3rd party assessments are required; if you supply oven gloves or Christmas crackers (among other things) then this extension will be a welcome relief. MTS UK is an Approved Body for toys and, following the acquisition by Eurofins, is now also able to provide EU Notified Body support for toys.

Some significant changes will take effect during 2022 in the EU that are not being matched in the UK. A number of new toy standards have been harmonised by the EU and are currently in a transition period, with older versions being withdrawn over the next few months. As such, the current editions will cease to provide a presumption of conformity with the Toy Safety Directive.

The UK government has not yet announced any changes to their list of Designated Standards meaning there will be a difference between the EU and Great Britain. Our guidance is not to rush out and test to both versions of the standards (although

MTS will do so if requested) however if you are moving to the new standards and your customer is demanding to see an older version of EN71, then please get in touch and we will try and help. Generally speaking, if the newer standards include the same requirements of the older standard, then this should still be sufficient to show compliance. For example, if the newer standard only amends the requirements for costumes and you are making a soft toy, then nothing will have changed in terms of safety obligations for your product.

If you are only selling in Great Britain, these changes won’t impact you; although it is anticipated that the UK will adopt the revised toy standards as designated standards in due course, there are not expected to be many companies solely in this subset. If you are selling into the EU or Northern Ireland (Brexit again) and using EN71 to show presumption of conformity, then this could have an impact in terms of testing in the laboratory and the details on your Declaration of Conformity. You can choose to apply the requirements of the new editions of the standards even before they are formally harmonised even though the presumption of conformity has not yet granted by the harmonisation process. This is because the new editions represent an increase in safety standard over the previous editions.

New standards for finger paints and nitrosamines took effect in late November but the upcoming changes in 2022 are likely to have a wider impact across the industry.

An ongoing impact of Brexit is the names and addresses on products. Since the Brexit transition period

ended in 2020, organisations based in Great Britain have been legally unable to place goods on the EU market (not just toys) without having an EU name and address on the product. Conversely goods placed on the GB market require a GB name and address. Anecdotally, this has not been widely enforced so far but it appears there is an increasing focus on this for EU customs and enforcement authorities. It can be expected that there will be an increase in awareness/ enforcement activity around this area as time progresses and as the deadline for those regulations requiring conformity marking (31st Dec 2022) approaches.

Post-Brexit, the UK is now free to start developing its own legislation and develop new requirements targeting specific areas of concern or emerging issues, although it still remains a member of CEN which is the organisation that develops standards such as EN71. The EU has announced the start of the process to fully update the Toy Safety Directive to address some of the current gaps and limitations. This development is likely to take some time to complete, but MTS and the wider Eurofins group will continue to monitor this and flag any significant changes in the future as this will inevitably widen the compliance gap between Britain and the EU.

The MTS/Eurofins team will be exhibiting at the London Toy Fair and will also be in Nuremburg in February so please come and see us if there are questions about product compliance. For any immediate compliance questions then please get in touch at Mat@mts-uk.co.uk.