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17 Nov
Posted by David Miller as CCGs, Electronic Games
Hasbro’s annual Investor Day event is an opportunity for the company to promote its strategic “Brand Blueprint” among investors. For those readers with an interest in corporate strategy, toy marketing, or even just a better understanding of the major drivers in the mass-market toy and game business, I highly recommend listening to the recorded presentation (which runs about an hour).
From that presentation, however, I’d like to call gamers special attention to CEO Brian Goldner’s description of the Magic: The Gathering brand blueprint (see his presentation slides below). Using Magic as an example for how digital products are essential to the development Hasbro’s “franchise brands” (its biggest and most important properties), Goldner revealed plans for a product he referred to as “Magic Digital Next“.
Our stories are told to foster the personal connection audiences demand. These stories are curated by fans, personalized around brands, and told through a variety of mediums…
In a world where stories create personal connections with consumers, the role of digital is omnipresent in franchise brand development. This connection requires creating a digital ecosystem that spans from ideation and development to learning about a brand through engagement and stories to purchasing and ultimately interacting and playing with that brand. At Hasbro, the digital ecosystem is developed and celebrated throughout our organization…
I want to speak briefly to how our investments in digital for one of our franchise brands, Magic: The Gathering, will expand the opportunity and audience for this global franchise. At the core of the Magic blueprint is storytelling. We activate Magic stories on every platform, analog and digital. The story we’re telling today is around the Battle for Zendikar set, which is resonating very strongly with gamers around the world. In the past few years, we have doubled the number of play events and stores running these events. By the end of 2015, over 800,000 official events will have run in over 6,000 store locations around the world, this year alone. And we expect this trend to continue and the brand to continue growing. Perhaps our biggest opportunity to keep expanding Magic is to improve the digital Magic ecosystem. We know Magic players want to play in person at events and also play similar level competitions online. Right now we have digital offerings at both ends of the knowledge and engagement spectrum. Magic Online is for the highest level players and we have Duels as an entry experience. The greatest opportunity for Magic is to create a new digital experience leveraging contemporary technology to create a seamless digital experience that meets all the players needs from new players to pro players. This is what we are investing in and we have a team in place to deliver the first new Magic Digital Next product in the next few years. In the meantime, we will optimize the Duels and Magic: The Gathering Online experiences to continue driving the overall Magic business.
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