Best Toy Brand Pages on Facebook

This Christmas we decided to monitor the activity at the top toy brand pages (on Facebook). We studied in detail the Facebook Pages of 50 leading toy brands. During this study, we followed the conversations, and went through every bit of content on their Pages. This included some truly awesome content in the timeline section.

The analysis was both qualitative (Part A) and quantitative (Part B). The aim was to test if “real world” feedback was being supported by what the numbers were telling us (and vice versa).

Read on to find which Brand pages are exciting their followers and which ones are losing momentum. Also included is our feedback on what’s good and what could be done better for the Top 5 brand pages.

Methodology

We identified 50 Facebook pages that dealt with toy brands. After that, we identified 16 pages to be excluded. This was on account of largely two factors. Firstly, we found that some of these pages were not purely toy pages (e.g. Disney cover movies). Secondly, a few brands threw up data that we just couldn’t comprehend (e.g. PlayDoh showed a material drop in the number of Likes). We tabulated the publicly available data on Likes and Engagement, over the period 15-Dec to 10-Jan-13 (26 days).

On the other hand, we reached out to a sample set of 25 mothers from US and UK who are subscribers to our Toy Tasting channel. In India we collaborated with an online toy store and sought out some of their toy customers. We asked our sample group to rate the brand pages that they liked. There was no questionnaire, but on receiving their response, we followed up with a discussion to understand their choices.

Part A: Qualitative assessment

Based on the feedback we got from our panel, and on the basis of our own judgement, we drew up a list of Top 5 brand pages that we liked. In each there is something unique. Managing a toy brand page involves catering to an audience that straddles, young parents, older kids and in some case serious hobbyists. That’s not at all a coherent target audience. In our view a car or a fashion brand has it easier – atleast on this metric.

We’re sure you’ll find some good ideas here.

LEGO

What we like

• The About Us write-up (below the cover photo) tells all the fans that “you are awesome builders, so we want to see your LEGO photos, videos and stories too”. Here’s a brand that knows how to engage
• LEGO Facebook page has an interesting App that allows users to put their Lego memories on their own timeline. Like – when they built their first Lego set
• Content rich time line, gives a lot of interesting facts about the brand. Our favorite is the “10 Commandments of LEGO” from 1963

What we’d like to see

• LEGO engaging with their fans directly. The interaction is almost limited to what it would be in a user run forum

Fisher Price

What we like

• Fisher Price has fantastic pictures showing kids playing. These were collected during their recent “Moments of Joy” campaign
• Fisher Price gives its fans something in return for their support – they have print and color cards for little ones
• Fisher Price leverages the Timeline to show-off its rich history. We especially liked this quote from 1943, “If the war requires our entire plant, we will suspend toy-making for the duration.” – Herman Fisher

What we’d like to see

• Fisher price product videos. We just couldn’t understand why only five videos have been put up

LeapFrog

What we like

• The Christmas campaign says – You “Like” We Give. LeapFrog has promised to donate toys worth $20 for every like and $10 for every share. Leapfrog “gets” the spirit of Christmas
• They have “Friday Fan Photo” wherein customer pictures are shared. We suspect a lot of thought went into making it “Friday”. As opposed to any other day in the week

What we’d like to see

• Some posts giving out educational facts or ask questions to engage with fans

Scrabble

What we like

• It’s not easy maintaining a Page around a game. But Scrabble does it brilliantly, with challenges to get the dictionary in your mind racing
• Scrabble Hub tab takes you through the history of Scrabble and has tips to get ahead in the game

What we’d like to see

• Tips for beginners should be bought onto the main page

VTech

What I like

• The page is full of deals and discounts
• They put up posts regularly

What I’d like to see

• Interesting pictures with moms and kids around
• Posts other than Vtech deals and products

Part B: Quantitative assessment

Ah, don’t we all like to see how the numbers stack up!

Our objective while conducting the quantitative evaluation was to measure the actual engagement based on the publicly available numbers.

Top 15 Brands | By Likes

Uno and Monopoly surprised us their leadership position and the extend of their lead over the #3, Barbie. Heavyweights like LEGO, Hot Wheels and Fisher Price have an impressive following, but do pale in comparison to the top 3.

We did a quick check on You Tube and clearly Barbie, LEGO, Fisher Price and Hot Wheels, dominate over UNO and Monopoly. But on Facebook these two brands have achieved a leadership position.

Top 15 Brands | By People Talking

We choose to gauge engagement by measuring the proportion of followers who are currently talking. The surprise in this is that there is an overlap of only three brands in the Top 15 By Likes and Top 15 By People Talking (as a % of total Likes). These three brands are: LEGO, Leapfrog and VTech. The median engagement across the sample was 1.95%. Surprisingly UNO (0.45%) and Monopoly (0.38%) have among the lowest levels of engagement in the entire sample.

Brands to watch out for

To measure the dynamism in the fan base of the brands, we used two measures: (a) Likes Additions Per Day, (b) Likes Additions Per Day as a percentage of the total Likes. The first measure should be thought of as speed. The second measure is like acceleration. The best position to be in is with high speed and high acceleration. But how much is high speed and high acceleration? Read on.

Separately, it is worth noting that we found a very high correlation (0.70) between our second measure and engagement.

The median benchmarks were as follows:

Likes Additions Per Day (Absolute): 140 (This metric is the x-axis in the chart below)

Likes Additions Per Day (% of Base): 0.07% (This metric is the y-axis in the chart below)

We plotted below our study sample of Toy Brand Pages (Note: Size of bubble denotes, existing fan base). The most dynamic set is in the top right quadrant, and we call this set the Masterful Players. There are nine brand pages that fall into this category. These are listed in Table 1 below. These brands are the ones to study and emulate. Clearly, even within this set, LEGO and Barbie are the clear leaders.

Summing it all up

The similarity between the names in our Top 5 Brand Pages and Our List of Masterful Players (Table 1), indicates that the high performance of these Brand Pages, is on the back of genuine customer connect. Anyone with an interest in Facebook marketing would gain by observing the techniques being used on these pages (LEGO, Fisher Price, LeapFrog, Scrabble, VTech).

If your business is toys or similar to toys you could use the median data in the “Likes Additions Per Day” Table to benchmark your own performance.

Finally, do let us know what you think.