Talkin’ Toys: Hasbro’s Kim Boyd on ‘Women Innovators of Play’ Event, Commitment to Supporting Talent

Everything that we do is guided by the consumer and insights. We spend a lot of time and effort on foundational research … then we pair that with always monitoring things to do with cultural shifts [and] trends, just to ensure that our foundational work is current. So in the case of girls specifically, for the most part, we’re talking about a Gen Alpha girl, which is a girl that was born after 2010. Through this foundational work that we do, we’ve discovered that this generation is unlike any generation before it due to a lot of factors.

What we found with this particular generation of girls is they’re tech-enabled. They are empowered, they’re determined to take ownership of themselves as well as the world around them. They’re extremely resilient; they’re curious. They’re creative, they love humor … but it’s because of all of those things that we think about as we’re thinking about developing a new brand or a new play experience, or even if we’re thinking about developing new content because we need to stay, we want to ensure that whatever we’re doing is speaking directly to that girl. If it is that in this case, we’re discussing a girl-led franchise, and I’d say Furby is a great example.

The universal truth, or the brand truth, within Furby was just about bringing out your self-expression. We call it bringing your inner Furb, which essentially just means free to be who you are. If it’s wacky, silly, or funny, it doesn’t matter. That idea of self-expression is a thread throughout Furby and leads itself all the way through the entire play experience.

We did spend many years specifically focused on this Gen Alpha girl and in fact even went back to the drawing board on that particular brand through testing when we realized at one point it wasn’t quite resonating with her …even though we do do a lot of insight work and foundational work, and we may take some of those insights that might be girl focused, we always make sure that all of our communication and our marketing is to a broader audience because we want all of our toys and our brands to be inclusive.

We have a diverse portfolio of brands that speak to many different audiences, and each brand has its own purpose and belief. So, to me, the magic is being able to combine the brand belief with the insight to deliver a really unique play experience. And because we have such a rich portfolio of brands, we get to do it for a very broad consumer group, which is just amazing.

We want to ensure that we’re fueling our industry with a diverse group of individuals that’s reflective of those that we are creating for. So in a lot of ways, we need to create a clear pathway in this case for young girls so that things that we’re doing, for example, like you had mentioned with Girl Up, having a partner like Girl Up [for Girl Innovators of Play] gives us the audience to be able to speak directly to girls, to give them exposure to our industry, to mentorship.

It’s [Girl Innovators of Play] a great way to expose them to the industry to encourage their creativity, the innovative thinking with the longer-term goal that they eventually pursue a career in this industry and they’re contributing to the diversity that we hope to have more of in the future for those that are creating. And then, obviously, the more diverse we are with our creators, the better the innovation will be.

We want to have a common interest and a common goal, and for us, it’s important that they also want to elevate innovation and play. That is also critical to our relationship and partnership with Girl Up. We’re committed to inspiring and upskilling the next generation of innovators, and that’s really important. And then it’s all about how we do that together.

In the case of Girl Up, we partnered with them closely to understand what would be the most natural and beneficial way for us to be able to speak to them [young girls], encourage them, and upskill some of their talent … Girl Innovators of Play was very focused to think about, “okay, we’re talking to adults, women in the industry or trying to get into the industry, but let’s think about that next generation.” And so Girl Up is just one partnership, but I expect that we’ll have more because I know that there are a lot of other wonderful organizations that are also similarly interested in further developing our future innovators.

When we started this a year ago, it was all about promoting an inclusive and equitable toy game community. That was one of our top priorities. Then, obviously, we wanted to encourage more women’s participation in this space, increase awareness and exposure, and start to create a better path in this creative space.

Specifically, when we launched Women Innovators of Play, we also launched the Women Innovators of Play Challenge. It’s building a community and helping to give these women innovators a clear path to market, so to speak.

For the actual event itself, we wanted to have the right mix of experts and expertise as well as real tactical on-the-ground information. We wanted to learn things that would be beneficial, whether you were submitting an invention idea last year, things about your social media or had a booster or profile on social media. So I think what you’ll see this year is a really diverse program.

We are much more actively promoting what we’re doing because we want to cast the widest net possible, because we are trying to grow this community …, and because we want to ensure that this is available and accessible to as many women as possible.

Women Innovators of Play and Girl Innovators of Play are just one component of Hasbro’s much larger goal to really help drive equity within our space. We also partner with other great organizations within our industry, like Women in Toys, which is a fantastic organization to help celebrate accomplishments because I think celebrating [and] amplifying the accomplishments of women in this space is so important.

We’re all about elevating and amplifying the accomplishments again and ensuring that more women have visibility and awareness. We can help create a clear path for those who are interested in having a more creative following into a more creative career path. Partnering with Women in Toys is just one great opportunity for us to celebrate some of those accomplishments.

There’s never been more of a need than there is right now for people to connect through play, whether it’s toys or games. So we have this incredible opportunity as toy and game makers, and Hasbro is really committed to ensuring that there is diversity of thought and that we are creating an equitable, diverse industry so that we can continue to deliver the best possible play experiences — really continue to just inspire that next generation so that we can keep fueling the pipeline.