Playmobil, a crowdsourcing design strategy

I guess all of us know playmobil and its products. For the ones who don’t, they are manufacturing plastic toys and in particular plastic figures (see picture) since 1974 and sold more than 2.2 billion of them.

A Playmobil

My questions is: « How can you manage to produce for more than 30 years the same plastic figurines and still be a leader in your industry? »

Answer: Crowdsource your creative process and filter it through your brand values.

In other words: Let your customers design what they would like to have and stick to one strong brand identity to cut through the huge amount of choices.

Let’s check some figures about the group:

• In 2008 Playmobil had a 452 millions euros turnover
• In 2009 Playmobil’s distribution subsidiaries achieved 14 % growth
• In 2009 Geobra Brandstätter Group turnover increases to almost half a billion Euros
• 1998 – 2008: Turnover multiplied by 10 in ten years
• Playmobil are sold in 69 countries around the world.
• Playmobil has 100% of its production based in europe.

So on the business side I think we can declare this a WIN.

Back to design. To develop new products and find inspiration, the 60 in-house designers carefully scan through, analyze and classify the 150 children drawing they receive per month. These drawing are mainly coming from retailers running drawing contests. This plus a constant review of children books trends allow the group to decide on new topics and range of product to lunch.

Once directions are set, new products and product lines are developed by a 50-strong development team and each product sees its details (color, patterns, accessories) carefully check by an historian to insure their « realism » before lunch.

This design strategy allows Playmobil to release their product without previous tests on the market and still have a 90% successful lunch rate. Such a strategy also made the marketing expenses shrink to their minimum. Indeed, the main vectors to communicate about new products is the Playmobil catalogue (sent to retailers and printed to 15 million copies) and the toy shop itself with the human scale Playmobil and Playmobil display cases.

This design method allows Playmobil to leave their products between 3 and 4 years in store without any design changes and diversify the gender of the main target ( 70% boys, 30% girls), in opposition to LEGO for instance.

Conclusion: Bravo

Online luxury is Instant Human Interaction On Demand

I went to a Burberry shop last week to try a Trench Coat and the experience I had there was extremely pleasant. The staff took care of me, dressed me up and told me all the little details about the products. I kind of felt special just because of this human to human interaction, even if I didn’t buy the coat at the end.

Now, I m hosting this very blog on one.com and I must say that this is the only website, as far as I know, that created the same feeling I experienced in the Burberry shop. This for one single reason: It has an online chat help service.

When you are stuck you click on the button and someone is there to answer your question. Let’s face it; I am a total unknowledgeable person about web stuff like Mysql, Java scripts or Php. Still the people at one.com were always very helpful, prompt to answer and helped me step after step to experience their product to its best.

This made the experience of hosting a website (which is a rather dull/complex thing usually) unique. Again, I felt pretty special just because of the human to human interaction. I now know, just like in the shop, that someone will be there to help me experience their product to its optimum quality. This is pure pleasure, this is luxury.

Intelligent Instant Human Interaction On Demand .That could be today’s definition of online luxury.

PS: I ve got no connection at all with one.com, I just think they rock

The paralysis of unlimited opportunity

Hello, I thought i ll start this new website with a word from Seth Godin, Enjoy

There aren’t just a few options open to you, there are thousands (or more).

You can spend your marketing money in more ways than ever, live in more places while still working electronically, contact different people, launch different initiatives, hire different freelancers… You can post your ideas in dozens of ways, interact with millions of people, launch any sort of product or service without a permit or factory.

Too many choices.

If it’s thrilling to imagine the wide open spaces, go for it.

If it’s slowing you down and keeping you up at night, consider artificially limiting your choices. Don’t get on planes. Don’t do spec work. Don’t work for jerks. Work on paper, not on film. Work on film, not on video. Don’t work weekends.

Whatever rule you want…

But no matter what, don’t do nothing.