How Trust and Expert Opinions Shape Toy Buying Decisions with Dr. Amanda Gummer

EP040_11-NOV-24_Webinar

Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Toy Business Unboxed, your gateway to the secrets of the toy industry. Here, Jason Hsieh, a toy entrepreneur and expert in the field. “Every product we develop is really inspired by some of the real life experience that we have with our son.” “60 percent of all toys last year were sold on Amazon.”

“Be passionate about it. Because it’s a road. It’s a journey.” “Like when you have an idea that you think is gonna somewhat change the world, make things better, I’d say go for it.“

Jason Hsieh: Hi, good morning, everyone. Welcome to this month’s webinar. Today’s webinar, we’re going to be talking about building consumer trust and the power of expert toy review. For those of you that is new to our webinar, usually we will talk about different topics within the toy and game industry.

In today’s agenda, we’ll be talking [00:01:00] about four different main topics of today’s training. First is, we’ll define what does consumer trust mean, and why is it so critical in today’s toys and game industry. Second, we’ll talk about the role of expert review. We’ll explore how the expert review works to establish credibility and also build trust with the consumer. So we’re going to talk about the impact on how does that going to influence the consumer buying decision and present some data on how having expert reviewing your product could really influence some of the purchasing behavior and also increase your conversion rate online and also offline. And last but not least, we’re going to talk about some strategy on how to utilize those review to enhance your brand’s reputation and growth. So let’s go right into it. First of all let me introduce myself. My name is Jason Hsieh and also a serial entrepreneur. Currently I also have a toy company. We design toys and product for kids with special needs. Kids on autism spectrum, ADHD, sensory processing [00:02:00] disorder. My oldest son is on the autism spectrum. So that’s why I started my company back in 2016. And I also own a the marketing agency called Toy Launch, which we specialize in helping other toys and games companies just like our ourselves as well and we also run a small foundation called Sensory Inclusive Classroom Foundation, which we donate sensory toys and product to the school district and also some churches as well. So my main work is really focusing on helping the special needs community and helping other entrepreneurs within the toy and game industry through education and through webinar, like the one we’re doing today.

Like I mentioned briefly, the way I started in my entrepreneurial career is because my son was diagnosed with autism and ADHD while we were living in Japan back in 2013, because of that. But it was very difficult for me and my wife to find the help and resources in Japan. Actually, it was so bad. Even we live in Tokyo, one of the largest metropolitan [00:03:00] area in the world, but we can only find two therapy center to take us onto back then in 2013 to help him with his condition. So we decided to move to United States in 2015 to seek better resources and therapy. However, we run into issues with the health insurance system here in United States that it doesn’t cover or doesn’t pay for most of the therapy that we needed for our some back then. And that’s why I decided to start a business on top of my full-time corporate career back then. And that’s how my first toy company LakiKid was born around 2017. And currently over the year, I was able to grow the business and about three years ago, I quit my day job and now I do this full time. So all I do nowadays is really playing around with toys all days, every day. That’s what I do for a living now. And besides our own toys brand, we also work with various of other different company, helping them with, digital marketing effort, both on Amazon and also off Amazon on [00:04:00] different services and also work with our corporate partner really closely. We are also Shopify partner. We are also Amazon certified ad agency. And we also work with other associations. We in the toy industry, including Astra women in toys. And also we are part of United inventor association as well. And we also run a podcast called toy business on box podcast, which we interview people in the toy and game industry regularly to show and talk about what is working and what is not working currently we in the toys and game industry.

And in today’s webinar, we also have Dr. Amanda Gummer with us today, talking about her expertise, and she is a leading expert in child development, and also founder of Good Play Guide, which was established back in 2012, offers trust independent review for toys product for children. And she also have a PhD in the neuropsychology and over 20 years of experience. Dr. Gummer, you want to introduce yourself [00:05:00] a little bit too? 

Amanda Gummer: Oh, I think you’ve said it all, but yeah, thank you very much. So I run the research consultancy Fundamentally Children alongside the good play guide. And we support people in making good things for kids and helping kids thrive through play.

Jason Hsieh: And thank you for doing what you do. I think this is a very important aspect of your work and how is that really going to be contributing to the industry as a whole as well. So for today’s discussion and today’s webinar, we’re going to first talk about what is consumer insight. Consumer insight. The high level definition is to really provide a deeper understanding of your audience behavior needs and preference. And I think for each of our different brands, we are working and dealing with a little bit different consumer. Dr. Gummer you want to talk about how you see it?

Amanda Gummer: Yeah, I think In an increasingly competitive market, and I know that the toy industry in particular has, is facing a lot of challenges, we really want to make sure that toy companies who [00:06:00] are putting children at the heart of their development, are able to understand their audience and therefore serve them better. And it’s as simple as that. If you understand who you’re making toys for, understand what they like, understand what they need, understand what they do on a daily basis, understand what their hopes and goals are, then you can serve them better with the products that you make and that’s making better products. So that enhanced product appeal, it gives you a competitive edge on your competition. And people, you get that brand loyalty because people will talk about it. So there’s all of the, good things that come out of doing the right thing by children. And that all starts with really understanding your audience.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, I 100 percent agree with that. And also I think our own brand is really trying to talk to parents that have kids from age 3 to 12 that also have special needs. That’s our core audience, but I think for each of you that’s listening, your audience will be a little bit different than mine, your age group might be a little bit different than mine. So it’s very important to have the [00:07:00] understanding of who are the the target audience that you are trying to talk to and creating a product and creating content around and how to serve them the best. And also you talk about the importance of trust in the toy purchases, trust play a critical role in the purchases because parents like to prioritize safety, being, and also development of their children.

Children and the brand that can really create and establish that trust will see a stronger customer relationship and also a more long term success in the future as well. Based on Dr. Gummer, some of your experience, maybe you can also talk about how is that going to help as far as playing into the marketing side and how that can really can amplify the brand as well.

Amanda Gummer: I think integrity comes into it a lot here. So if you have that independent validation, people are much more willing to, believe what you’re saying, because in the world of fake news and social media, and it can be very difficult when you’re [00:08:00] saying something, people are going to say you would say that, wouldn’t you? You’re trying to sell me a toy. If you get that independent endorsement, it builds that trust and it gives that validation to what it is you’re doing. So you do get the benefits of that increased loyalty. You’ve got people out there championing your brand because they believe in it.

And certainly when we do anything like this we, won’t champion. I get asked all the time to put my name or my voice to a product and unless I’m confident that it does what it says it does and is it’s making valid claims. I won’t do it. So having that independent expert being prepared to put their name to something really does give parents that assurance and helps ease the buying decisions, particularly if it’s a product that is slightly higher end. It matters even more then. 

Jason Hsieh: And I think that’s also the reason why having a third party talking about and reviewing it from a non biased perspective is really important to create additional trust. And also you have a [00:09:00] different set of eyes compared to the inventor or the creator, like myself that created product, we are naturally biased toward the product.

We think we create the best product on planet earth, but from a third party perspective, I think you can really bring a different kind of perspective on how to really improve the product, how to position the product differently, and really how to speak with that Customer that we’re trying to so hard to reach as well.

So the expert toy review really provide in depth evaluation from individuals like yourself and your team with special specialized knowledge within child development, toy safety, or even education aspects. Some of the key benefit that you already mentioned a few earlier is also creating a credible assessment and also help the parents to make an informed decision making and also enhance the product transparency.

If you have any story that you would like to share for our listener and viewer. What are some of the interesting product that you have, that have [00:10:00] gone through and you have done the review for? 

Amanda Gummer: We have over a thousand products in the good play guide now on goodplayguide.com. And the whole point is that you can’t buy the accreditation. And because it’s an accreditation, not a PR award, the methodology and the way we test the toys is really important. So we observe natural behavior by, from children in natural familiar settings with friends and family so that you see what they how they would play with it in real life.

I think it’s very easy to get a good review from a product test by going Hey kids who wants to test a new toy and you give them a new toy and the kids go? Yeah, we love it Because if they say they love it, then they’ll get more toys and that’s the sort of and especially You know the same goes if you’re a toy inventor and you give it to family and friends They love you. They care about you. They want you to be happy They’re going to say nice things about it to get really independent advice or independent reviews is one thing I think where we differ from other reviews around is that the reviews are done [00:11:00] by experts in children So we have teachers we have therapists we have early years practitioners. We have Psychologists and we have all of the toys that go on into the good play guide have been assessed by somebody who understands children so we can look at how to how maybe it could help a child with autism or with a particular challenge. We can see how it can help children build their confidence.

It’s not just about do they enjoy playing with it? It’s what skills does it help them develop? How easy is it for them to use independently? Is it something that adults need to help children engage with, or can kids play with it on their own, all of those things. So our reviews are much more comprehensive because they come from people who really understand children. And I think that gives the manufacturers so much more information to take and put back into their product development or their marketing strategies so that it can really help like you say, with the transparency and, just that sort of longevity of the, brand and the product.

Jason Hsieh: [00:12:00] Yeah, And you talk about this already is also you play a different role in your overall business marketing strategy, because it’s more than just marketing, but it also build that additional trust in the brand. And you also play a critical role to build that customer’s trust by offering some of the unbiased assessment that you mentioned and some of the benefit that you mentioned, including unbiased professional opinion, highlighting some of the important details that sometimes as a brand owner, Ourself is hard to see and also reassuring the parent they are making the right purchasing decision for their child and also establish that brand credibility as well.

And the next thing I want to talk about is the main difference between an expert review versus a user review, because of course we get a lot of reviews from the end consumer either Amazon through your website, or sometimes people will also pay influencer to try to get their product [00:13:00] review it. So I think the next portion of today’s training, I want to talk about what is the main difference between having expert review versus a user review. Maybe you can also elaborate on that a little bit. 

Amanda Gummer: User reviews are really valuable, obviously, in terms of understanding how people are engaging with it, what they think of it, but I think there’s such a lot of fake reviews out there that you have to be really careful when you’re looking at how many Amazon five star reviews a product’s got, and I think the consumers have wised up to that now too. The credibility and authority of the experts doing the reviews, I think really matters. And one thing I should just mention is that we don’t ever do the safety testing. That’s not something that we get involved with, but we do act as a bit of a quality assurance. And we’ve had it where toys have come in for review and one bit of it doesn’t work. And we’ve been able to pull that if it’s at the prototype stage or before it’s really shipped or it’s early samples, you can highlight those difficulties and protect the brand and protect the reputation of the company [00:14:00] and also give the distributors time to go back to the factories and go, you need to fix this. This isn’t working. And if you get that, if you do that at the right time, you get all the benefits of the marketing of knowing that you’ve taken that kind of quality assurance. But you also get the opportunity to fix things early as well. So I think that technical aspect, the kind of the man going, being able to go back to the manufacturers and the factories and check and tweak things. Early enough can save fortunes. I remember one company and I’m not going to name names, but they came and they said, this isn’t selling. It was a product and it was a lovely product. It looked great or boxed up lovely, a popular brand. It wasn’t selling. And they were like, it’s not selling. We don’t know why not. It’s not what we’re not, and we did some testing and it. it just didn’t work. It didn’t fit together the way it was supposed to fit together. And so we gave them the report. We said, this is why we think the it’s a usability issue. It’s not a play value thing because the play, if it was working, it would have been fine, but it didn’t work. And they were like, Oh, we’ve [00:15:00] got thousands of these on a container ship on their way over here. And they’re like yeah, you need to do it. So I think it’s not just about the benefit of the expert review. It’s about getting the timing right as well. 

Jason Hsieh: I see. So since you already mentioned about the case study, can you elaborate on like, how were you able to identify, you mentioned as like a usability issue that you noticed. What can we do as a brand owner ourself how do I identify that? 

Amanda Gummer: Looking at your own qA processes is important, but getting a good play guide review during the development process can really help get the fix any issues, identify issues early and fix them, but it can also really help with the marketing messaging because you might think your product is an educational toy and when children are playing with it, they might play with it in a totally different way or parents might really enjoy something that you think is made for kids on their own And the parents might want to get involved and then it becomes a family activity. So [00:16:00] unless you actually put the products in the hands of kids and watch Them play with it and see how they engage and that’s where we use our understanding of children to interpret that behavior. You can miss opportunities for marketing activities or sales channels or routes to market that just by being able to see that can really, come to life.

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, Thank you for sharing that. sometimes there’s always some issues that it’s hard to know. That’s why it’s very important to do like play study or like a different study with like actual user. You can see how the kids can interact with the toys or games that you develop differently what you originally intended to do. And that’s, I think sometimes you also look at the things from a very different perspective as well. So the next thing I also want to talk about is also the psychology behind having expert reviews of the toys or games that our listener and the viewer is working on.[00:17:00] 

The consumer usually are more inclined to trust opinion from individual that they see as knowledgeable or experience especially when making important decision about their child safety and also development as well. And some of the key reason that you mentioned a little bit earlier, including authority, credibility, and also professional validations and also it could reduce some of the perceived risk from the parents. And it can also influence some of the consumer behavior. But I think one of the major things that a lot of the people that I talk to when talking about getting like additional accreditation is, When should they start? How long does that process usually take? Do we start it during the design process, during the prototyping process, or do we start it after, okay, everything is already finished and we’re about to launch the product, then we try to get accreditation and get some additional expert opinion or expert review on it. What is the best timing? [00:18:00] 

Amanda Gummer: So I would say it depends on how innovative the product is. If it’s innovative, I would do research right from the get go. And I think that through the fundamentally children brand, we do research and consultancy right from storyboarding or concept stage. So if you’re making something that’s really new and you want to know what age it’s for, how kids play with it, what skills it develops, all of those things, the earlier you start, the better. If you’re making a new version of a fairly established toy, you can get quite a lot of the way there yourself. I would still say final prototype, pre launch because then you get the benefit of the accreditation at the launch. So that gives you extra, it makes it work harder for you. But yeah, I think getting users and experts involved in the product development process at the earliest point. I would say that would my, but I think I, it pays dividends. It really de risks the development and it can save costly mistakes. 

Jason Hsieh: Who is on your team when you work with a brand, what is like the high level process that they usually go through?

Amanda Gummer: For us, [00:19:00] it depends on the level of depth of detail of the review, but we have child minders. We have early years professionals. We have teachers. We have therapists we have psychologists we have people who have been working in toys and with families for years. I think if you’re building your own Net expert network you want to have a mixture so you do want some kind of teacher So you want to because that kind of What’s linked to the curriculum? What is it? How does a product link to what kids are learning in school? That’s really valuable. You want some kind of play worker somebody who and you know, whether it’s a child minder or a qualified play worker or somebody who can really understand how children might engage with the product.

And then I think if you’ve got somebody who’s got experience with the inclusivity and diversity, all of that kind of stuff to help make sure that the products are as inclusive and accessible as possible, that’s great. So when you’re building your network, It’s not an easy thing to do, which I think is why as having that network already built [00:20:00] is a real resource for the industry, because there’s only so many professionals who have time to come and help you build your toy and that they’re doing their day job.

So I think you’ve got access to teach, even if you’ve got if you can build a small network, an immediate network around you of a teacher, a childminder, a therapist of some kind and use them as your kind of first line. You can then, you can get quite a lot of feedback from them, but they’re not easy to find. So if people are struggling to find that sort of network, then that is, yeah, then that’s where we come in. 

Jason Hsieh: Just like you mentioned, identify not just different experts in different fields, but that’s also related to the product and the category that you’re in. For us, so we partner with like occupational therapists usually the most, because a lot of our products being used in the occupational therapy setting as well. And other partner we usually partner with is like school [00:21:00] administration. Like I know a few principal of elementary school that sometimes I’ll talk to and give them free products and just get them, get some feedback from them, but having that network of people that you can talk to, to get direct feedback, or even just give some of the product for free to see how they have, how the product is being used and foster that kind of long term relationship is really important for the long term success of the brand.

You can try to engage with those people either through event with some kind of partnership, but it does take time to identify and find those people. So sometimes it is, it could be very beneficial to leverage someone like your company that already have that network in place instead of go out and try to find all those individual people yourself.

Amanda Gummer: Yeah. And the other thing to bear in mind is if you’re giving a school, your local school free toys there’s going to be social desirability effects. They’re going to want to keep you happy because they’re going to want more free toys. So you might not get quite as brutally [00:22:00] honest feedback from them as you would from somebody who’s completely independent, who can say, look, we didn’t make these toys. Tell us what you think. We want to know your honest, the honest truth. It’s just a bit more authentic. I think people you’ve not, you’re not clouding any relationships or anything. If you have that independent third party doing the reviews. 

Jason Hsieh: For sure. And I was wondering, do you have any case study or story that you’d like to share of how things may went wrong?

Amanda Gummer: I was just going back a few years now, but there was a story in one of the UK newspapers about how a motorized toy train had pulled out a child’s hair. And it was toy train, the headline in the, tabloid was toy train makes child bald. They phoned me up for the daily mail. It was, I think phone me up for a comment and interview. And because the product had been accredited by the good play guide, we knew it was a good toy. It was a great toy. It was a motorized little train goes around on a track. And we were able to say, [00:23:00] look, the child shouldn’t have been putting a train in her hair and pressing on and having the wheels spin round. That’s not the train’s fault. That’s either the, it’s kids will be kids and accidents will happen maybe the parents should have been looking a bit more closely. It’s that kind of thing. So because we were able to say, no, this train is actually really good for children, it develops these skills and it helps children and the children that we tested it with really engaged with it on these bases.

So we were able to really cut the story down and really protect the brand. Those kind of things that, that kind of PR damage limitation is really valuable. And again, we can’t do that unless we’ve actually tested the toy. 

Jason Hsieh: What happened at the end?

Amanda Gummer: It was fine. The story died. The story disappeared and it was yeah damage limitation exercise was successful. 

Jason Hsieh: And like you mentioned, leveraging expert review is also excellent way for brand growth. It could be part of your digital marketing strategy when you’re launching either a new product or a new brand to start out with because review can go beyond just building trust. [00:24:00] It also serves as a a powerful tool for the growth of the brand because now you’re seeing a positive review from professionals offering social proof. Boost visibility and also help establish the brand’s reputation for both quality and also reliability as well. And some of the key ways of course, working with someone like yourself, that might be a way to get additional review. But after you’re getting them, it’s also very important that you’re using them, the reviews, after you get it. Otherwise it’s sitting somewhere in your computer that you never really share. And then all the time and effort you put into getting those expert reviews is going to go waste. 

So I want to also talk about once you get those review to make sure you’re featuring those review in your marketing campaigns, share those review on social media, and also you can incorporate those review in your website, in your product, maybe insert card. And you can also engage with different experts, but you, Dr. Gummer, if you can also [00:25:00] elaborate after for the brand that you work with, after they get accreditation, how do you help them after, you finished the accreditation process? 

Amanda Gummer: So there’s lots of ways that we support brands who are accredited. So they go on the website they feature in our social media, but they get a suite of assets that they can use in their own marketing material. So on their socials, newsletters, expose even if they’re going to conferences or trade shows, they can print out the stamps and use them there. E commerce platforms, another one, we’ve got some really great examples of how people have used the good play guide accreditation and created either a TV ad and referencing it or a storefront within Amazon where all of the accredited toys are all there, those kinds of things. There’s a really really powerful ways of doing it and it. It doesn’t happen very much anymore, but I never understand why you would go through the process of getting the accreditation and then not shout about it. And we [00:26:00] now have a range of support that is exclusively for accredited products to help with, they can access campaigns and ongoing sort of month on month support for their brand so that they can really shout about it and maximize the impact because the harder you make it work, the more valuable the accreditation is for the brand and the more value adds. So it’s it’s really interesting to see how creative some of the brands can be with the work that they do with their accreditation. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. And you also really tied to the consumer journey itself, awareness to purchase because the expert review play a critical role in the consumer journey to guiding them to not just discover the toys, but also induce more confidence in making that final purchasing decision. And some of the key benefit mentioning throughout today’s webinar, including some of the increase in brand awareness and also alleviate concern and boosting confidence in the purchasing decisions and supporting the long term [00:27:00] customer royalty as well.

And I think even for me as a parent, myself, I have three kids. Sometimes when I’m purchasing product, I like to ask the therapist I’m working with, what do you think about this one? And thinking about purchasing for my son, for example, and I think that’s the power of expert review because people like to want to opinion from the expert and the people that have been working in child development or occupational therapy fields for years. And me as a parent, I feel like that is, that’s really assuring that, okay, I’m making the right decision. I’m not just spending money on random stuff for no reason. And also, it combined authenticity and also integrity in the expert review, because as we know, and that’s actually 1 thing will be this kind of covering in the next portion of today’s webinar about not just expert review, but also a lot of people were looking to influencer and how is that going to be a difference? We’ll also cover that in today’s webinar. But before we [00:28:00] talk about that, I think we also want to cover some of the key benefit as far as creating the impartial assessment and also transparency in the review process. 

So I think Dr. Gummer, you mentioned about your processes and I know there’s a lot of different company that also offer not, just certification, so to speak, but also some kind of badge. Can you walk us through how is your process different than all the other one that is already available in the industry right now?

Amanda Gummer: Yeah, sure. So my background is academic psychology and methodology was drilled into me. So the whole idea about being able to compare like and quite often, I’ve seen reviews where the reviews get sent out to one, maybe two families and you get a review back and there’s very little consistency. You don’t know whether the kid was poorly. You don’t know whether the mom was busy. You don’t know whether the grandparents are visiting. You don’t know what was going on and when, that toy [00:29:00] was being tested. You also don’t know an awful lot of, there’s not an awful lot of standardization in the review process.

So it might get sent over to this family who loved it because it, It ticked the box and, it worked for them. And then this family were playing with it in a different way and it didn’t work for them. So to get that consistency. So we have very robust guidelines for how we observe and monitor and feedback on the products that were being tested. So that’s something that we are very strict about to make sure that everything is standardized, but we are observing children behaving naturally. And I think that’s another key thing, because you can get feedback from children in artificial situations, and you can’t then generalize to the wider population or to children on another day. You have to make sure that you’re observing children behaving how they would normally behave in order to be able to draw conclusions from that [00:30:00] playtesting. 

Jason Hsieh: How long does that process usually take your team for a typical review process? 

Amanda Gummer: So we normally three to three to six weeks depending on how busy we are and what type of toy it is. We have been known to turn it around in a lot shorter time. Than that if needed, but yeah, not. We normally suggested of three to six weeks. 

We can do it a lot quicker if needed, but if it’s just on a standard review, if it’s just coming in, it joins a queue. And if we’re busy, we like to make sure that we always try and underpromise and over deliver here. So we always try and manage expectations. 

Jason Hsieh: Of course, Yeah. And you want to make sure you’re doing the right step, right? So that’s very important. Yeah. 

Amanda Gummer: And that gives us a window to retest as well, because if we get a product, so if we’re reviewing something and maybe the kids aren’t really engaging with it in a particular way, maybe we need to tweak something about the way we’re testing it. Maybe we need to try it with older children or younger children. We have that timeframe gives us time to do that too. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, thank you [00:31:00] for sharing the processes. I want to talk about, which we mentioned it a little bit earlier, is also utilizing multiple platform after you get an expert review. Make sure you are distributing it through the emails and also use the diverse distribution channels and incorporate the review into your packaging. And also If you are selling in the brick and mortar location, utilize it as a in store display as well. That’s many different strategy.

Dr. Gummer, you mentioned about using it in your Facebook ad campaign in the, in a video setting, that could be another way to, to use the review that you work so hard on getting and take a lot of your time and energy as a business owner, trying to get those expert a review for the brand and the product. 

Next is the difference between an expert review and influencer, because influencer marketing is really, trending and a lot of toy entrepreneur that I talk to the one thing we always talk about okay, what kind of influencer strategy are you currently doing? And in today’s webinar, I want to [00:32:00] talk about How is the expert review different influencer review and the main difference between the two. So you know how to use them effectively alongside with each other, just because you are doing expert review doesn’t mean you should not do influencer review. To be honest, in my opinion, you should do both, provide a different kind of perspective. 

Amanda Gummer: Absolutely and we quite often work with influencers. I’ve done some work with some fairly high profile influencers where I’ve provided some of the expertise and they’ve provided the audience and the kind of the more kind of relatable parenting view. And that works really well. So you can get, The expert and the influencer on the same podcast or the same video, that can work really well. But I would say if you are using influencers, it’s about building awareness of your brand. So it’s reaching you are utilizing their audience and their reach to, to raise brand awareness.

I think experts help build brand trust. I think that’s the key benefit, the key difference. [00:33:00] But I think, even if you’re just using an influencer for that reach, you want to make sure that they are genuinely a fan of what you’re doing because the integrity and the authenticity comes across really well. And we’ve all seen it, haven’t we? We’ve seen celebrities going, yeah, buy this. It’s great. And then they walk away and they don’t even drink the drink or put the shoe on or whatever it is. And you know that it doesn’t feel authentic. So especially with something for children. Pick who it is that you are using as an influencer, make sure that they genuinely believe in what it is you’re doing and understand the product. And aren’t just reading a script or posting a social reel or something. It’s got to be 

Jason Hsieh: very important because sometimes you have influencer that reviewing a toy that doesn’t even have kids. So what are they actually reviewing? Even though the product is designed for kids. And I think that authenticity aspect of the marketing is so important and sometimes is being overlooked by the brand and [00:34:00] they spend a lot of like time and even also money engaging with those influencers because they have big Instagram account with a million followers, but are they really the people that you want to associate your brand with? That’s definitely an excellent point. 

On your perspective when you are working with some of the brand of course, you mentioned about a few things already about the difference between using an influencer versus expert review. And one of the key thing you mentioned is also building that long term trust and also create that credibility for the brand itself. That’s the main difference between the influencer versus expert, but you, yourself I always say you’re a both, you’re an expert and you’re an influencer in this space too. 

Amanda Gummer: Thank you. Yeah, I think that long term trust building is really important. I don’t think many people set out to be a sort of flash in the pan, go in, flog it, sell it, get out. I think most people want to, A, for [00:35:00] environmental considerations as well now, but also for their own reputation and, long term legacy and success of the business, that longer term approach. Does mean that you want to make sure that you have got that you’ve got you’re taking an evidence based approach to the development You’re using people who know what they’re talking about and you’re getting That all the foundations right from the start and build that trust and because it’s so easy to lose It takes a long time to build trust, but it’s so easy for it to disappear and you only have to look at some of the Terrible adverts campaign ad campaigns that you know We can all remember And where you just, you, it just puts you straight off of a brand. And I think it’s, that you don’t get that so much if you’re taking that evidence based approach and using experts. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, for sure. And the next thing I want to talk about is also different type of format when it comes to having reviews, one of the most powerful format, obviously, is video because you can do image [00:36:00] reviews, but I think video does offer a more engaging and more impactful way to showcase some of the review that you’re getting and for to take your services as an example you also provide a video to the brand as well, right? Can we talk a little bit about what type of video that the brand that’s working with you will be expecting? 

Amanda Gummer: We have everything from user generated content that’s just filmed on a phone and is very authentic and it’s just caught on the moment. We have our play cafe, our play, a good play zone where we interact with kids and watch kids play. And it’s quite easy for us to just see something exciting happening and being able to record that obviously with all the GDPR and proper data protection consent and everything. But there’s that right through to studio setting fully lit. Production quality, and filming. And it depends what the clients want, but in terms of the reviews as well, once you’re accredited, if you have a video [00:37:00] of your product, that’s that you like, we can include that in the, in, on the review page in the good play guide. So that’s an opportunity for video to be part of it, be part of the review without having to pay us to do it, to do the video itself.

But if you’ve obviously got somebody like me or one of our experts talking about the benefits of the product, that again, is a really powerful way of getting that credibility and, independent expert endorsement across. 

Jason Hsieh: Once you take those video, then you can also incorporate those and integrating those video reviews into your product page. And that’s also going to help you as far as on the marketing side to really elevate the consumer confidence and also drive additional sales by adding that credibility and trust to the purchasing decision. For example you can either use it for your own website, or you can use it on Amazon as well on the Amazon listing. You can upload multiple video as part of the product detail page itself to really [00:38:00] reinforce some of the major benefit. And also increase the engagement with your potential customers and also put more attention on some of the key feature and you also make your product a little bit stand out more because if you do a lot of shopping on Amazon, you don’t, it’s not a lot of a lot of the product.

I will say right now, the quality is not so good. They are all competing on price. So having an expert review talking about the product from a very authentic perspective that really also help you as a brand owner that’s watching this month’s webinar about how do you stand out in the midst of competition nowadays.

The biggest problem with digital marketing, especially when it comes to Amazon, that’s influx of a Chinese brand that doesn’t really focusing on authenticity. They don’t really focusing on quality. They don’t focusing really on any of those aspects. All they focusing on is price. They are just trying to sell your product where they can. They will [00:39:00] actually go and copy your product and sell it at much lower price without even consider any of the things we discussed in today’s webinar at all. And, but as a brand, I think as a brand owner myself, I think it’s really important to really not compete on price because we’ll never win that battle if you’re just competing on price.

But how can we compete as a story of the brand, just like for example, That’s why people are buying Legos at a different price than all the other Lego knockoffs that people are also selling that look identical to the Legos. But because of the consumer trust, like Lego is a brand they were able to build over the years, that’s why people are willing to pay a premium for a very similar product. Product. And I think that’s also one of the major benefits of having an expert reviewing your, product to release, like may your product stand your product and your brand stand out as a premium and you’re willing to invest into those kinds of [00:40:00] additional, scenes that are just out of brand doesn’t want to invest into.

And I don’t know, Dr. Gummer, do you have anything else to add to that? 

Amanda Gummer: It can be tempting to join that race to the bottom when it comes to price. But I think it’s really important that we protect those companies that are investing, like you say, in the R and D and putting children first and really doing their homework and, investing.

And I think I want to make sure that we are giving companies that are doing the right thing by children a commercial advantage because they should be the ones that are being more successful Because they’re doing the right thing I don’t want to live in a world where you have to choose between making money and doing good I think the people who are doing the right thing by kids should be the ones that are successful and that’s where I think the accreditation really comes into its own we can then once we have accredited products we can then really help shout about them and build that brand trust and I think it’s That’s the way that we can address some of the less. That’s ethical practices within the industry. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, and [00:41:00] one thing I want to talk about next is the future of the toy expert toy review as a technology involve more and more of us is using AI. I use tragedy on daily basis as well. That’s also a different way to incorporate the review and also utilizing some of the most current and some of the future technology as far as maintaining the relevancies of our brand and our product, and also enhance equitabilities and Potentially also future proving some of the brand reputations as well and on your Aspect do you also use some of the ai as far as your current process working with the brand as well? 

Amanda Gummer: Yeah, and we’re looking at incorporating it more into the website to help personalize the experience so the kind of if you like being able to Create something where you can put some details about a child in and come up with really personalized recommendations based on [00:42:00] A much wider range of characteristics and features. So yeah I think AI is going to make, it much more, feasible to personalize recommendations and reviews, for individual customers, but also make the toy manufacturers. Reviews more, more substantial. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, for sure. And for a lot of those that’s listening or watching the webinar, I think I also work with a lot of emerging toy brand that’s new to the industry. So establish that initial trust early is really critical to gain that consumer confidence and stand out in the competition, like very competitive market that we mentioned earlier and expert, like having an expert review could really play in a vital role in creating that credibility from the start.

And like we’ve already mentioned a few throughout today’s presentation is to make that building that additional consumer trust and also [00:43:00] early brand authority as well. And I think Based on your experience, Dr. Gummer, I’ve seen you have worked with so many different brands over your careers.

How many of those are like newer to the market compared to more established brands that’s coming to you for help? 

Amanda Gummer: Yeah, there’s a real mix now. And we launched our seedling program a couple of years ago. Where we support new brands and small brands. And it’s a, really nice sort of almost a mini incubator. So you can be on the program for up to two years and you get discounted rates and you get a lot of sort of handholding and support and introductions and some of the sort of money can’t buy stuff that you get from just being connected. And we’ve had great feedback. It helps with investment raises because people, investors feel better that you’re taking an evidence based approach and you’ve got somebody sort of experts in the industry, knowing supporting you, it helps with finding distribution partners, because we have a network of people, of companies that we know within the industry and we can make relevant [00:44:00] introductions. It helps make sure that you’re not wasting money going down a rabbit hole or a wrong path because we can help guide and make, and help small companies make informed decisions about the next steps and strategy.

So it’s been really successful. And we really like working with the really small guys and it’s something that I think I want to see more of because I think it’s where the innovation really happens. I think the, kind of the new startups and the small companies who’ve got that, those visions and they’re, often mission led and they want to do, they want to solve a problem like you did you want to do something for yourself and you want to make the world a better place. You want to give these kids the future they deserve. And I really like that. I love supporting brands who’ve got something about them and not just looking at the bottom line 

Jason Hsieh: for those people that’s listening. If they’re interested to learn more about that ceiling the program age is mentioned, where can they find that 

Amanda Gummer: if they go to fundamentallychildren.com, there’s some information there about our [00:45:00] services and there’s a contact us form. So you can, you just get in touch that way. 

Jason Hsieh: I see. Okay. I’ll also make sure we include that as part of today this month’s webinar as well. The next thing I wanted to talk about is, Pitfall to avoid in expert review, because there’s a lot of different company out there that kind of offer some sort of review services. Of course, it’s different than what you do, Dr. Gummer, but as a brand owner, sometimes there’s just so many options. If you look at the toys product nowadays, they have 10 different badges from different companies. Oh, this is a bad for whatever. And it’s really hard sometime as a brand owner myself, because we’re inundated by the information by what is already in the marketplace right now, what I want to spend some time talking about how, what are some of the pitfalls to avoid as a brand owner to make sure we are working with the right company as far as a long term partnership.

Amanda Gummer: Yeah, you should [00:46:00] absolutely make make sure you understand the process. So how are they reviewing the toys? Who reviews the toys and how, are the toys reviewed? Like I said, we very much prioritize natural play behavior in authentic settings so that children are displaying everyday play patterns. So I think that transparency around how things are reviewed, I think absolutely. Really key. And I think, the other thing is to understand the difference between a PR award and an accreditation as well, a PR award you get the badge, but it always has a date on it. So you’re not going to want to put that on your packaging because it looks out of date very quickly.

Whereas an accreditation is for the life of the product. And it should be so you can confidently put that on anything. It’s not going to go out of date. So I think that’s something to look at as well. And I think if it’s, there’s a lot of controversy around whether or not you should pay for reviews.

And I feel if you’re paying for the review. And everybody automatically gets the [00:47:00] award or gets the badge. There’s no integrity there. So you want to, so the other thing I’d ask is, how many reviews of, how many of your products tend to fail? And what happens if they fail? Again, that goes to the integrity of the review.

But equally, if you don’t pay for a review, You will be paying somewhere along the line. So transparency around you don’t pay for a review, but it costs you 500 pounds for the award dinner ticket and another thousand pounds to use the logo, afterwards or whatever. And it’s understanding where the costs are because a free, entry to a, an award or a, an accreditation of some sort might sound appealing, but they’re going to get that for it to be any value.

A, it has to be, it has to be credible and independent and have the trust of consumers and the industry, but it also need, you also need to understand, what the full costs are. 

Jason Hsieh: One thing you mentioned, I think that’s actually very common when I go. first got into the industry. Almost every single batch, you will say the year on it. And if you want to get the latest one, you need to pay a renewal [00:48:00] fee every single year to get a updated version, which is weird for me. 

Amanda Gummer: I find that quite cynical. Yeah. Yeah. So we don’t do that. We have yeah, it’s the, accreditation is the life of the product when we, for the good play guys. So that was one of my, was one of my bug bears with the way that the industry was working with the kind of awards. And yeah, so I that’s one of the things that I committed to right from the get go. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. And that’s something like me as a business owner, which I don’t like, like why do I need to pay for this thing that I already done many years ago, every single year?

Amanda Gummer: Yeah. If it was good last year, it’s still good now. What’s, nothing’s changed 

Jason Hsieh: and the, problem with the industry is okay, I pay for this renewal fee, but what do I get ? Yeah. Besides just changing the year that’s no additional benefit that we are getting as a brand besides just paying them more money for changing the badge to the like the latest year, pretty much. I think that’s another thing to definitely look out for because that’s a lot of there’s a lot of choices in the industry right now [00:49:00] for the brand owner, like myself to choose from, it’s focusing on, like you mentioned earlier, Dr. Gummer, on choosing a company that could be unbiased and they are not just Oh, if you pay us, you’ll get a badge or just there’s no process, whatever, pretty much as long as you pay, you get a badge automatically, then that’s not the right partner because that also that also talk a lot about Like the, integrity of that badge or that thing that you just paid for, it doesn’t really worth that much because anyone can get it as long as they pay the company to get that badge.

So there’s no, there’s not a lot of like process of validation behind the badge that you’re getting as a, business owner. So thank you so much for mentioning some of the pitfall when choosing the right partner for the, which we talk about partnering with a reputable review platform is super important because all the because of all the pitfalls that we mentioned now all the platform hold the same way [00:50:00] with the consumer. So it is very important to be very strategic about where you’re featuring your review and who do you decide to partner with your product and your hard earned money to, really engage in this process. And we already mentioned some of the consideration earlier based on the pitfall is to selecting the correct industry specific platform, because sometimes there’s also batch out there that’s not industry specific. Pretty much. It’s like a Prada instead of I think your services is more industry specific and you also have three different kinds of certification as well, I don’t know if you can elaborate on the difference between the three and what people, 

Amanda Gummer: so we have our own. We have our own good play guide accreditation and then we are also the partners for the toy association steam accreditation, steam toy accreditation and the mesh helps mesh accreditation. So mesh toys, steam toys. So [00:51:00] mesh is mental, emotional, social health. Steam is science, technology, engineering, and maths. Arts and Maths and so we have developed frameworks and run accreditation programs on behalf of third parties for them, but we also have good play guide accreditation which is our own and we do that. Across the board. 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah, so yours definitely very industry specific and also category specific at the same time. So you can really go down to the very detail. So going back to the key consideration you hit the nail on the head about being very specific on which, what kind of accreditation program that will work the best for the product that you have. And also make sure you have the unbiased evaluations and that’s all very important consideration. When choosing the right partner. So as well, winding down in today’s webinar. 

Thank you so much for those of you that are joining us live or watching the replay for today’s and this month’s topic about building consumer trust [00:52:00] and the power of expert reviews.

What I want to mention is about how we can help. If you are interested to learn more about Dr Gummer’s program we’ll make sure in the email that we send out also include more information on how to sign up and and also Dr Gummer, can you also mention about, what are the best places for people to find you online as well?

Amanda Gummer: So you can see the reviews in situ on goodplayguide. com and for more advice and information on how we can help brands with the accreditation and other services it’s fundamentallychildren. com 

Jason Hsieh: Yeah. Thank you so much. And and I think Dr. Gummer, you also go to a lot of the conferences yourself as well. So people might also run into you in the upcoming toys and game conferences as well. But thank you so much for your time today. for the Q and A session, if you have any additional questions. Please send us an email and we’ll make sure we forward [00:53:00] your question to Dr. Gummer after the fact. And thank you so much for everyone participating in this month’s webinar. I hope you find this webinar very helpful in your entrepreneurial journey and with your companies. And Dr. Gummer, thank you so much for your time on sharing all your knowledges and all your expertise and some of the stories that you have seen over the years with the brand that is participating in your program. 

Amanda Gummer: Thanks, Jason. It’s been lovely.

Outro: You’ve been listening to Toy Business Unboxed, hosted by Jason Hsieh. Thank you for joining us and exploring the fascinating world of toys and the ingenuity behind them.

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