Marketing Communications Memo
Michael Richter
PSY/322
June 15, 2013
Michael Turner

Marketing Communications Memo
Date: July 15, 2013
To: Management Team
From: Michael Richter
Re: New line of educational toys for kids aged 7-10 As Top of the Rock Toys moves into the future it is time our teams begin to discuss our new product realization for our toys. As of last week, it was brought to my attention that we do not have many options for educational toys, especially for the children in the ages of 7-10 years of age. As many of you may already know, Top of the Rock Toys want the children of our world to enjoy playing, yet at the same time continue to learn and develop the fundamentals needed to become the top minds in our country.
The reason for this memo is to inform you that I will be leading the team that will develop this new product line, since this will be a joint effort from all the management team I am cordially asking that all teams that have data that pertains to demographics of our markets as well as psychographics please contact me as soon as possible so that I may begin to understand our target market, thus building our toy company into the leader of educational toys. The following will be a list of what I may or hope to obtain from the management team. The data that is provided will negate our goals so it is vital that you only pass along key information to the specific age group of 7-10 years of age.
Our newest products have aimed their targets at younger children then normal, with this said we will want to understand the psychographics of these children’s behaviors. What we as a team must look at in particular is how the children in this age group make the decision to want to play with our toys. The main areas I would like to cover will be the personality of the children. It is not as simple as the personality of these children makes them buy it.
We are located in Minnesota; this is our proving grounds. I ask is the state a highly educated state? In fact, Minnesota has some of the highest test scores in children of this specific age group, according to the Us Census Bureau, “Minnesota had the highest percentage of people over the age of 25 with a high school diploma.”(US Census Bureau, 2004) This demonstrates that parents in this location will also play a heavy part in getting children to play with educational toys.
What does this mean? These are our key demographics, we will be aiming our product marketing at ages 7-10, our location is Minnesota, who has a higher than average educational rate. These three demographics give us a challenge to market our toys to those who already enjoy learning. The reason why this is a challenge is because the age group we have chosen is full of spirit, ready to run and play. Many educational toys do not offer running and playing, however, since our location has a nice weather pattern that will enable us to capture a locked in the house winter audience our success rate increases by double. So let us address our plans for making this happen.
As before I mentioned we want to understand psychographics as much as we do demographics. Our buy in is going to be the snow, this will be when we release our ad campaign, weather outside is frightful, and the games looks so delightful. This is going to contribute to the buying motives of this location. Research suggests that educational games increase during winter months. Great, we now know that Minnesotans are often locked in and have very little for entertainment. How can we find their interests out? Well, let us look at the stats again, remember the state is a higher than average educational state, this must mean that they enjoy learning. This state’s demonstrates a strong belief that learning is important.
Where do we go with all this information? First we will launch our release of our product at the Mall of America in Minnesota. This will bring us directly into the first demographic, second we will offer a discount to student at the mall at the time who have recently received honors on their report cards. This is our sound understanding of who will want to buy our products, students who maintain good grades and live within a state that has climatic changes. The children demonstrate a personality of learners, based on our data gathering children who often spend more time indoors will actually have more exposure to educational tools. On a side note while marketing is communicating this into our ad we will want to ensure we steer clear of sounding like we endorse not playing outside. We at Top of the Rock Toys actually whole heartedly believe that children should play as much as possible to remain healthy in their body as well as their minds.
Children of these age groups have short attention spans; our focus is to offer games that provide entertainment to those children who have become bored from cold weather blues, parents who have had a day full of children at their feet. All of these are our psychographics. Did we forget about the parents, absolutely not, while we researched the psychographics of the children we discovered that parents also have the same beliefs and attitudes towards products as the children do. See part of the understanding you target is falling looking into the entire world of the target, and parents teach their children to enjoy learning. They also teach them the habits of boredom, so we will ensure that the games we offer will also include parent activities to do with their children. If the parents are happy so are the children.
To some it all up, we have looked at our target analyzed our target and have now made a game plan on how to deploy our communication from marketing. It may seem like a lot however when it begins to move it will all be worth the efforts. No company has ever made a cent without doing a little bit of research on their consumers. Research enables the marketing company to know who can see the ad before they ever see it, in a way it like predicting the future, but you can only get good at when you try hard and practice. Please take a second and think about the wonderful enjoyment we can provide both parent and child alike with our new products.

Thank you for your time
Michael S Richter

Reference
US Census Bureau (2004). High school diploma or higher, by percentage statistics - states compared - State Master. Retrieved July 15, 2013, from http://www.statemaster.com/red/graph/edu_hig_sch_dip_or_hig_by_per-high-school-diploma-higher-percentage&b_map=1#source