Parents need to play in the ‘Sandbox’ – and marketers can help
I attended the recent Sandbox Summit on technology and playtime in New York. The first Sandbox Summit was held at CES earlier this year, and founders Wendy Smolen and Claire Green moved it to Manhattan for round two. Starting with a presentation by Google Creative Labs’ Andy Berndt, much of the discussion focused on the opportunities for collaboration and creativity online.
MIT Media Lab’s Mitch Resnick discussed the Media Lab’s Scratch, a site that lets kids upload and add to each other’s projects, such as stories, games and animated characters, all created by kids. Dizzywood founder Scott Arpajian shared Dizzywood’s use as a classroom tool to get kids working together on projects in the eco-friendly virtual world. Offline, Leapfrog’s Jim Gray presented the company’s Tag Reading System, which lets parents know what their child is learning and interested in even if they can’t be there to read the bed time story.
The concensus was technology can enhance playtime if, like the Tag, LEGO or Dizzywood examples shared, it encourages children to continue to explore and create. “It’s how you use the medium that’s important,” explained Kathy Hirsh-Pasek (Einstein Never Used Flash Cards). Hirsh-Pasek and other researchers, like Annenberg’s Deb Linebarger, also talked about the value of parent interaction.
This is a huge opportunity for manufacturers and publishers. We all know about the time constraints of today’s parents, but most parents want to be involved – and playtime is one of the fun ways they can stay involved in their child’s development, not just in the early years, but right through the tween and teen years. Look at Toontown, the first all-family MMO. I’m less sure about Leapfrog’s Tag. Does its innovation mean parents will be reading less books to their kids?
There’s both a product development opportunity to create new ways for parents to easily step into the play room, and a communications opportunity for companies to talk to parents about play time experiences – and not just about what their children will learn, but about the opportunities for parent involvement in playtime. I know many parents (dads in particular – I’m married to one) who are still kids at heart. Maybe more resources should be shifted from marketing play experiences to kids to marketing to the parents?
You can download all of the Sandbox Summit presentations for free here. The panel led by Alix Kennedy, editorial director at Family Fun and Wondertime, was a particularly good one, with speakers from Leapfrog, LEGO, MIT and the 92nd Street Y Preschool. Hands-down the most entertaining presentation came from Eric Beck, producer for NextNewNetworks and creator of Indy Mogul, a site that teaches amateur filmmakers and movie enthusiasts to make special effects on the cheap. The “making it rain” episode is priceless (and it costs just $50 to make it rain, a bargain even in this economy!).
Right on about the need to market playtime to parents. We’ve been hearing the research on active play and parents’ roles for years, but mostly directly from the sources themselves. For some reason, MSM doesn’t see the need to tell the story, so it hasn’t broken through, and that’s a shame. The data is there. How do we make this the next “inactivity/obesity”? This is no less of a crisis. I would have loved to ask the 92nd Street Y person what schools’ responsibility is and what role they should play. They have the means to get right to parents, and don’t demure to do it frequently when they feel the need (e.g. during any fundraising drive). A coalition may be in order, comprised of researchers, educators, rank and file parents, and — not to be kneejerk, but — influential, intelligent celeb parents.
Great comments Rob. On the marketing piece, we see so much focus on product features and what the product does. Marketers that focus on what the child can do (and how parents can play along too) have an opportunity to stand out and endear themselves to parents.