Marketing research

by Magda

Parents of children 6-13 are our clients, children are the users of the product. Our final marketing strategy will mostly depend on our value proposition - if it’s going to focus on giving kids better future or rather just entertainment. For now as we are focusing on giving children better skills for the future and also possibly helping kids with hyperactivity our marketing should be focused mostly on parents, because they are the ones that care most about their kids education and future.

So we need to search for the channels where we can connect parents of children 6-13 and possibly parents with hyperactivity problems.

It would be good to have a healthy mix of online and offline marketing channels.

1. Parenting blogs

It is a great channel for us because it can give us instant access to hundreds of thousands parents, bloggers would often review the product and can be sort of evangelists of the products. These blogs are mostly run by moms, but some of them are written by dads, so they are possibly the first group we should connect with. Blogs are also great because they often are written around one specific subject, so we can also find bloggers writing about their kids with adhd problems and connect with them as well.

http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/Top-25-European-Moms-2012

http://famousparenting.com/top-50-parenting-blogs-2014/

http://www.healthline.com/health-slideshow/best-adhd-blogs#6

http://www.friendshipcircle.org/blog/2014/01/27/10-addadhd-blogs-and-forums-you-should-follow/

2. Community portals and forums for parents - about education, after-school activities, adhd etc. - the places where people exchange ideas and look for inspiration what to do with their kid. Maybe also for homeschoolers.

http://www.circleofmoms.com/moms-kids-adhd

http://www.addforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=7

http://connect.additudemag.com/groups/group/Parents_of_ADHD_Children/

http://www.time4learning.net/

3. Other online communities for parents - like Facebook groups,

http://homeschoolrealm.com/links/facebook-groups-for-homeschoolers/

https://www.facebook.com/adhdsupportgroupforparents

4. Create our own community - our blog and facebook group dedicated to the parents

5. Local meetup communities - http://parents.meetup.com/ - join local meetups with parents, we can use it not only for promotion but also for idea validation

6. Trade fairs - local and international education/ toys fairs

http://happybaby.mtp.pl/en/

http://www.btha.co.uk/toy-fair/

http://www.spielwarenmesse.de/about-the-fair/fair-profile/?L=1 - the biggest toy fair in Europe

Experimenting with product name & logos

Yellow attracts the human attention more than any other color. It's playful and bright. 'Y' is an excellent letter, it's a vowel but not of the most typically used. 'Y' resembles a node, a tree and connection.We want to create something Yellow. Maybe 'Yellowstones' (?). That's under discussion.

Here's a first draft of the new colors & Y concept.

Main competitors

LEGO MINDSTORMS

“Create and command amazing LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robots with touch sensor, color sensor, infrared sensor and 550+ LEGO Technic elements. Building instructions for 1 robot included.Download 4 more building instructions plus bonus building instructions developed by real fans and endrosed by LEGO at LEGO.com/mindstorms”

Price $350

Recommended age: 10-15

Extras from LEGO: PC programming software , commander app - to navigate the robot (you can also navigate through special commanding thing that is included in the pack), 3d builder app - with easy to follow instructions on how to build a robot, some other building instructions.

1st survey form for parents

We are using this form to extract useful information from parents and keep in contact with the ones that are interested for further engagement in the project.

Click to see the form:
in English
in Spanish
in Greek

Kids' problems & needs we can directly or indirectly address

This is not extensive research, just a first effort to extract and sort some of the issues we can use firstly to take in consideration designing our product and subsequently market it as such.

Problem / Need	Cause	Relevant Solution using our product
Hands-on learning of how the physical world works.	Too much abstract, virtual interaction using Tablets & so on	The kids use skill-based knowledge of applied mechanics, electronics, -often even biology- to build their systems.
Limited play & learn time with parents.	Parents having default routine tasks that engage their children or involve their participation in ‘their world’ insufficiently.	Parents help the kids develop & improve their projects.
Attention dispersion.	Too many simultaneous stimuli.	Each task requires careful, devoted attention
Inability to attend the details or break down and compose from scratch..	Toys, games and devices are optimized for effortless use and forgive many mistakes.	Kids have to learn how to systematically trial and error and focus on details for demanding DIY projects.
Poor dexterity, clumsiness.	Lack of handicraft tasks. Mostly ready to use devices & software.	Our system involves fine handcrafting tasks and lots of improvisation hacks for each particular project beyond or along the very basics.
Lack of co-operative activities with siblings or friends.	Access to mostly competitive or solitary activities.	Task sharing is critical to successful projects. e.g, one kid can build the hardware and the other can code, but they have to communicate efficiently to succeed.

DIY electronics & mild learning disabilities

So we started with the question: “Can we can build an educative kit based on DIY electronics that employs applied principles to significantly help hyperactive and fidgety children?”

We did not find research that correlates DIY electronics with such difficulties at all -not to mention in our favour- but there are many toys & games designed for our -presumably- target children, that are build on some very particulate principles.

Since, to my knowledge, there is no similar kit specifically designed to encourage distraction free, conscious engagement with which many kids struggle, we can base on this concern, attempting to design a product  to specifically address these difficulties.

Needless to say this is all lots of work. We need to design 'models' and abstract 'spaces' within our kit's instructables that put the children in a 'focusing zone'. That's an extremely interesting challenge.

We also need to think a lot about the marketing, we may have to be careful not exclude the rest of the consumers perceiving our product as 'for stupid/problematic/hyperactive' so not ‘my perfect little angels’. So we can just stress how we have designed our product focusing on the above, and then get feedback from families with fidgety kids to open that market just 'incidentally'.