Intern report: Marketing for littleBits
Confucius once said, “三人行，必有我师”, which means that within a party of three people, you can learn from at least one. He uttered this when observing how a young kid protected and took care of his own toy, which taught Confucius lessons about responsible ownership. It is this outlook that described my internship experience in Tinkertanker…
When I turned up for the Tinkertanker interview, I felt slightly overdressed. In contrast to my formal dressing, everyone in the office was dressed in comfortable smart-casual attire. The place was welcoming, calm and assured. Here I was, a virtual tech-beginner applying to a company to teach others about technology. My interviewer Yin Jie asked me to demonstrate my sales pitch for a technology toy, where I tried my level best to explain its features that I had learnt about one day before. Fortunately, the toy made technology simple and intuitive in understanding.
I later connected the firm’s willingness to employ less-experienced interns with an educator’s confidence in nurturing people to develop and produce their best work. The job acceptance meant that I was spending the next month of my holiday break understanding more about littleBits, and finding the best ways to present it to customers in retail and at events.
Let me give a short overview about the toy: littleBits are electronic toy brick modules, which can be combined using magnets to allow children to build circuits. This ability to construct circuits and inventions allowed children to develop an understanding about electronics.
littleBits is an awesome product, providing a hands-on experience to make electronics less daunting for the kids. The strength of the product made our marketing job easier. Our role was to highlight the main features of the product and increase the public awareness for such an innovative toy. We had the opportunity to bring this product to a “market” of curious kids and eager parents at our event fairs and shop booths. This toy could really change the learning experience of the children!
We put our minds and efforts into creating a cohesive marketing experience. We conducted research into features of littleBits, and how to make our products appealing and informative. We incorporated these findings by building sample models, refining a sales pitch, and producing engaging visuals to communicate with our customers.
littleBits has a simple design, which provides immense possibilities for different inventions. Similar to LEGO, littleBits can engage the fascination of children and sustain their attention in exploring technology. Many inquisitive children spent close to an hour at our booths exploring and tinkering with the wide array of littleBits components we provided, and parents found it difficult to bring the kids away after the playing experience was over. I remarked at the ability for the toy to maintain the high level of interest and sustained effort in the kids playing it.
As much as we could, we offered guiding questions and helped the children enjoy a meaningful experience with the product. This required team work and invested effort to develop a coherent marketing strategy. This brainstorming and marketing process took place in a fast-developing context. For example, at my short Tinkertanker stint, our team came up with marketing and design ideas for the newly-introduced littleBits Code Kit. Much team co-operation was needed to set a clear vision for how to best market it and allow every one of us to contribute to the process with our strengths. For example, Joey and I settled on creating a simple code game, where she designed a very creative and attractive visual for the game, and I had to quickly learn, on-the-job, how to code the game. In a way, we were “downloading a marketing update” for our toy.
Apart from marketing, there was a need to incorporate the educational aspect in customer communication. Tinkertanker is ultimately an education-minded company. For littleBits, we conducted workshops and simple introduction lessons for children to learn about the toys. It was indeed grueling to answer the endless streams of questions by children and catering to their demands. However, the reward from the kids being engrossed in learning about the toys and thanking us for the sessions after made it worth it.
I believe this lays at the heart of the company’s mission. While I was thinking of marketing the toys, I constantly catered for how to best engage the children. I kept asking what could benefit the active children from their experience the toy. In fact, when asked at the exit interview, I talked about how this was the most memorable phenomenon: when the entire company united around an educational mission. The efforts invested into making interactive booths and co-ordinating a Maker Faire display had been intense, but also rewarding.
The experience at Tinkertanker had its busy periods and also its enjoyable moments. All in all, I think the deep educational drive of Tinkertanker made the fact that my time spent there was an enriching learning experience more than a mere coincidence.
Editor’s Note: Tim joined us during his first summer vacation from the National University of Singapore, where he’s studying in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. We rarely take on non-tech interns, but we’re really glad we had Tim on board for a couple of months! In his time with us, he worked independently to come up with all kinds of effective marketing collateral for littleBits, proved himself an able (and very, very patient) workshop facilitator, co-ordinated freelance promoters in retail settings, and handled exhibits and sales for our Maker Faire booth. Great stuff all around.