CH. 7 BUSINESS MARKETING

Business marketing is the marketing of goods and services to individuals and organizations for purposes other than personal consumption.

Strategic Alliances: Fuhu has a number of partnerships with other firms. Google was added in the form of the Google Play Store. Kids may now download kid safe apps to their Nabi's. Similarly Disney partnered with Fuhu so that Disney's huge content apparatus can be made available to kids. Cartoon Network also partnered with Fuhu as well. If one looks at Fuhu website Partners take on similar billing as do Investor Relations and Careers and About Us have.

All the products that FUHU sells are sold through resellers either online or in stores. These resllers include but not limited to BestBuy, Walmart, Target, BJ's, Kmart, GameStop, Sam's Club and Sears.

The purchase volume for Fuhu products for retailers BestBuy that sells its Nabi line usually order huge inventories from Fuhu.

Customers for Fuhu may amount to possible close to 200 depending on the size and scale of the businesses that buy from Fuhu.

The following article talks about Fuhu partnerships with the Japanese telecom operator KDDI who invested $5 million into Fuhu.

http://www.fiercemobileit.com/story/kddi-invests-5m-educational-apps-maker-fuhu/2012-11-01.

CH. 8 SEGMENTING AND TARGETING MARKETS.

FUHU has done tremendous work from my point of view to item from an onlooker peeking in to see how it has followed the 5 bases used to segment consumer markets.

1. Geography

In FUHU commercials already identified in previous blog entries they are divided in urban where kids are dancing to hip hop and a more middle America flavor where kids are outside distinctly white picket fences skipping rope and talking to the postman. This applies to the elements of geography. FUHU marketing tem identifies different areas for example hip hop may deal with African American Hispanic Asian and some Caucasian elements form the first commercial while the second commercial may appeal to the segment that is more middle America in terms of values and other identifying traits.

DEMOGRAPHICS

FUHU Nabi line is geared specifically towards kids from the age of 3 to the age of 14. With parents providing the purchasing power behind products that from their perspective would deliver advanced and improved child behavior. Its directed at mostly families with young children in terms of the Family Life Cycle.

PSYCHOGRAPHICS

Lifestyles tend towards children that are geared towards having a successful time in school that has started in the home by the parent. In terms of geo-demographics there are significantly larger Hispanic and African America and Asian groups on both east and west coast as well as Caucasians in the middle and south of the United States.

BENEFITS

Parents seeing the need to encourage kids to be more involved in class work as well as doing chores as well as being more responsible.

USAGE RATE

The usage rate is high according to figures provided by FUHU they sold 1 million units and to the end of 2013 plan to have 4 milliowith 42,148n screens.

All these have positioned FUHU products to be recognizable. They have partnered with Google Disney and Nick Barnes and Noble as well as Cartoon Network. These partnerships provide huge avenues to establish their products as well as gain momentum for the other partners as well. As INC 5000 top performer with 42,148% over 3 years it has positioned itself well.

CH. 11 DEVELOPING AND MANAGING PRODUCTS.

A key part of what FUHU does to this point is maintaining sales during their present growth stage in the Product Life Cycle for the Nabi 2.


  Below is an excerpt from INC magazine dated September 2013, which details the companies moves in the growth stage.

" It's the first Android tablet for children, and it sold 1.2 million units last year, generating $118 million in revenue--explosive sales that led to 42,148 percent growth in three years. The Nabi is adorable. It's possible the men who run Fuhu were adorable once. Now they

Because the company makes only $5 or $10 profit on the Nabi devices themselves, this is where the money is. Later, Mitchell shows me removable stickers, called Nabi Frames, that retail for $5.99. "These are awesome," he says, his eyes gleaming like Christmas morning. "It's like printing money, right?"
September will be a big month for Fuhu, if everything goes as planned. The company will release an audio dock attachment that converts the Nabi into a karaoke machine. There will be a special-edition Disney Nabi, preloaded with Disney videos, that will sell exclusively at Best Buy, and a special-edition Nickelodeon Nabi that will sell exclusively at Walmart. There will be a Dream Tablet, designed especially for DreamWorks. DreamWorks Animation, which committed $5 million to Fuhu's latest $65 million round of funding (putting the company's value at $280 million), now has an executive on Fuhu's board.
Mitchell and Fujioka believe this is just the beginning. Mitchell sees the Nabi as a distribution channel for children's content of all kinds. "At the end of the year, I'm going to have four million screens out there," says Mitchell. "That's like a whole TV network." Fuhu has a partnership with Japanese mobile provider KDDI to produce a Japanese version of Fooz Kids, and later this year Fuhu will launch in China--looking to use the Huis and their Foxconn connections to help the company sell not just to affluent Chinese consumers but to the whole education system. Fuhu is also taking another crack at Pinq, this time with a line of home audio products."

CH. 18

SOCIAL MEDIA AND MARKETING.

Social media may be described as any tool or service that uses the internet to facilitate conversation.

Time Controls Why we like it: nabi Time Controls helps parents manage children’s screen time by setting time limits and enforces them through nabi – a character that interacts with children to let them know their time is up. Time Controls also allows parents to gain real insight into what their children are doing on the tablet and for how long. Most importantly, Time Controls encourages children to learn and earn by rewarding time spent on educational apps with more playtime on their favorite apps and games. Ages: Ages 3 to 10. Great for special needs. Price: Free, preloaded on nabi 2 tablet ($179.99) www.nabitablet.com The above was taken from the National Parenting Publication Awards website. There is an interesting relationship going on here that I feel is relevant to the discussion. This review site gives also the pricing information and website details. It would be expected from a so called independent review site we would expect some amount of impartiality. This is not however the case. Here the reviewer acts as a medium to go to the marketers website. Their is much ambiguity in Review Sites. What is learnt from social media however is that is redefines the mold from which marketing operates as a whole. Content now is not made for television but some maintain close to 70% visibility on social media. As in my product the NABI 2, you will be hard pressed to see a commercial airing on ABC Nightly news however if it is shown it will be on Saturday morning cartoons that  being a teaser to an app it has online.

CH. 10

PRODUCT CONCEPTS

    FUHU has a Shopping Product which is defined as a product that requires comparison shopping because it is usually more expensive than a convenience product in the form of the Nabi 2. FUHU  product width consists of the following:

• Nabi 2 (ideal age 7-10)
• Nabi Jr.(ideal age 3-6)
• Nabi XD(ideal age 11-14)

However each tablet is recommended for a specific age group which means they have separated kids along a product depth chart as well by age. Instead of making only one Nabi to fit all they have made Nabi for different age groupings which allow for profit maximization throughout the line. Both its breadth and its depth in making products for multiple age groups combined with different marketing campaign aimed at different segments of the population allows the company to keep its BRAND NAME popular through the population. FUHU has gone ahead and rebranded and reposition so to speak via advertising to target audience. In my previous blog entry FUHU via its agency of record DRAFTfcb L.A. have done commercials that target different ethnic, social, economic and cultural groups. This recognizes the simple fact that one way of portraying a product may not be well received in a target market versus another commercial. To reiterate how rebranding for different markets is important I will redo the commercials this time taking a broader look at how parents would be attracted to either version of the product. How it appeals to how they grow their morals customs and general American subcultural groups.

CH. 17

Personal Selling and Sales Management

Much of Nabi sales comes from its products interaction with its user base its kids. The following and above commercials shows the 3 different customer bases they will attract. That of young kids that watch Nick Jr. and those from urban America and those from a picket fence backdrop.

 

 

 

The following commercial is from a more picket fence backdrop:

 

 

 

 

Ch. 16

Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotions.

FUHU has launched an innovative advertising campaign led by award winning Draftfcb L.A. as its agency of record(AOR) . The commercial above shows FUHU comparative advertising against its Amazon Kindle competitor.

Fuhu also uses one of the eleven executional styles to advertise its products above that of LIFESTYLE.

FUHU also uses commercials to show another of the Eleven Executional Styles for Advertising that of DEMONSTRATION

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Holly Robinson Peete Joins Fuhu, Inc. as nabi Brand Ambassador

 

Fuhu, Inc., the creators of the award-winning nabi tablets for kids, announced today, mother, actress and philanthropist Holly Robinson Peete has joined the company as a brand ambassador for its nabi family of products made just for kids. Holly Robinson Peete will help educate parents on the benefits of integrating a tablet into their children's lives as a key tool for both learning and entertainment. She will also spearhead the company's autism program, Inspire, as lead strategist.