Transcriber: Megan Bandeira Reviewer: Denise RQ
As he introduced me, I do, in fact work in the toy industry,
for one of the biggest toy companies in the world called Spin Master
and-- she's saying "slow down" but I only have five minutes
so I've to speak fast.
One of the biggest toy companies in the world;
I'm actually the guy who finds the new products that we make.
So I go around, and I meet with toy inventors
Every toy you've ever played with, likely came from an independent toy inventor
who had this creative vision to make some little play thing
that connects with an audience.
So, lucky enough to go around and meet with all these people,
look at the toys and play with them.
Spin Master is what you'd call a mass company,
we sell millions of toys to millions of kids.
And what I'm really looking to do is, every year, to find that must-have toy.
This is like the big-time toy everyone is talking about at Christmas time,
It's the toy that has that real something special
that gets the buzz going.
It's not really that different from, say, a pop-star who's trying to break through.
Before I go forward,
is there a clicker-thingy for the PowerPoint that I should have?
(Team member) It's probably on the scene? On the podium?
On the podium? Green button?
Ah, there we go, great. Where was I? Sorry.
Finding the must-have toy is not that different
than a pop-star looking to hit a new big song
or a movie company that's trying to sell a big block-buster movie
or even a politician that's looking to win support for his new idea.
At the core of it, what we're all doing
is trying to connect with the world in a meaningful way
with something that's new and exciting.
And, in the last ten years, I've seen about 25,000 toy presentations
25,000 individual toys have been presented to me.
Each one has been made
by an inventor with the intention of entertaining and delighting,
and most of them, unfortunately, don't.
They're OK, they're not that cool, they're not that fun.
But once in a while, a toy comes across that just has sheer magic.
And in my experience of showing toys to people
as they bring them into the company,
I've had the chance to see people interact with thousands and thousands of toys,
I've tried to sort of figure out
what is this quality that makes the ordinary extraordinary.
I don't have a secret formula for picking toys,
I don't have a crystal ball.
I've been wrong slightly less than I've been right,
but still, enough times.
I've tried to sort of think about what that thing is that we're looking for?
It's that little thing that you haven't seen before
that little bit of extraordinary surprise,
that thing that fulfills your inner drive and makes you want to touch it,
try it, pick it up, and experience it
and, in short, it's the thing that makes an apathetic person in the world
who has a million forms of entertainment, sit up and take notice of this thing
even if they didn't want to in the first place
At the core of it, really what it is, it's magic.
We're looking for a little bit of magic.
I've tried to figure out what is the recipe, the qualities for this magic?
And this is where I'm going to get a little bit esoteric and digress.
I'm going to try to do it quickly.
I'm going to talk about this man. This is a guy by the name of Arthur Kessler.
He's an author, philosopher, political scientist,
he wrote a book in 1964 called "The Act of Creation".
In this book, he tries to dissect what makes a joke funny.
He has a logic of laughter.
In this chapter, he's trying to break down what are the elements that make laughter
this powerful, overwhelming sensation that you can't resist when it hits you.
What are the elements that make it happen?
He introduces a concept called "Thought Matrices", Matrices of Thought.
What he's saying is that every time you approach something in life,
you automatically build a thought matrix helping you interpret what you're seeing.
If you remember from math class, a matrix is basically just--
- I actually have a picture of one - a set of values, of potential outcomes
So, for example, you see a lion approaching an antelope.
The lion could attack the antelope, kill it; the antelope could run away,
maybe the lion decides to back off
but you can get a sense of what the expectations are;
what the likely expectations are going to be.
He gives an example.
So, if you approach this in life, you look at it; it's an abstract shape.
It could represent a taxi cab to you,
it could represent a tiny table cloth, it could be a checker board.
You don't really have a lot of things to constrain your thought,
but if I show you this,
now all of a sudden you see a very codified set of rules,
and you have a very different set of expectations.
If there's a bishop on it, you see something criss-crossing,
If you see a rook on it, you see a very rigid form of lines
and this is how we approach everything in life pretty much,
with these matrices of thought.
And what he says is if you tell a joke to someone,
what you do is you're lulling them into a particular matrix of thought
a particular way of thinking, a particular set of outcomes;
you're telling them a set-up that's going to build a scenario
that leads them to a certain number of expectations
and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, comes a punchline
and this punchline doesn't fit in the matrix.
The punchline is something you totally didn't expect.
It's totally outside of your expected predicted outcomes
but, amazingly, it still fits the logic of the original setup
It forces you to think in a different way and change the outlook that you had
to incorporate this new information into your thought matrix.
So, basically it's forced you to change the way you think
instantly and intellectually, in a very powerful way
that provokes an actual physical reaction: laughter.
So what's the point of this you might be asking?
Why is this toy guy talking about jokes and the logic of laughter?
That's because I read this in college, and it stuck with me over the years.
As I've seen people interact with toys,
I've realized it's basically the same thing.
If I can bring something to you, and I can have it defy your expectations
If I can have it do something that you didn't expect
If I can provoke a reaction that you didn't see coming,
that's where the magic starts to happen.
But beyond that, there's a further constraint to this
Because I can make someone surprise you, that's not hard.
If I show you a car, and it transforms into a duck, it's surprising.
but it's really not that cool, it's a little bit weird.
But if I show you a car, and it transforms into a cool robot,
it kind of makes sense.
You saw the pieces of the car, and now they make the pieces of a robot,
and that's magical, that's where people get excited.
If I show you a laser gun that starts playing show tunes,
it's a little weird;
but if I show you a laser gun
you have a bunch of expectations about what this gun will do.
You can point it to something, pull the trigger,
and if it provides some magical, powerful explosion you didn't see coming
that's where the magic happens.
And this is a core message in product development and marketing
It's what marketers call "The Bridge to Familiarity",
a delicate balance between innovation--
- What's innovation? It's something new, something you haven't seen before -
but also the familiar.
It's in this fine line between novelty, innovation, and the familiar;
that's where the magic happens, and that's where creativity happens
and that's where messages that resonate with people happen.
So the way that a joke works - 30 seconds longer -
is very much the same way that a pop star works
when she's communicating you a message,
which is the same way that a toy works,
and it's the same way a political message or even a revolutionary thought works.
So that's the connection between toys and everything else.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)