Here is a transcript generated by otter.ai of The Content Mix podcast interview with Jonathan Kaplinsky, EMEA marketing manager at Hasbro:

Jonathan Kaplinsky 0:14
Hi everyone, I’m Shaheen from The Content Mix, and I’m excited to be here with Jonathan Kaplinsky, marketing manager for EMEA export markets at Hasbro, which is thought of as a toy company, but actually does a lot more—and he’ll tell us about that in a minute. But first, just wanted to say thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Shaheen. It’s great to be here.

So yeah, tell us a bit about what you do at Hasbro, and what the company actually does, because I think that everyone knows the brand, but actually probably aren’t aware of how far-reaching it is.

Yeah, perfect. So Hasbro is, most of you may know it for being a toy company. Yeah, so brands like Transformers, My Little Pony, Play-Doh, Nerf, Monopoly, and basically most of the board games that you play with are Hasbro brands. But Hasbro is much more than a toy company. It’s actually a very powerful entertainment company. So the purpose of Hasbro is building brands. Yeah, and our mission is to create the world’s best play and entertainment experiences. So actually Hasbro is more an entertainment company, not only a toy company, which is still of course the basics and the biggest amount of our business, but creating entertainment experiences and content is also a very powerful part of how we do build the brands. I currently am the marketing manager for export markets EMEA. Export markets means basically all the markets in which we do not have a local Hasbro operation. We are managing those markets from Amsterdam, where I’m currently based. To give you some of these markets, so we manage markets like Ukraine, the Balkan region, the Baltic region, we do manage Israel, and basically all Africa, from North Africa, Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, all the way until South Africa. So it’s quite a lot of markets and quite an interesting role. Coming from local offices, that I can tell you from my past experience, it is a very different way of managing Hasbro brands, where you do from one market manage several of them. So for an experience to be based in our local office, like where I started. So I started more than eight years ago, working for Hasbro in Colombia, working as a brand manager in Colombia and focusing my efforts and the team’s efforts only in that market. So that was a great starting point, a great experience. Then I had the opportunity to go to Chile and learn from a bigger market, a more developed market. And then from Chile coming back to Colombia, now as a marketing manager in Colombia, and then from Colombia, we also had this creation of the Andean region. Yeah, where we were working with not only Colombia, but markets like Chile, Argentina and Peru. So that was for a couple more years until the end of 2018, where I got the chance to be transferred to Amsterdam for this current role.

Shaheen Samavati 3:27
Okay, so how did you get into marketing in the first place? And what did you do before joining Hasbro?

Jonathan Kaplinsky 3:34
Well it’s, yeah, I can tell you I actually, for my first job I didn’t apply to marketing. I applied to a sales position in PepsiCo. So my first job was in PepsiCo, and I applied to a sales position. And during the interview, the person who was interviewing me she said, “You know what, because of your profile and your your preferences, I think might be interesting if the marketing manager can also interview you.” So she came, and she told me that they were looking also for a marketing assistant. She explained to me what the role was, what I was going to do, and that sounded so interesting. And basically, I got even more excited than I was when I applied to the sales position in PepsiCo. And finally, I got the job. Yeah, I have to say it was not planned, it was not like I decided I want to do marketing. When I finished school with my bachelor in business management, I decided and I had clear I wanted a commercial area. Yeah, and I thought that I was always going to follow the sales path. Basically, I don’t know, based on my parents’ experience, but then I understood how much marketing also do have in that commercial sense and how relevant it is for the commercial development of the team. So I could put in marketing all my, let’s say, my abilities in the commercial part, but mixing that with the creativity and leadership that marketing requires. So being able to exploit that potential in marketing in companies that are marketing driven and brand-driven companies, like Hasbro. Yeah, it really makes you feel passionate when you feel that you are in the middle of the engine moving the company forward.

Absolutely. It’s interesting how big of an impact that first job experience can have on, like, an entire career trajectory, right?

Yes, absolutely. That specific moment in the interview could have changed my whole career. Probably if I got into the sales position job, I would be maybe following the sales path. And I realized that probably, that I got this help from this person. Yeah, that she did a great thing for me, seeing my potential and my profile more into the marketing part. And that probably is the reason why 11 years after that I’m still in the marketing career.

Shaheen Samavati 6:12
Very cool. So how did you end up going—because you were working in Latin American markets and then made the jump to Europe. How did that happen?

Jonathan Kaplinsky 6:21
Yeah, basically we were trying to build, as Hasbro, this team based in Amsterdam. Yeah and I, talking to a friend in the US, he commented me the opportunity that it was going to build. So basically it sounded really exciting. I had never been in the Netherlands before. But, of course, who doesn’t want to live in Amsterdam, and to experience as well the opportunity to work with such different markets and learn from many different cultures, and work in a very, a multi-diverse team? So it sounded incredible. And I came back home, and before applying formally for the position, I spoke to my wife and said, “What do you think if we go for it and we try to get to this chance of moving to Amsterdam?” She was into it. And then I applied. I applied, I went through their whole selection process. And yeah, luckily I got the opportunity to live this experience that has been great.

Shaheen Samavati 7:27
That’s awesome. And so in your current role, what is your day-to-day like?

Jonathan Kaplinsky 7:32
Yeah, my day-to-day… yeah, it is basically meeting after meeting, I have to say. So in my current role, it is a lot of management work. And because we do have such an extended list of markets we deal with, in each market, we do have local partners and we do have customers as well, that you can imagine, and distributors. So we do have a local team, but having these teams in the different countries, it’s most of my days having different meetings, with our internal team at Hasbro and with the partners in the markets. So it’s very important for us to keep track of the priorities, yeah. Which are the few things that we want to achieve in the short and medium term. And focusing myself, my team in those priorities allow us to spend all this time that we do spend in meetings, but in the correct ones that we do have to. And then what I do for myself, that works for me, is I block a percentage of the day for myself, to be able to have time without meetings to prepare for the meetings, of course, that I have to prepare, I mean, whenever I have to make presentations and prepare plans. Then I block this percentage of time during the week for myself, to be able to prepare for that. I would say I block 20% of the week’s time. And the rest, 80% is basically meeting after meeting. Most of the meetings are done virtually, of course now, with the actual situation that most of us are still working from home. But even before that, we had lots and lots of virtual meetings. So yeah, that’s basically how the day, a regular day looks for me.

So you’re kind of the liaison between different people, basically, like you’re making connections.

Yeah, basically that. We do have regional teams, yes, working with the different markets I told you. And trying to put the marketing plans that myself on my team we work on, how to take these plans to the markets is basically what we spend time on. How to put the, as you said, the different teams in the correct place, and to be able to share the plans with them in order to see these marketing plans executed in the markets at the right time. Because that’s the most important thing for us.

So as we talked about before, a large part of what Hasbro does is create content, as a kind of media company, entertainment company. So, where do you kind of draw the line between media and marketing? And what kind of content is it that you’re actually dealing with in your job?

Yeah so, a lot of the… a main reason why Hasbro brands are so powerful and known worldwide is because of the very strong content that is out there for the different audiences. So for some of the brands, if you think about a brand like Transformers, for example, Hasbro is creating movies for the brand, is creating shows—shows for TV or digital shows as well. And that type of content definitely supports the brand a lot, and creates brand awareness and engagement for the target audience with the brand. And that is a big, big help in terms of marketing, or how this content is going to end up in consumers for your brand in your markets. The other type of assets that the company creates, and that we do use, are basically assets that we use for advertising. Yeah, for the different brands, for different specific toys that we launch. So most of those assets are video assets, let’s say a 15-, 20- or 32-second asset that we do run on TV or in digital advertising in the different countries where we operate. So that is the assets that we do manage locally. In some cases, we do not create the assets, we already get them from global teams, but we do adapt those assets to be used in the local markets to support the brand awareness and also the sales of the specific SKUs that we want to sell.

Okay so a lot of your work is, like you were saying, adapting the advertisements for the different markets. And what does that entail? And like do you actually create different advertising for different markets, or it’s a translation? Or how does that work?

Yeah, that’s probably one of the biggest differences of my current role versus working in a local office. Yeah, you get the assets, let’s call them the video, the TV commercial, or the spot that you want to use on YouTube. And you get it, and most cases it is in English, and in most of our markets, we do have to adapt it. So we do the dubbing, yeah, to the local language. And we, in some cases, depending on the regulations or legislations of the market, we have to adjust a few things on the spot or the asset. But the main part of the adaptation comes with the language. So dubbing the assets, it is something that we do for most of our markets and for all of the assets that we want to run in the media. And a very important part of that is having a partner that helps you with the localization and the adaptation of those assets. So yeah, that’s a big part of our efforts that we do.

I see. And it’s mainly, like, video content that you’re dealing with, or you also…

Mainly video. Yeah, there are specific examples where it’s not video, but it’s mostly video, what we use.

Shaheen Samavati 13:38
And what about like, how do you distribute that? Like through social media, through traditional advertising, I guess?

Jonathan Kaplinsky 13:46
It depends on the country, and that’s very interesting, there’s no one answer for that. It is very different, the media strategy that we do for a market like Ukraine or a market like Israel. So in some markets, we are dedicating a big effort still on TV. And in some others, we do a mix with TV and digital support, yeah, a lot of that coming with YouTube. And in some markets we actually are focused only in digital support. So it changes a lot market by market. There are markets where an influencer campaign can have a very strong impact. So it varies market by market. And it doesn’t… it’s also very important not to stick to one way of doing the media, or running the media, or using the assets. So every single quarter we are reviewing if the media strategy in that specific market is correct, or there’s something that needs to be changed.

Okay, so we can go to the recommendations part of the interview. I just wanted to ask you about an app or tool that you use in your job?

So basically, we do use a lot of apps or tools from our partners. So the agencies that we work with, the localization agency, for example, or our media partner, they do have tools for us to be able to consolidate the different needs that we have into one single place. So the brand managers in the team are putting in there all their requests for localization, let’s say for the different assets in different languages. And we can follow up in one single place what the status is for all the requests that we have. So it’s very easy for us to be able to manage so many different markets, yeah, with some brand managers. And that’s why it’s very important to have these tools that provide you the opportunity to see in one place what’s going on for all different markets. And that’s one of the valuable things to consolidate a lot of the efforts that you do with one partner. So those are tools that come from the agencies that we work with. Any specific tool that I use… I don’t have. I do use 90% of my time Microsoft Teams for all the different meetings and calls that I just told you. That’s the way I spend my day.

Makes a lot of sense. And I guess, well, I guess for you, it’s all the time, but especially now with the working from home, right? All right. And then, what would you recommend in terms of a book or resource for marketers?

Well, if I have to think of one book, I would say that’s StoryBrand by Donald Miller. Actually, last week we were doing a peer-to-peer session where I gave this session to the rest of our team in Amsterdam, talking about this book. So I prepared a few slides to share with the rest of the team these very important messages that he gives in this book. Because for me, it can seem very simple and obvious that you have to follow these steps that he introduces in this book, but most of the brands, when you look at the campaigns that they have, or you just look in their websites, they are actually not following his main recommendation, which is position your brand as the guide for the hero, not the hero itself. So most of us, we think that our brand is the hero, and that we have to communicate from that perspective. And that’s a huge mistake. The hero in the story is not our brand; the hero in the story is the consumer. This person is the hero of his or her own story. So we have to understand that our brand needs to be a guide for them to help them get to where they want to get. If we position our brand as the hero of the story, customers may not listen. So if you really want people to listen to what you’re saying, they need to feel that you understand they are the hero and you are providing them a tool or a guidance on how to get where they want to get. So that’s basically the message of the book, which is a game-changer, to my mind. It’s a game-changer on how you approach the communication that you do in the assets that you’re going to create, and in the content that you’re going to create for your customers and consumers. If you really want them to listen, you have to understand that they are the hero of the story, not your brand.

Yeah, I second that recommendation, I’ve read that book too. And I found that actually, it seems simple, but actually I think it’s just like, the author managed to take a lot of what you read in other places and make it really simple and like, kind of… and I guess that’s actually what he’s advocating, is making things as simple as possible. And he really manages to do that in the book. Cool.

Yeah, exactly. I also like how he explains, probably towards the end of the book, how in the first 30 seconds of watching somebody’s homepage or website or advertising, you need to understand what they are offering, why this is relevant for you as a consumer, and how do you get it. How do you acquire that product or service? It’s very obvious, yeah, but look at many of the advertising that you can see in a post-up, or in a TV spot, or in a website of somebody. And you will notice how many of them they are not fulfilling one of these three requirements. Many of them may not be clear on how do you get the service, or why this service is interesting for you. Or you may have to take two minutes reading a website to understand what are these people selling. So it’s very clear recommendations that actually will change the results.

Absolutely. And I’m gonna throw you a curveball question, because it just occurred to me. But like, I was curious what’s your kind of perspective on the future of localization? Because, you know, I think there’s these, kind of like, countertrends. One is like increased automation. But then there’s also the increased use of English as a global language. And do you think it’s going to be necessary in the long term to keep doing localization?

Yeah, I think it will be still necessary to keep thinking about localization. I think the automation, it is very important to make things easier for the teams that are leading the brands. And although consumers may understand English, more and more, and in more and more countries, if you really want to give the clear message, understanding their insights, using a different language that is not the home language for them or their own language, it’s very difficult for you to create the impact that you want to get. So for me, it’s about finding a balance on trying to automate or to make an automatization on the things that you can, in order to reduce your workload and reduce the processes. But in terms of language, I think you will still need to, for a long time, to go to local languages, most territories.

It definitely also looks like consumer brands invest a lot more in localization than some of the B2B companies that I’ve been interviewing. I think that’s an interesting trend. But I guess in the business world, like, English as a language is more accepted. And maybe that’s why.

Yeah, absolutely. I think when you go directly to consumer, that is when it goes very relevant to speak the way that they are listening, yeah. To speak the same language that they are. It’s not only because they will understand better, but they will feel this connection with the brand that is so important. And you feel and you see that even in Amsterdam, which is such a cosmopolitan city and everybody speaks English here. But local brands are communicating mostly in Dutch. Yeah that’s, I think it really fills or gives the Dutch consumer a bigger connection with the brand.

So it’s not going away anytime soon, at least in the next couple hundred years, I guess.

Not from my perspective, yeah.

Shaheen Samavati 22:13
Yeah. Okay, well great. Well, any parting advice or words you’d like to say before we end the interview?

Jonathan Kaplinsky 22:21
No, I would say if… yeah, if you allow me to say one more advice, it’s very important to test and learn as well. It just came to my mind also how much we have learned in my experience at Hasbro, in my previous companies as well, how much we learn when we go ahead and test. You may never have the correct answer before you try. On which is the correct content for this specific consumer in this specific country, or which is the correct media to drive that content? There is no one way. So my advice is: always try to think about keeping some percentage of your budget for advertising to try different things. Yeah, and to challenge how things are made in the company you work for and the brands that you manage. Because there is already, the reality is that there’s no one way of doing things. Yeah, what works for you today, in three or six months’ time may not work. And you need to keep open of investing part of your budget and part of your time in trying new things.

Yeah, definitely. Things change extremely fast in this industry. So that’s a good note to end on. Thank you so much, Jonathan, for sharing your insights with us today.

Thank you, Shaheen. It’s a great pleasure to speak with you.

Shaheen Samavati 23:41
And thanks everyone for listening in. For more perspectives on the content marketing industry in Europe, check out TheContentMix.com, and keep tuning into the podcast every weekday. See you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai