Mattel Mismanagement: Matty’s Newsletter

This is part of a short series of articles covering a number of serious missteps that Mattel has made concerning some of their top properties.

When Mattel’s MattyCollector.com site went live, there was (and still is) a link to join “Matty’s Newsletter”.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter
MattyCollector.com is your source for exclusive toys, news and more. If you want the latest updates on toy lines like Justice League Unlimited™, DC Universe Classics™ and Masters of the Universe®, sign up here for Matty’s Newsletter!

The “latest updates” never came from this newsletter, however.

In He-man.org’s WTFWTK(2.9), a very direct question was asked regarding the newsletter:

2. Why are subscribers to the mattycollector newsletter not receiving any email notifying us of news?

That is because we haven’t sent one yet! Right now we are updating Mattycollector.com fans through the news section (which gets new posts about 2 or 3 times a week). We are looking into doing a newsletter in the next few months but right now our energy is going toward making sure the product and content of the site is top notch. You will see a lot more product in 2009 and a lot more content on the site. We’re just getting started!

This was posted December 15, 2008. The day the first two figures, He-man and Beastman, went up for sale on MattyCollector.com. The updates to MattyCollector.com’s news section became less and less frequent. As the line continued, they started a Facebook page to post all of their news and updates. Fans, collectors and news outlets all were required to register for facebook accounts to follow Mattel’s page.

He-Man.org’ers, among other fans and sites, could not understand this move. On February 16, 2009, He-Man.org WTFWTK 2.12 was posted with the following question.

1. It was previously said that Mattel would start making use of the newsleter on Matty Collector. But so far, most of the recent news updates have been posted on Matty’s facebook account. Wouldn’t it be better to not only post the news on Facebook, but to also send the news via the newsletter on Matty Collector as well as send the news out to all fan/toy sites, or at least to He-Man.org, to maximize Mattel’s informative reach?

We are working on getting Matty’s Newsletter going and will continue to use both Facebook and fan site posts to get news out. One of the great things about the Facebook page is that fans tend to re-post any announcements from this site onto other fan boards, so it really helps us get the word out rather then only posting news on just one fan site which may not be on everyone’s radar.

So this is Mattel’s attempt at viral marketing? I suppose this makes sense in some form, but for this to be the only outlet for news updates seems a little extreme and exclusionary. Yes, people will repost the links on their profiles and sites, but for every person that reposts a news item, there seemed to be four more commenting negatively on the posts about the quick sellouts of MOTUC figures, the poor DCUC distribution and quality control, and more. It has since gotten better, but the MattyCollector ‘Wall’ is mostly full of shared links to people’s auctions for MOTU and DCUC figures.

In one of the monthly Mattel Q&A’s (posted March 16th), Poe Ghostal posed this question to them:

Poe: The Matty Mattel Facebook page has been very good about updating collectors on the status of various toy lines. However, not all collectors have Facebook accounts. Would it be possible for these updates to be cross-posted on Mattycollector.com?

Mattel: Ideally we would like to do this, but believe it or not it is a bit more complicated to update MattyCollector.com’s news page due to unforeseen legal issues which is why we started using Facebook. We highly recommend that if fans want the latest info they register for the Facebook page.

Mattel has undoubtedly spent a great deal of money for the creation of the MattyCollector.com website, not to mention the monthly maintenance of the site for new content and items for sale. Despite all of this, the company cannot post news for their own products on the site they pay for due to some unforeseen legal issues. I am confused how their legal department allowed them to create a Facebook page, but will not allow them to post news items on their own site. You will find that this is not the only time Mattel’s legal department has been blamed for their many gaffes (see SDCC art book in forthcoming article).

In another Q&A put up by TNI on March 21st, Mattel was asked about advertising and once again told everyone to follow Facebook.

TNI: Continuing along the lines of collector demand determining the success and longevity of these lines, what is Mattel actually doing to promote these and getting the word out? You started Mattycollector but then switched and started making all your updates on Facebook which many fans don’t use. I’ve seen you display some print ads but every study I see shows that people use print media less and less and get their information online and on television. Besides trying to use word of mouth on message boards, are you doing any type of real online advertising campaigns for these lines on the major toy, video game, comic book, or movie websites where you would be able to reach millions of potential customers?

Mattel: We are also stepping up advertising for the lines taking out print ads in toy magazines and DC Comic books later this year. You will also see large promotions for MattyCollector at SDCC. Facebook will continue to be the place to read our daily blog. If you are not signed up, you might be missing out on the latest info. It is free so come on board!

This strange persistance to tell everyone that they need to follow Mattel on facebook makes me think of a couple possibilities. Has Mattel made a deal with Facebook to get more sites and fans to join Facebook and create traffic for the social networking site? Or is Mattel too cheap to pay their web development company (Digital River) to update their site for every announcement? Mattel has been posting news on their MattyCollector.com news page, but it has been very infrequent and missed many news announcements. It is most likely that neither of these theories are correct.

On August 19th, I received the email shown below from MattyCollector. The first newsletter. Note the date of the email and the on sale date for the figure. Yes, the items went on sale two days before the email went out. As timely as ever, Mattel.

Tri-Klops was the first MOTUC figure in quite some time that did not sell out within an hour of going on sale. He is also the first figure to have the benefit of another increase in production numbers. It took about 3 days for him to sell out. Mattel had mentioned it wanted figures to last about two weeks before selling out. Could it be that Mattel has almost completely held back their marketing efforts for this line until they knew they can at least meet existing demand? Now that they finally got a figure to last longer than a day, are they experimenting with the newsletter nine months after asking everyone to sign up for it? Seems like the most likely avenue. We know that Mattel is extremely tight with their purse strings. Its entirely possible that a marketing push would have been a waste and would have only added fuel to the fire of the quick sellouts.

When put in this line of thought, Mattel’s actions actually make a lot of sense, but their frustrating persistence to tow the company line of signing up for facebook instead of just being open and honest has irritated many fans including this collector.