Record-Breaking Amount of Consumers Voted for the 2023 TOTY® Awards
December 12, 2023 | The Toy of the Year® (TOTY®) Awards offer an opportunity for toys and games to be showcased in front of consumers as one of the very best toys on the market, especially during the critical holiday shopping season. For the 2023 TOTY Awards, engagement was at a record-breaking high as more than 60,000 consumers voted to help determine the individual product category and People’s Choice winners.
To help drive this consumer engagement, The Toy Foundation™ (TTF) worked with 17 kid and kidult influencers to spotlight every finalist in front of nearly 3 million collective followers. Each influencer was assigned a product category that best fit their interests and created up to three waves of content calling on their followers to visit toyawards.org to learn more about the finalists and vote for their favorite products. In total, the campaign generated nearly 100,000 engagements. View all influencer content and results of the program in the report here.
“When kids see Blue Marble products, they immediately see the fun, which is what makes kids gravitate towards our products. That's also what helped us win our first Toy of the Year Award in the Creative Toy category this year,” said Aaron Thompson, vice president of brick and mortar sales at Blue Marble.
From August through October, the influencers shared a total of 56 pieces of content across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook announcing the category finalists, category winner(s), and the Toy of the Year and People’s Choice award winners. Select influencers also shared dedicated product posts and hosted a giveaway to win one of the finalist products to produce additional engagement.
“I had the BEST time! It was so fun to play with and showcase the awesome Outdoor Toy of the Year finalists with my fans. I think they love them as much as I do!” said kid influencer Ethan of Play with Ethan.
The influencer program provides additional value to companies that submit to the TOTY Awards by placing finalist companies and products in front of consumers. In addition to this program, finalists were highlighted by key media and shared within TTF’s social media content, and winners received a video of their acceptance speech from the awards ceremony. The influencers were not paid and received a product sample direct from the brand to feature in their content.
TTF worked with ChizSix Marketing and Media to implement the influencer program.