Ideas We Love: Yoto Player

Issue Number 28: The smart speaker aimed at helping parents manage their kids exposure to screens, ads and all other types of internet based pollution.....

September is here and for those of us with children in the household, that means ‘back to school’. Back to school means back to routine. After the six weeks of the summer break, it’s hard to get back into the rhythm and routine that school asks of both parents and children alike. Everything gets a bit stricter - especially the run up to bed time: When to eat, when to wash, when to wind down, when to read and when lights must go off.

The idea we love this week is central to the bed time routine in the Darlington household: Yoto Player.

The Idea: Yoto Player 🎼 🔈

The Yoto Player is a smart speaker aimed at kids. However, conscious of the amount of screen-time that their children were getting, the founders tried to conceive of a media player which was pretty lo-tech, at least outwardly. Yoto sell two devices. The larger of which doubles up as a night light and bedside clock and is ideal for use in the bedroom, allowing parents to set a ‘wake up’ time that encourages kids to stay in bed until a reasonable hour. The smaller version is much more mobile and perfect for using on the move as a means of entertaining kids. The ‘media’ that both players consume are cards - these are used to access audio content (music, podcasts and audio books) - and are inserted into the player to start the audio playing.

An 8-bit screen provides basic graphics that go-along with the stories played by the speakers, whilst big buttons with a very satisfying feel to them enable the user to navigate to specific chapters or sections of a story. These buttons also provide the user access to ‘Yoto daily’ - an ‘as live’ daily podcast which contains silly games, fun facts and children’s TV style ‘shout outs’ to members of the Yoto audience. You can buy cards, you can sign up to a subscription service to access content, you can even programme your own blank cards with your own recordings.

Essentially, it’s a smart speaker and a media ‘eco-system’ which is built on the foundations of modern tech, but presented in an entirely more ‘child-friendly’ way. Lovely.

Why we love this idea 💕

#1 Mild-mannered. High powered 💪

Despite the lovely lo-fi ‘toy’ aesthetic of the Yoto player, the devices contain a surprisingly sophisticated level of technology within them. You shouldn’t let the mild mannered exterior fool you. We love things which seek to reconcile two, seamingly polar opposites. Things that lean into ‘and’, not ‘or’. Whilst the main purpose of Yoto is to create a screen-free and safe device for kids to engage in, that doesn’t mean it needs to lack sophistication. Lots of the things Yoto can do - from accessing a live radio station, to allowing kids to programme their own cards with recordings and playlists, to syncing to mobile devices for ‘anywhere access’ of the content you’ve bought are really quite smart. And most importantly, everything works really well too. No buffering, loading, software updates or complicated processes that might confuse or frustrate younger audiences (or their parents)

#2 Learning by doing 🤓

One of the founders of Yoto had their child in a Montessori Nursery. Montessori education systems seek to promote learning in children by focussing on physical objects, play and by allowing a certain level of independence in the child. Yoto, whilst safe from ‘ads’ and the dangers of screen time, allows the child using it the opportunity to develop the confidence and skills which will be central to succeeding in the tech enabled world that they’re going to grow up in. Limiting and managing screen time is not the same as acknowledging how important tech literacy will be to people’s future success. These devices create the space for that literacy to develop in a way which protects the young from some of technology’s less desirable side-effects.

#3 Fueling Fandom ⛽️

As a young child, Tom was obsessed with two things. Sharks and the Porsche 911. We both see that sort of obsession in our kids now. Kids love going deep into topics - learning everything they can about whatever it is that excites them. Watching the same shows all the time. Listening to the same music. Exploring ‘the worlds’ of their interests more and more as they get older and more discerning in their taste. Tom’s son can name all of the Jedi generals of the Clone Wars, (shout out to Ki-Adi-Mundi) in a way which is frankly both scary and astounding. As a parent, you love to watch your kids get into stuff. Yoto’s platform for audio books and content from some of the world’s biggest rights owners and IP holders means kids can explore more of the stories they love - all without being sat in front of a screen - allowing their imagination to develop and run wild. Something we could all do with a bit more of in our lives (especially working in a creative industry as we do)

What we’d love to do with it

What might we do with Yoto if we worked for or with the company?

#1 Broaden the range ⛰️📺

What other areas of our ‘digital’ lives could the brand expand into? The combination of ‘safe but sophisticated’ tech to help kids build confidence and skills with media and technology is a really interesting and fertile area to explore.

What might the Yoto treatment look like for a device that is designed to help build and develop your child’s artistic ability? What might a Yoto Calculator be like? Or a games console that can help instill better reasoning and strategy whilst improving co-ordination. A phone, even?

The combination of ‘opposites’ embodied by Yoto is so powerful - and could easily be applied to many other devices - helping the brand broaden their appeal and sell to more families.

#2 Broaden the audience 👵🧑‍💼

It’s not just kids who need to manage their access to technology. Lots of adults are concerned about the effects that screentime is having on them and they’re retreating into low/no connectivity media as an escape. Do adults looking for digital detox represent a growth opportunity for Yoto? What would a set of products aimed at adults look like? The content is definitely there - audio books and podcasts already make up a significant chunk of many adults media diets and so this could be a really interesting, if tangential area ot explore for the brand. We like the way that if they sold to adults and kids within the household, you could end up being a low-fuss alternative to Sonos.

#3 Broaden your partners ✈️ 🚅

Given the relationship with rights holder and IP owners - the creation of limited edition collaborations and special editions feels like a natural area to explore. Yoto could work to produce a ‘Marvel’ skinned player for example, that comes with all of the MCU story cards as a pack included. Similarly, they could work with Axel Scheffler or other famous children’s illustrators to release skinned players.

The breadth and variety of the content available on Yoto gives you a clear permission bridge into exploring partnerships and collaborations. This might not stop at the content level, but go into brand partnerships too. What if Yoto collaborated with British Airways for example, providing the inflight entertainment for junior travellers? Or similarly, they could work with Avanti trains, or the Eurostar. Any time where the temptation exists for parents to put kids infront of the ‘electric nanny’, the Yoto brand could play a role in creating guilt free entertainment.

#4 From distribution to production

There’s no reason why, having worked so hard to get the devices into people’s homes, that Yoto couldnt get more seriously into commissioning content. Rather than just providing an access point to other people’s stories, they could work with up and coming authors and give them a platform from which to distribute and sell their own stories, just as netflix moved from the distribution to the commissioning of content.

If you like this, you’ll love ….

Like all the best ideas, Yoto reminds of loads of other things we really really love.

Cbeebies Bedtime Stories 📺 🤩

Each night as the BBC kids channel goes off air, a celebrity reads the audience a story. It’s become quite the thing, as we learnt recently - and now forms a major part of many A-listers promotional roster. A great example of a ‘long-idea’ and one which provides mutual benefit to both the BBC and to the celebrity in question, not to mention providing a service to parents all over the country.

The Heineken Boring Phone 📲

As featured in IWL#17 Heineken’s Boring Phone turned the functionality of modern smart phones upside down, offering owners an altogether less connected telephonic experience - all in the name of reclaiming quality time together with friends.

Spotify’s Spreadbeats 🧮 🎼

A Cannes winning campaign that saw Spotify create a music video within the confines of a humble excel spreadsheet. Aimed at media buyers - an audience who spend most of their day in spreadsheets, spreadbeats was a technical masterpiece masquerading as lo-fi artwork - just like Yoto. And just like Yoto this shares a lot of the 8bit sensibility and aesthetic that makes the devices they sell so appealing to look at.

Until Next Time

As always, we hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Ideas We Love. There are nearly 900 of you who read our little newsletter now. Please share with your friends, colleagues and loved ones and convince them to sign up

Until next time!

Cheerio.

Tom and Matt x 💕