The Signal Interview
A good Dungeon Master is always looking to make sure that he’s leading a well-rounded group, that all its members understand their goals, and that “everyone has a heroic moment,” Chris Cocks explains.
Hasbro’s CEO has been playing Dungeons & Dragons for 40 years. As he marks his third anniversary at the helm of the company behind the role-playing game, he says running “fantasy improv” campaigns is how he decompresses. But it has also shaped how he leads his company.
“A team can only go as fast as they trust each other. And leading a campaign in D&D, the players have to trust that you have an outcome in store for them, and you’re not going to do a total party wipe, as fun as that might be for a DM,” he says, sitting in a nerd-friendly board game café off New York’s Union Square. CEOs should also allow “table talk” disagreements among their team members, he says, while keeping them unified on the outcomes they want.
Cocks plays regularly, including a campaign with his sales team last Sunday, for which he constructed an adventure featuring a Scooby-Doo theme, mini figures, sound effects, and an “incredibly elaborate” PowerPoint presentation.
“It was Scooby-Doo and The Haunting of Merkmiss Manor, and they had to go and figure out who the Merkmiss monster was, and unmask a bunch of local townspeople, and then clearly they weren’t the real villains. It was evil Lyle Blackwood who was trying to steal the Blackwood fortune,” he recounts, reveling in the world he created.
‘We pushed the pendulum way too far’
DMs and CEOs both have to be able to tell a story, and Cocks spins a compelling yarn, but he says his most important move as CEO has been to focus Hasbro on play, not storytelling. Brian Goldner, his predecessor, who died in 2021, had steered the home of My Little Pony and Transformers into entertainment, buying the production studio eOne for $3.8 billion in 2019 with plans for Disney-style synergies between toy-aisle merchandise and films and shows made in-house.
“We pushed the pendulum way too far towards the storytelling side of the ledger,” Cocks says, which “badly defocused us on investing in design and innovation, investing in our supply chain, managing our cost structure, and developing our talent.” The former Microsoft marketing executive has led a “pivot back to play,” opting for a capital-light licensing strategy that has cut Hasbro’s content spending by 95%.
“Maybe you sacrifice [the chance of having] a huge mega-hit upfront, but the chances of a huge mega-hit are pretty fleeting,” he says — even for the company whose Transformers films have grossed more than $5 billion. Under its new model, Cocks expects movie, theme park, and video game partners to put $4 billion of their own capital behind his brands over the next four years.
‘We had to show a lot more cards’
Cocks says he could see “we had to go back to play” even before he was elevated from running Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast unit, where he oversaw the growth of D&D and the card game Magic: The Gathering. But two activist shareholders, Alta Fox and Ancora, were pushing for a shake-up at the same time, urging the board to unwind the eOne deal and spin off Wizards of the Coast.
Cocks sold eOne in 2023 for about $500 million, strengthening its balance sheet while retaining the studio’s Peppa Pig brand. Despite investors’ hopes that this would unlock hidden value, Hasbro’s stock is roughly where it was when he announced the sale.
The battle with the activists was “pretty bruising,” Cocks says, and he “had to show a lot more cards than I think you otherwise would have as a new CEO.” With the board under attack, he found himself defending its past decisions while still determining which of them he needed to change. Thinking about how best to “craft the narrative” so as not to give future activists fresh targets delayed his strategic pivot by a year, he estimates.
‘Life through a thousand stitches’
Last month, he articulated a more confident narrative, telling investors Hasbro could reach 50% more consumers by 2027 while delivering mid-single-digit revenue growth, improving profit margins, and cutting debt. His new “play to win” strategy organized Hasbro into three lines of business — games, licensing, and “last but not least,” toys.
Hasbro has been marketing Mr. Potato Head and GI Joe since the 1960s, but traditional toys are a harder sell now. Fewer babies are being born in big markets like the US, Europe, and Japan, and they are turning to screens for their entertainment at ever younger ages. Hasbro has responded by targeting older audiences with board games, video games, and collectibles. Roughly 60% of its sales are now to people aged 13 or older, and Cocks talks of a future where “40, 50, 60 year olds” are engaged in a lifetime of play.
Shorter-term, though, President Donald Trump’s tariffs pose challenges for an industry with little domestic manufacturing capacity. About 40% of Hasbro’s toy production is in China — down from 60% when Cocks took over, but enough to herald a “cost shock” similar to the one it felt in the pandemic.
Hasbro could have been “selective” with its price increases with a 10% tariff, he says, but at the 20% level imposed this week, the higher costs to import dolls, action figures, toy cars, and Nerf blasters will ultimately be passed on to consumers.
Cocks is looking for “optionality and agility” in its supply chain, observing that “it’s anyone’s guess what will happen a week or two from now and what the end game looks like.” He has increased investment in alternative production bases such as Vietnam, India, and Indonesia, while pushing a “design to value” approach to keeping toy prices in check. Using cheaper wood has improved margins on its Jenga blocks, while changing the components of Candyland has let it cut the game’s retail price, he says. It’s a strategy of “life through a thousand stitches, as opposed to death from a thousand cuts.”
‘We aren’t serving 85% of customers’
His pursuit of a wider range of production sources has started to shape a new view inside Hasbro of its opportunities in emerging markets. Most of the next billion children will be born in countries in which Western toys are beyond most families’ budgets, he says, so “we aren’t serving 85% of customers in the world.”
Listing the imitation products he has found in Hong Kong, with names like “Poptimus Prime” and “Humble Bee,” he wonders why Hasbro can’t make toys so cheaply.
“We’re missing the right vendors. We’re missing the right way to manufacture them. We’re missing something about our quality standards, or our design standards are not right. So instead of fighting that, why don’t we embrace it and go find those manufacturing partners and ship those products in other countries?” he asks.
Product safety considerations mean Hasbro won’t be able to sell its toys quite as cheaply as their knockoffs, “but 1.1x [their price] is a hell of a lot better than 2x or 3x, and I think we have an opportunity to delight more people and expand our footprint as a result.” The first products developed in this way will hit stores in emerging markets this holiday season, he says. One day they could appear in value retailers in the US.
‘AI is a great leveler’
Smartphone screens are not the toy industry’s only technology challenge. Cocks uses artificial intelligence tools to generate storylines, art, and voices for his D&D characters and hails AI as “a great leveler for user-generated content.”
Current AI platforms are failing to reward creators for their work, “but I think that’s solvable,” he says, describing himself as “an AI bull” who believes the technology will extend the reach of Hasbro’s brands. That could include subscription services letting other Dungeon Masters enrich their D&D campaigns, or offerings to let parents customize Peppa Pig animations. “It’s supercharging fandom,” he says, “and I think that’s just net good for the brand.”
Cocks’ company attracted the attention of one AI platform owner last November, when a social media debate about whether D&D had gone “woke” prompted Elon Musk to ask, “How much is Hasbro?”
Cocks laughs off the tweet from the world’s richest man, saying any takeover interest went nowhere. He is equally quick to play down the recurring speculation about a possible Hasbro-Mattel merger. “We have pretty fundamentally different outlooks about where strategically the industry of play should go,” he says — while praising his rival, with whom he has struck licensing partnerships for products like a Play-Doh Barbie Playset.
“I come from the games industry, which has competition, but … you don’t think that someone else’s victory is your loss,” he explains. Except, perhaps, in one Hasbro game that is famous for bringing out players’ vicious sides.
“I’m a crass capitalist cheater in Monopoly.”