Newsroom

With families spending more time at home together during the coronavirus pandemic than ever before, classic card and board games have emerged as a comforting activity in many households. As brand manager at Mattel, Inc. for UNO, one of the most iconic card games, Bill Krieger MBA ’17 has a front-row seat on the roller coaster that is business in the COVID-19 era.   

As Krieger transitioned to working from home in March, he continued to watch over the global brand while demand for games, including the UNO mobile app, surged. 

Being the brand manager at Mattel is similar to running an entire business, says Krieger, as regional offices all around the globe look to his team to set the marketing strategy and provide the tools to execute it. 

“UNO is a classic game that has a very special place with families, but it’s also an extremely relevant brand in pop culture, perhaps now more than ever. As we’ve sought to keep the game modern and fresh, we’ve launched a very successful mobile app and driven explosive growth on social media. We have a great team and they are engaging with our fans on the brand side in a way we never have before,” says Krieger. “That is really rewarding.” 

Going West 

Krieger graduated from SUNY Buffalo with a degree in history during the midst of the Great Recession. Gigs producing marketing videos for small businesses led him to Florida and, eventually, he made his way out to California, working behind the scenes at ESPN and the NFL Network. 

“It was a classic story,” Krieger says. “One day I took a look around and asked myself, ‘Is this what I want to do long-term?’” 

The answer was no. Krieger found an internship at a marketing firm but realized in a matter of weeks that he was unequipped for the role without an MBA. 

Krieger flew all over the country looking for a business school with small class sizes, easy access to professors and a strong sense of community. In addition, he wanted a career services team that could provide individualized attention as he changed careers. Ultimately, he chose to stay in Southern California at UCI’s Paul Merage School of Business. 

“I had a really great vibe from UCI,” he says. That feeling extended beyond the recruitment phase, to the strong sense of community he developed with his cohort and his peers in the Marketing Association and the Merage Entertainment Association. 

A pivotal moment came during Krieger’s first year at the Merage School. Nick Tran MBA ’11, who was then VP of marketing for the sock and underwear company Stance, presented a real-world marketing challenge for the class to solve and present within a few hours. Through that exercise, Krieger says he better understood the concept of brand marketing and decided that it was the path he wanted to follow.  

“In the first year, it’s overwhelming and stressful,” recalls Krieger. “But you have that moment where you realize this is work, but it doesn't feel like work. It’s fun.” 

“Now I’m living that every day,” he adds. 

Embracing Transformations 

Krieger assumed he would go into brand management for the entertainment or sports industries. But then Ray Adler, Mattel’s vice president and global head of games, spoke at a Merage School event and emphasized the crucial role that toys and games play in the entertainment industry, oftentimes with a longer lasting impact than movies or TV shows themselves. That struck a chord with Krieger, who fondly remembers his grandmother playing UNO with him when he was a young child. 

The Merage School’s Career Center kicked into gear helping Krieger prepare for an internship at the toy company. 

“They put me in touch with everyone under the sun at Mattel who had gone through the Merage School, and all of them were willing to talk to me, some of them multiple times,” says Krieger. “They were doing it because that’s what Merage School alumni did for them. Now I’ve had the chance to do that for other students too.” 

Krieger was so successful with his internship at Mattel that they invited him to stay on part-time through his second year at the Merage School. He joined the Kids Games portfolio full-time after graduating, and then became the brand manager for UNO, ushering it through an extraordinary period in history. 

“I went from playing UNO with my grandmother as a kid, to interning with the brand, to planning its 50th anniversary next year,” says Krieger. “It’s kind of surreal and awesome.”   

Krieger arrived at Mattel right as the company was implementing a variety of digital initiatives. For a 75-year-old company known for its tangible products, making the shift to digital spaces while maintaining core competencies has been a fascinating process, says Krieger.  

“Being a part of that shift to embrace digital space is actually one of my favorite parts of working at Mattel,” says Krieger. “When I came out of the Merage School, I felt prepared to be a part of that and to help lead the way.” 

Then as now, Krieger is one of the many Merage School alumni leading the way amid global challenges and transformations. 

# # #