How Barbie Sparked A Remarkable Brand Reinvention At Mattel

Research and data led to insights, which led to action on Bar­bie. And this is a for­mu­la Mat­tel is now apply­ing to oth­er brands.

Lisa Lacy By Lisa Lacy. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Most con­sumers like­ly have fond mem­o­ries of toys they played with as chil­dren. Toys estab­lish mem­o­ries that can last a life­time, accord­ing to Mat­tel Pres­i­dent and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Richard Dick­son, who spoke recent­ly at Adobe Sum­mit. But that’s not to say once a toy man­u­fac­tur­er has a suc­cess­ful brand, it can rest on its lau­rels, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion.

Bar­bie is a prime exam­ple. Accord­ing to Dick­son, Mat­tel grew com­pla­cent and lost mar­ket share as a result, but even­tu­al­ly rein­vent­ed itself, and Bar­bie, to regain rel­e­vance. Here’s the kick­er: Mat­tel did so with­out los­ing what made the Bar­bie brand spe­cial in the first place, which has since become a roadmap for the rein­ven­tion of Mattel’s oth­er brands. Here’s why look­ing back­ward helped Mat­tel and its toy brands move for­ward, and how research and data helped Mat­tel over­come fear of change.

Kids are of the moment.’

If you’re a 70-year-old com­pa­ny in a 1,000-year-old indus­try with a port­fo­lio of lega­cy brands, kids are of the moment – how do you last this long?” Dick­son said at Adobe Sum­mit. “Rel­e­vance is an incred­i­ble chal­lenge.” But, he said, Mat­tel has “a remark­able trans­for­ma­tion in progress.”

Our first big idea wasn’t a toy, it was a mindset.’

Find­ing the way for­ward some­times begins with under­stand­ing what made a brand spe­cial in the first place, Dick­son said. “For Mat­tel, in 1945, our founders thought of the busi­ness as a cre­ations com­pa­ny, not a toy com­pa­ny,” Dick­son said. “We start­ed in a garage and Mat­tel was design-led before we knew what that meant. Our founders were design­ers and inven­tors in an amaz­ing hive of cre­ativ­i­ty in post-war Cal­i­for­nia, which is a place where incred­i­ble things hap­pen in garages. But our first big idea wasn’t a toy, it was a mind­set.” The brand’s con­vic­tion was that bold risks on insight­ful, inno­v­a­tive ideas would delight chil­dren and build a busi­ness, Dick­son said. For a long time, it worked. Until it didn’t.

At some point, we stopped looking into the future…’

Barbie 1961 Couple

Look no fur­ther than Bar­bie. Or, as Dick­son put it, Mat­tel trans­formed the sim­ple paper fash­ion doll into an icon and it became a break­through brand. Mat­tel also rein­vent­ed the toy car by infus­ing it with rev­o­lu­tion­ary design in Hot Wheels, he added. “We also looked beyond tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing and our founders bet every­thing on TV,” Dick­son said. “They believed in the pow­er of this new medi­um long before any­one talked about con­tent strat­e­gy and TV was a wild new exper­i­ment.”

This ten­den­cy to always look for­ward helped pro­pel Mat­tel to the num­ber one toy brand and Dick­son said Mat­tel sought to retain its orig­i­nal garage mind­set to avoid com­pla­cen­cy, which, for a long time, made Mat­tel an unstop­pable brand. “We rev­o­lu­tion­ized the indus­try, but, at some point, we stopped look­ing into the future, became near­sight­ed and failed to rec­og­nize how fast the indus­try was chang­ing,” Dick­son said.

Sometimes the most valuable invention is reinvention.’

Not only did play itself start to be seen through the prism of child devel­op­ment – play with a pur­pose – but com­pe­ti­tion extend­ed far beyond toy com­pa­nies and into media and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. “Every­one is com­pet­ing for time,” Dick­son said. “From a world based on 30-sec­ond TV spots, we evolved into an omnichan­nel uni­verse in which play is chang­ing and media, con­tent, games and brands are merg­ing seam­less­ly.”

How­ev­er, Dick­son said Mat­tel was sim­ply repeat­ing what worked in the past and its ideas start­ed to lack pur­pose. “We devolved from an inno­v­a­tive com­pa­ny to a pack­aged goods com­pa­ny,” Dick­son added. “Our brands lost rel­e­vance, Mat­tel lost its way and our per­for­mance suf­fered. But some­times the most valu­able inven­tion is rein­ven­tion. So we start­ed to ques­tion every­thing, embrace uncer­tain­ty and relent­less­ly exper­i­ment, putting results before the process and break­ing down bar­ri­ers to col­lab­o­rate and share as nev­er before.”

Girls had to love her again and moms had to like her a bit more.’

Barbie 2016 Fashionistas Line

Mattel’s biggest brand – and biggest chal­lenge – was Bar­bie. To wit: By some esti­mates, three Bar­bi­es are sold every sec­ond, which means more Bar­bi­es are sold every year than babies are born. “Bar­bie was long one of the biggest, most valu­able kid brands, but quar­ter by quar­ter, it lost its pur­pose and the Bar­bie empow­er­ment mes­sage was too broad and unfo­cused,” Dick­son said.

Fur­ther, Mat­tel start­ed mak­ing Bar­bie brand deci­sions that were sub­jec­tive and incon­sis­tent. “We need­ed to dis­rupt Bar­bie with­out los­ing the things that made the brand great in the first place,” Dick­son said. “So we start­ed by lis­ten­ing to con­sumers – kids, moms and cul­ture.” Con­sumers still talk about Bar­bie, so there was a pur­pose inher­ent in the brand DNA, but Dick­son said the chal­lenge was mak­ing these ideas rel­e­vant 57 years after the brand was cre­at­ed. “Rapid rel­e­vance was our only way out,” Dick­son said. “We had to cap­ture the every­day con­scious­ness. Girls had to love her again and moms had to like her a bit more.”

Ergo, the brand start­ed with big, mean­ing­ful changes like diver­si­ty by launch­ing more than 20 new dolls to reflect the “won­der­ful, com­plex world girls expe­ri­ence and see today,” Dick­son said. In fact, per the Bar­bie web­site, the 2016 Fash­ion­istas line includes four body types, sev­en skin tones, 22 eye col­ors and 24 hair­styles. But rein­ven­tion also meant intro­duc­ing a flex­i­ble foot to “[lib­er­ate] Bar­bie from high heels and to fur­ther con­tem­po­rize the brand,” Dick­son said. In addi­tion, he said anoth­er impor­tant cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tion is that girls said Bar­bie was their best friend and would love her to talk back to them. “We’re all talk­ing to Siri, why can’t we engage Bar­bie in a con­ver­sa­tion?” Dick­son said. “So we intro­duced Hel­lo Bar­bie, which cre­at­ed a cul­tur­al rip­ple and fur­ther con­tem­po­rized the brand, includ­ing a sto­ry in the New York Times Mag­a­zine [that called it] ‘the most advanced of a new gen­er­a­tion of AI toys’.”

In oth­er words, Dick­son said, Mat­tel reframed the con­ver­sa­tion with­out rein­vent­ing the brand. Plus, because moms were becom­ing increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal of Bar­bie, Mat­tel sought to engage them in a con­ver­sa­tion about what Bar­bie is real­ly about and what the val­ue is of girls’ play with Bar­bie and – again — “reframed the con­ver­sa­tion del­i­cate­ly with­out rein­vent­ing the brand” thanks to some help from this Imag­ine the Pos­si­bil­i­ties video that ends with the lines, “When a girl plays with Bar­bie, she imag­ines every­thing she can become,” and, “You can be any­thing.”

To date, it has near­ly 21 mil­lion views on YouTube alone, but, per Dickson’s fig­ures, it’s 50 mil­lion views over­all with 500 mil­lion engage­ments.

Mattel’s silence was perceived as resistance.’

Barbie 2016 Fashionistas Collection

Barbie’s fig­ure [became] a source of con­tro­ver­sy and Mattel’s silence was per­ceived as resis­tance,” Dick­son said.

Mat­tel under­stood and sym­pa­thized with moms, but our fear of mak­ing a mis­take and mess­ing up the most pop­u­lar toy ever led to inac­tion. But research and data, includ­ing many, many con­ver­sa­tions with kids and moms, led to insights, which lead to action.” That also includ­ed the release of more body shapes such as curvy, tall, and petite join­ing the orig­i­nal doll in Jan­u­ary 2016. “Its cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance war­rant­ed a Time Mag­a­zine cov­er sto­ry and a vast amount of cov­er­age, includ­ing mil­lions of exchanges…and that’s con­tent mon­ey just can’t buy,” Dick­son said. “Bold deci­sions sparked cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tion and Bar­bie and Mat­tel are lead­ing once again.”

We’re re-establishing ourselves as a creations company that inspires the wonder of childhood.’

View-Master VR with Google Cardboard

Now Mat­tel is apply­ing this rein­ven­tion for­mu­la to oth­er brands, such as Fish­er-Price, Thomas and Friends, Bob the Builder, Pol­ly Pock­et and Bar­ney to “accel­er­ate every brand and cre­ate new cul­ture at Mat­tel,” Dick­son said. For exam­ple, thanks to a part­ner­ship with Google, Mattel’s 3D View-Mas­ter has been updat­ed as a vir­tu­al real­i­ty device that works with Google Card­board. “It took kids any­where around the world. If there was ever a brand for VR, this is it,” Dick­son said.

And we’ve part­nered with Google to rein­vent it as a state-of-the-art learn­ing tool.” And Thing­mak­er, which orig­i­nal­ly let kids make their own toys by pour­ing plas­tic into molds, has been rein­vent­ed as a 3D print­er. “We had a brand ahead of its time,” Dick­son said. “Work­ing with Autodesk, Thing­mak­er is now a 3D-print­ing machine that allows kids to cre­ate and print a range of indi­vid­ual toys.” Then there’s Hot Wheels, which Dick­son described as “an amaz­ing suc­cess­ful brand for almost 50 years” that is now incor­po­rat­ing pop cul­ture, like “Star Wars”. “We see a lot more part­ner­ships, but that’s only part of the Hot Wheels sto­ry,” Dick­son said.

We’re encour­ag­ing boys to be more imag­i­na­tive and invit­ing them to cre­ate new toys. We used to be very pre­scrip­tive about how to set up [Hot Wheels], but now we encour­age them to do it on their own.” That includes efforts like Track Wars, Hot Hacks and Hot Wheels Labs. How­ev­er, when it comes to core brands like Bar­bie, con­tin­u­ous rein­ven­tion is key, he added. “These are a few exam­ples of how we’re chang­ing the fun­da­men­tals of Mat­tel into a fast-paced democ­ra­cy of ideas with bril­liance through­out the orga­ni­za­tion,” Dick­son said.

What’s the next big leap? Most of our plans are secret, but we’re re-estab­lish­ing our­selves as a cre­ations com­pa­ny that inspires the won­der of child­hood. We’re not just a toy com­pa­ny, but an orig­i­nal cre­ations com­pa­ny instill­ing pur­pose into [our brands].” 

Lisa Lacy

Written by Lisa Lacy

Lisa is a senior features writer for Inked. She also previously covered digital marketing for Incisive Media. Her background includes editorial positions at Dow Jones, the Financial Times, the Huffington Post, AOL, Amazon, Hearst, Martha Stewart Living and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

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