02/02

The Mattel/Barbie phenomena examined through the lens of horizontal brand marketing

There are some great lessons to be learned for every marketer that we summarize.

A quick preface before we begin.  

I hated the Barbie movie. It was absolute torture to sit through (btw not everyone on our team, nor the juggernaut global box office receipts nor the multiple award nominations supports this POV!). But that doesn't matter because the marketing was genius. 

We’ve always firmly believed that marketing can’t drive the business until it goes horizontal.  

What does that mean?  

In a nutshell simply, most companies’ marketing efforts are organized within a vertical organizational silo but today’s consumer experiences a brand horizontally across the company.  

We “reconstructed” the Mattel/Barbie juggernaut just to illustrate the principles and power of horizontal brand marketing (see chart below). Mattel may not have approached it with exactly the below principles in mind but they certainly seemed to have relaunched their brand and business from a horizontal perspective. So what can we learn from them that can be useful to us?

1. Define the business you’re in. Richard Dickson, ex CEO of Mattel (now CEO of The Gap) was faced with a seriously flagging business–Barbie was looking down three years of continuous sales decline. He made the bold first step to redefine Mattel not as a toy company but as a pop culture company with Mattel’s brands as a “canvas for conversations” around what was happening in the world. That changed everything. 
2. Define a Vision. Barbie was seen as outdated and not reflective of the modern girl today, the diverse world we live in or, in fact, what any parent would want to bring home to their daughters. But the vision of Barbie as “inspiring the limitless potential of girls everywhere” was still relevant; it just needed a massive refresh…‍
3. Make Product a reflection of the brand values. Dickson focused on the product immediately to reflect the vision for today’s consumer: launching 24 different Barbies with various skin tones, different body and eye shapes and different career sets as well as disabilities. Each time out Mattel reflected a Barbie more in tune with the cultural conversations happening around diversity, inclusivity, female empowerment and individuality. 
4. Use Traditional “Vertical” Marketing to seed the brand message and the usage occasion. Mattel launched the refresh with a genuinely funny and moving re-articulation of the brand vision via “Imagine the Possibilities” that quickly went viral. Importantly, they also re-introduced the Barbie Playtime occasion to parents within the same effort. They refreshed their YouTube Channel content that lightly touched on “girl power” and “possibilities”– all setting up the Big Kahuna… Watch here.
5. Reimagine Branded Content. The Barbie movie was an incredibly bold move by Mattel in partnership with Warner Bros. It wasn’t the wall to wall product placement on celluloid that everyone dreaded. It was actually something far more subversive and genius. The entire movie plot is virtually Mattel tackling the Barbie “irrelevancy issue” and business problem head on; bringing her literally into today’s real world and addressing the issues women face today (sexism and male patriarchy). By the movie’s end, we’ve just seen an almost two hour brand vision film on empowerment and infinite possibilities for girls today. (The other vertical marketing efforts surrounding it like AI Generated selfies, UGC and the cultural zeitgeist of Barbenheimer just kept the buzz going.)
6. Align Partnership Marketing to the brand. With over 165 partners you can expect there to be the traditional collabs (the Zara/Wrangler collections etc) but in the midst were some jewels that expanded the brand vision and gave a preview of what true partnership marketing should be: brand amplification not just brand ubiquity. The Gap + Barbie partnership was clothing, yes, but also around shared brand values of individuality. The Xbox partnership showcased the Barbie car and consoles as to be expected but also advanced the brand narrative of female empowerment via live interviews with female gamers and careers within gaming. Even if you somehow dodged the traditional marketing for the movie you could not escape the horizontal reach of 165 massive brands all touting the Barbie brand within their own brands. (The merchandising from these partnerships alone has been so financially successful for Mattel that they are continuing this past the movies as an independent revenue stream.)

Mattel’s Dickson and Warner Marketing get a huge shout out for their bold moves and risk taking. (Not many CEOs would allow a movie to take the piss out of their company and do so globally.)

Did marketing drive this? Absolutely.  

Was this all done deliberately under the banner of building a horizontal brand?  No.

Did they do it across the company? Absolutely.  

Did it drive business results? Irrefutably. Sales up 16% Q3 '23.

Talk about making plastic sustainable. Genius.

Sources: Fast Company, Medium and Xbox