The Mattel Playbook Insights
Last week we went Outside In to cover elements from ‘The Barbie Omnichannel Marketing Template 2023’ here at: https://outsideinlens.substack.com/p/the-barbie-omnichannel-marketing
As part of the same discovery process, I ran into a lot of discussions and notes around ‘The Mattel Playbook’ to approach marketing, go-to-market and CX efforts for the company that owns and runs the Barbie ecosystem. I found it to be a worthwhile effort to go Outside In even into Mattel’s ‘Playbook’ and collect some learnings there. Let’s go…
Context
How did a brand in terminal decline go on to rack up record sales and make the most anticipated movie of the year?
In 2015, Barbie, having long been criticized for promoting unrealistic body ideals and perpetuating gender stereotypes, saw its lowest volume of sales in more than 25 years, bringing in $900m. Since then, it has been on a mission to reverse its fortunes and by 2021 had achieved a record $1.7bn in annual sales. A whole generation of millennial parents had been told that Barbie was bad for their kids, with studies analyzing the negative effects of Barbie and hundreds of news articles highlighting various controversies, from a doll with a ‘don’t eat’ book to a puberty doll with growing breasts. Getting this cohort of parents to completely reappraise their attitudes towards the toy was going to be a tall ask
Barbie’s impressive reputation makeover has been achieved squarely through marketing and product innovation. “Every year from 2014 on we have created important segments product-wise and by marketing these we have generated, in the last three years, the biggest record years for Barbie ever.” – Richard Dickson
Elements of the Mattel Playbook
In 2021, the Mattel strategy was evolved from transforming Mattel into an IP-driven, high-performing toy company to growing their IP-driven toy business and expanding their entertainment offering. Film and television, consumer products, digital experiences like games and NFTs—these are directly adjacent businesses to the toy industry. They are making a lot of progress on capturing the full value of our IP in what they believe are highly accretive business verticals
The Mattel Playbook is a game-changing approach to brand reinvention that balances the art and the science of creativity, essentially, to deliver what is called ‘brand longevity’. It has 4 parts:
1) Purpose,
2) Design-led Innovation,
3) Cultural Relevance, and
4) Executional Excellence
1) Purpose
“The most important element of any brand is its purpose. Why does the brand exist to begin with? In a world of consumption, where everything is everything and everything is more, why do people respond to our brand?” – Richard Dickson
This is the distinctive reason for being that lives in every one of Mattel brands—meaningful and motivating to their teams and collaborators. Brand purpose is also increasingly important to consumers who want to align their purchases and decisions with their values
For instance, Barbie’s purpose is to “inspire the limitless opportunities of girls”. Taking this purpose, Mattel has tried to bring Barbie up-to-date with culture, both in its marketing and products and in shaking the toy’s anti-feminist reputation
2) Design-led Innovation
Design-led Innovation is defined as being obsessed with the consumer when designing products. “That means really understanding people’s likes, dislikes, trends and the world we live in. Then, ultimately, it is about how we filter that through our purpose?” – Richard Dickson
They do this in a couple of ways: One, through innovation that refreshes or evolves brands. Like a new die-cast car or a new doll in Barbie’s Fashionistas line. Two, innovation that changes up, or in some cases, revolutionizes brands. Think Color Reveal technology, fingerboards, and NFTs
Season after season they connect data and insights with great design instincts to create the next hit toys. Ideas that they perfect in a distinctly Mattel way through design sprints, showcases and a virtual garage led by the best Innovation Programs team in toys
3) Cultural Relevance
For the cultural relevance part, Mattel has been working to fix many of the long-held criticisms of Barbie. “We really made a concerted effort to really become the most inclusive and diverse doll in the world. Not only is our brand culturally relevant and brand equity scores up, but those who love Barbie love her more, while those who didn’t like her now think that she’s OK.” – Richard Dickson
For example, the company has introduced 24 different skin tones, nine different body types and added to Barbie’s list of careers
4) Executional Excellence
It is about realizing that anyone can have great ideas. But, if you can’t execute them and bring them to the market in a meaningful way, however, they’re really nothing but ideas. – Richard Dickson
The Mattel Playbook in Action
A) The Barbie Movie – Purpose, Cultural Relevance
Mattel had been mulling over a Barbie movie for decades, but never had the right creatives or the right interpretation attached. But, the Barbie feature film ties up the Mattel Playbook perfectly now. The objective of the film was to create quality content. It wasn’t a commercial for selling toys
The movie is a product in itself. It is extraordinarily purposeful in the content of the story and it couldn’t get more culturally relevant
It delivers purpose, epic fashion, and irreverent humor. It explores topics like gender equality and what it means to be human
The film has brought in brand partners from sectors far beyond the usual toy category, with collaborations in fashion (Gap and Forever 21), beauty (Truly Beauty and Revlon), lifestyle (Mumu) and homeware (Ruggable) all helping Mattel expand the “validity of the brand generationally”
At the core of the brand we are for girls and for kids, but the Barbie movie has also created nostalgia. They have now had a kind of elastic outcome where we’re seeing all different ages want to play Barbie
This distinction has helped attract talent to work on Mattel films who appreciated the value of the IP and who look at its films as “canvases for cultural conversations”
B) Community and Commerce – Cultural Relevance, Design-led Innovation
Outside of its feature films, Mattel has tapped into its adult fandom audiences, launching Mattel Creations in 2020. The site is an e-commerce community aimed at toy collectors and is one of Mattel’s fastest-growing brands
The company has also pushed into the NFT space with Barbie and Hotwheels, with Mattel Creations allowing for trading in crypto
Physical play is not going anywhere. The industry of physical play is projected to grow by Euromonitor. But as technology advances and new platforms emerge, consumers are hungry to see Mattel IP in these cutting-edge spaces, such as digital gaming. They don’t view traditional play and digital experiences as competitive but complementary to one another. It’s just a larger playground. So they are excited about Mattel’s unique opportunity to pioneer what’s possible in both the digital and physical worlds, continuously bridging the gap between the two and, most importantly, creating unforgettable experiences for Mattel fans
They have reshaped their commercial teams, evolved demand creation, and took an all-channel approach, with the combination of the global reach of more than 488,000 brick and mortar stores where Mattel product is sold, together with world-class e-commerce capabilities, and growing DTC channels
MattelCreations.com is Mattel’s Collector DTC, and home to all of our Collector sites. A destination for fans of all ages, MattelCreations.com is a portal to pop culture, where Collectors gain access to exclusive, premium product, content, and an enthusiastic community of like-minded fans
“These are all like extraordinarily modern capabilities, particularly for a toy company, that we are moving directly in because it's the right place for us to be and where consumers are,” – Richard Dickson
C) Content – Purpose, Executional Excellence
Our objective is always to put our brands where our consumers are. Mattel will always make sure that our brands are discoverable in innovative and exciting verticals, which include, of course, physical toys, television, film, digital gaming, YouTube, Web 3, the metaverse, literally everywhere and anywhere in between – Richard Dickson
Warner Bros and Mattel’s marketing teams had been working “hand-in-hand” to develop assets and create a marketing campaign, with official drops of marketing activity so far including a still from set, a teaser video, movie posters, a selfie filter and then the trailer. It has all been very precision-curated pieces that can go viral. Everybody knew the Barbie movie is coming, people were talking about it, and so Barbie became a part of the cultural conversation, which objectively is any brand’s goal
D) Curated Customer Experiences – Design-led Innovation, Executional Excellence
Mattel has upped personalization with geo-targeted content, chat, and a doll customization program. Enhanced play with a remarkable metaverse that hosts a truly incredible immersive museum and bookstore. And we’ve optimized checkout, adding more ways to pay, including mobile. Underpinning it all are strategic investments in infrastructure, including analytics, which will allow them to learn from and optimize the site to provide even greater customer experiences, as well as inventory and order management systems to modernize our fulfillment and distribution capabilities
Following on the success of Mattel Creations, they are also developing a Mattel Shopper DTC, that’s complementary and incremental to their existing retail models across bricks and mortar and ecommerce. An exciting hub for everyday toys, it’s a unique value proposition that will include curated items, personalized video messaging, gifts, and a loyalty program
For verbatim Insights on the Mattel Playbook, catch this quick keynote by Richard Dickson here at:
https://worldscreenevents.com/festivals/keynote-mattels-richard-dickson/
E) American Girl – The Complete Mattel Playbook in Action
American Girl is Mattel’s premium doll line and a Franchise Brand like no other where characters, stories, and experiential retail combine to engage multiple generations of fans
Guided by the Mattel Playbook, Mattel has evolved American Girl by:
Creating a more modern purpose statement to center the brand
Putting premium details back in the box
Reconnecting the brand to girls and their parents by creating a new relevance to drive the cultural conversation
Enhancing the (journey) immersion – American Girl is known for to provide a seamless, omnichannel experience that’s rooted in data, insights, and performance-based marketing to drive commerce
Building characters and stories that speak to a wider audience
New timing for Girl of The Year. The new year always kicked off with a new Girl of the Year doll. They introduced her ahead of the holiday season, which allowed them to own the conversation early and then target more occasions to promote high-value companion accessories and play-sets throughout the year
Continued DTC experiments
More ‘memory-making’ experiential stores for fans
Hasbro Picks a Page from Mattel’s Playbook
Hasbro had acquired eOne – a Toronto-based Production Studio – in 2019 for $4 billion, a price tag that included coveted preschool brands such as Peppa Pig and PJ Masks. Earlier in August 2023, Hasbro announced the sale of eOne to Lionsgate in a deal worth $500 million. It planned to use the proceeds to pay down its floating rate debt and refocus on its toy and game businesses. Without eOne, Hasbro will also return to licensing and partnerships with studios to fund entertainment projects for brands such as Dungeons and Dragons, PlayDoh, Magic: The Gathering and Transformers. Hasbro retains ownership of those properties in the wake of the eOne sale
The eOne business had been spending about $500 million to $600 million in production dollars annually, an expense Hasbro will not be making going forward. The asset-light model is the same one that rival Mattel has been implementing since its film division was established in 2018. Utilizing third-party studios and distributors to create content minimizes financial risk for Hasbro, as it will no longer need to invest significantly in production. The potential box office gains are minimized when a studio is fronting the production money, but positive word of mouth from blockbuster hits can lead to merchandise sales and brand loyalty
In addition to focusing on its IP for film and TV content, Hasbro is also investing heavily in digital gaming. Already, it has found success with “Magic: The Gathering Arena” and is anticipating big gains from the upcoming release of “Baldur’s Gate 3
We will likely make more money on ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ than we have made on all of our film licensing for the last five to 10 years, combined – CEO Chris Cocks
In Conclusion
“Barbie manifests itself through product interpretations, but the idea is bigger than any one product.” And with an oversight of integrated brand marketing, innovation and design, as well as licensing, merchandising, live events and gaming – executing the Mattel Playbook – it has become a case study of how brands with legacy can reinvent themselves
References and Sources
1) Mattel Analyst Presentations 2022 and 2023: https://s201.q4cdn.com/696436908/files/doc_events/2022/02/18/Mattel-2022-Analyst-Presentation-Management-Remarks.pdf, https://s201.q4cdn.com/696436908/files/doc_events/2023/03/Mattel-2023-Virtual-Investor-Event-Management-Remarks-FINAL.pdf
2) Barbie Comeback – Mattel Playbook: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/06/06/the-brand-boss-behind-barbie-s-comeback-opens-up-the-mattel-playbook
3) Richard Dickson on the Mattel Playbook: https://worldscreen.com/tvkids/richard-dickson-on-the-mattel-playbook/; https://worldscreenevents.com/festivals/keynote-mattels-richard-dickson/
4) Hasbro Sells Off Production Studio: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/03/hasbro-sells-off-eone-taking-a-page-from-mattels-playbook.html