The Barbie Movie ain’t the Barbie
I know everyone is all in their “feels” for Barbie these days. No problem with that. If the movie gets out a positive message for women, “Huzzah,” I say!
But let’s not forget that Barbie is a commodity and the movie was created in response to a feature film by none other than Lego. The blockbuster threw Mattel—the maker of Barbie—out of first place in the toy category for the first time.
To combat that second-place position, Barbie pulled out all the stops—even going so far as to “woke.” The iconic doll known for her disproportionate figure was rebranded as the embodiment of social change. Mattel began producing Barbie vlog content on YouTube in 2015; yes, content on makeup and dancing, but also on social issues. In 2020, one post was a conversation about racism and white privilege between Barbie and her best friend, Nikki, who is Black. The video quickly went viral and today has more than 2 million views just on YouTube.
This was not Barbie’s first foray into social issues. She has also vlogged about depression and anxiety, and the “sorry reflex” (girls are prone to overly use this phrase, and the video explains scenarios of what to say instead). Yet if you go to Barbie’s YouTube channel, you’d be hard-pressed to find this content among the dozens of videos on bad hair days, baby showers, and Halloween (you won’t see the Barbie movie here, even now).
Mattel has also created an initiative linked to Barbie called “Close the Dream Gap.”
This video explains that girls begin to doubt their intelligence starting at age 5, while boys do not. To help eliminate that gap, Mattel created a fund to support minority organizations to help build girls’ self-esteem by donating $1 for each Barbie sold in the United States.
And—here’s the kicker—ten new dolls were developed based on real women, like Rosa Parks and Sally Ride, and their achievements. Ok, it gives girls aspirational dolls, but the purpose here was all about the profit.
The campaign started in 2018 and continues today with the company giving $250,000 a year to charities—which is small change for a company like Mattel. Even so, some of that money is derived through a Go Fund Me campaign and not their own coffers.
The brand is proud to promote that it had its best year ever in 2020, when they were the #1 doll brand on YouTube and on social media. This was helped by Mattel significantly increasing content production, including a weekly video from Barbie, a Netflix show, and an app. As Lisa McKnight, SVP, Barbie and Global Head of Dolls at Mattel, said, “I absolutely believe that purpose drives profit.”
All this should give us pause. Has Barbie made a long-term commitment to causes? So far, it looks like the company is moving in that direction. What concerns me is that the commentary is a bit facile, and we don’t know its impact; it’s making the brand look good—virtue signaling—but is it moving the needle on public opinion, on how girls think about themselves?
We don’t know. I first learned about these Barbie initiatives when I attended a marketing conference called The Gathering, which celebrates “cult brands.” Based on what I saw, I was not the only one who had never heard of these campaigns. Finally, as marketers they talk about their brand interests while hiding how they add to social ills: how long before those socially conscious plastic dolls end up in an environmentally unconscious landfill? What data are they collecting about young girls as they scroll on the app or watch the Netflix movie?