I’m a [reinvented] Barbie™ Girl
With the promise of the upcoming ‘Summer of Barbie’, it has been a truly astonishing turnaround for a doll once threatened with irrelevance.
Formerly a Barbie aficionado in my pre-teens, I have followed Barbie’s journey from a business perspective in recent years. And, as we head closer to the July 21, 2023 release date for the highly anticipated new Barbie movie, the promise of the ‘Summer of Barbie’ comes with a revitalised brand that was headed for obscurity not too long ago.
A timeline of Barbie World history
Launched in 1959 by Mattel, the original Barbie focused on wedding gowns and dresses related to homemaking, but the aim was to allow young girls to project their dreams onto their adult selves, according to founder Ruth Handler. At its release, many credited Barbie with pushing the boundaries of dolls’ restrictive gender roles as it was one of the first dolls not designed to be nurtured (unlike baby dolls which were popular at the time).
However, despite the progressive messaging, in the early 1960s Barbie also came with a slumber party set which came with a weighing scale permanently set at 110 pounds and a book which proclaimed “How to lose weight” and “Don’t eat” on opposite covers. It seemed to indicate that yes, there are more opportunities for women to dream bigger dreams, but only if they look like Barbie.
In 1965, Barbie became more ambitious with the launch of Astronaut Barbie, inspiring a new generation of girls ahead of the 1969 moon landing and well ahead of the launch of the first American woman in space in 1983. Diversity came in the form of Barbie’s new friends, and in 1968 Barbie released Christie, one of the first black dolls, in support of Equal Rights, coinciding with the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
The financial performance put the ascent of Barbie into sharp focus: Barbie made $350k in 1959 but by 1968, Barbie had earned Mattel a total of $500m, making it a Fortune 500 company in the mid-1960s.
The sinking of the Barbie ship
Career changes continued to come for the doll, including Barbie for President in 1991, but Barbie’s body, proportions, and ethnicity remained relatively static through the feminist movements of the 1970s (fuelled by the 1968 Miss America Pageant), and the body image epidemic of the 1990s and early 2000s. Internal discussions, covered in Hulu’s 2018 documentary, showed constant internal confusion about changing the doll’s appearance to remain relevant.
The numbers soon brought the confusion to a swift end as Barbie started seeing her first serious competition after years of maintaining about 90% market share of the doll sector from Bratz dolls and Disney Princesses. Gross sales of Mattel’s Barbie brand worldwide declined 30% from $1.2bn in 2012 to $900m in 2015 as the brand failed to push through any changes and got further and further away from the cultural revolution taking place across gender, race and body types. The revenue loss to Mattel from other Disney Princesses was estimated to be to the tune of $500m.
Barbie’s 50th anniversary brought a tanking reputation along with the financial pain, with the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2014. The special edition, released in February 2014, was a collaboration between Barbie and Sports Illustrated to celebrate Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s 50th anniversary. The cover featured a doll-sized version of Barbie wearing a swimsuit alongside the headline “The Doll That Started It All” and led to public derision and outrage at a children’s doll appearing in a men’s magazine.
The revival
Reinvigorated by necessity, in 2016, Mattel finally launched a broader array of Barbie dolls: from tall, curvy and petite to a range of ethnicities, hair types and outfits, and shifted to a protective PR strategy. The launch, codenamed Project Dawn, was covered by TIME Magazine, titled: “Now can we stop talking about my body?” The article highlighted that despite Mattel’s argument about how progressive Barbie was with her career choices, “Barbie’s famous figure has always overshadowed her business outfits”, and this could be the beginning of real change for the company.
Sales rebounded with the launch, hitting $970m in 2016 and growing steadily to $1.5bn in 2022, a CAGR of c.7% since the low in 2015. And for the first time, the company was heralded as a changemaker and #curvybarbie trended on social media.
The pandemic boom was a boon for the brand, with a continued push on diversity along with a move into streaming and gaming leading to Barbie generating its best sales growth in two decades in 2020 and 2021 of 16% and 24% respectively.
The road forward
Barbie seems to have finally gotten it. The company has managed to far exceed most expectations on the level of interest in its new movie. However, despite all the hype this year and social media-led marketing, Q1 results for Mattel, released in April, reported that “worldwide Gross Billings for Dolls were $306 million, down 22% in constant currency, versus the prior year, primarily due to declines in Barbie and Enchantimals”. Although the uplift from the movie would likely not be seen until Q2 or Q3 of this year, this does indicate little in the way of early proof of business strategy success.
With growing sales, has come growing influence: Barbie has a recognition rate of around 98%, which means that 98% of the world can recognize Barbie. With such outsized influence upon young girls and the world, Mattel has had a responsibility thrust upon it that it seemed to not have expected and has certainly underestimated.
Although the move away from the ‘classic’ Barbie image seems to be a step in the right direction, there’s a flip side of the coin, as TIME Magazine asks: “If Mattel takes away everything that makes Barbie an icon, is she still that icon?”
In the meantime, Mattel is capitalising on the frenzy with the launch of World of Barbie in Los Angeles, which was graced by the Kardashians earlier in July. The experience tickets retail at $45 and due to popular demand the location has added even more new dates. The move is a smart decision to get greater footfall in physical locations to connect with a new generation of Barbie girls.
Barbie’s journey has certainly highlighted the importance for brands to stay relevant and it is not unique in playing catch-up. Victoria’s Secret, for example, is another brand which, after years of its misjudged “Perfect Body” advertising and aspirational fashion shows, shut down its fashion shows in 2019 to reassess and regroup its brand.
It’s been simultaneously exciting and infuriating to follow Barbie’s journey in Barbie world, and I, for one, cannot wait to watch the new movie and see Barbie in the real world.
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