Barbie is Genius Marketing

Just as Will Ferrell’s character was initially opposed to the idea of ‘ordinary Barbie’, Mattel were at first sceptical of Gerwig’s feminist rendition of Barbieland, until they realised that it would make money. I’m not just talking about the box office, I’m talking about the eye-watering profits Mattel stood to make from toy sales.

The Hasbro Formula

For decades, rival brand Hasbro has known that pairing its best-selling Transformers products with cartoons and film adaptations is a great way to shift its stock. After a run of successful animated movies, the first three live-action blockbusters raked in $2.6bn. An impressive number no doubt, but this pales in comparison to the mammoth $7bn that Hasbro made from merchandising. That’s right, $7bn dollars. Revenue from Transformers toys, video games and apps came to almost triple the amount of the films themselves. 

It’s no surprise, then, that the inherent quality of the Transformers films was lacking. Together, the movies represented a big bumbling franchise laden with formulaic plots, toilet humour, objectification, and problematic stereotypes. With few exceptions, they were met with negative reviews and were easily forgotten behind some of the more talked about films of the day. But, faced with astronomical merchandise sales, I doubt Hasbro were particularly worried about the odd rotten tomato. They were, after all, glorified adverts that served their purpose.

As expected, Mattel tried to emulate the success of their rival toymaker. In 2001, they started churning out animated Barbie movies, and had some initial success. Combined, the first 10 films sold 40 million units and made an estimated $700m. By 2016, however, the average release only was making around $2m, indicating that people just weren’t watching the branded films anymore. It was clear that for their media strategy to work, Mattel would have to change up their game.

But they couldn’t just repeat the Hasbro formula. Transformers was an uncontroversial brand that had been going strong since it was created in the 1980s. No-one could really fault its modular shape-shifting toys, and so a big blockbuster action film was almost guaranteed to boost sales, something that just couldn’t be said about Barbie. 

The Barbie Problem

Since its inception, Barbie has been riddled with controversy. For starters, the plastic dolls have long been criticised for perpetuating an unrealistic body image. If stereotypical Barbie was really transported to the real world, her absurd proportions would barely allow her to stand up straight, let alone have a menstrual cycle. With such unattainable proportions, it’s no surprise that studies have found evidence linking playing with the doll to girls having a negative body image and an increased risk of eating disorders. In 2016, when Mattel tried to combat its critics by introducing four new Barbie body types, only one of these was more realistic than the original. When upscaled to human proportions, it was found that the new ‘curvy’ Barbie would be far slimmer than the average woman, barely fitting into the smallest dress sizes. 

And that’s just the physical aspect of Barbie’s negative influence. There’s also a long history of protests against the doll’s embrace of traditional gender norms over fears they may encourage girls to see themselves as little more than mannequins, housekeepers and sex objects. Even though Barbie comes with a whole range of uniforms that can depict her doing different careers, many see these as gimmick accessories for a doll whose identity is firmly rooted in nothing more than her appearance.

Set against this backdrop, it’s clear a transformers’ style blockbuster that simply tried to show off its product line would have backfired spectacularly. Mattel needed to do more than just plug its tired old products, they needed to reinvent both themselves as a company and Barbie as a brand, and they needed people to know about it. The Barbie film couldn’t simply become another instalment in a forgettable franchise, it would have to become a sensation.

Reinventing a broken brand

Enter Greta Gerwig. By turning Mattel into the film’s antagonist, and deriding their products for being out-of-touch. the audience’s hostile views towards the company are validated. We’re constantly reminded how hapless the male-dominated leadership is, how their brand has promoted unrealistic beauty standards, and how Barbie is bad for feminism.

As modern viewers, it’s much easier to cheer on heroes when they fight evil corporations like Mattel than one dimensional Decepticons. The anti-corporate rhetoric fits nicely within the anti-capitalist, Eat the Rich trend that has been taking over cinemas for the last couple years. Just look at the success of films like Triangle of Sadness and The Menu, movies that criticise the prevailing economic system and its problematic social values.

It’s no surprise then, that jokes at the expense of Mattel met with clamorous laughter in cinemas. So much so, that audiences barely noticed the sly trick that the film was pulling. After spending the first act of the film terrified about her newly developed flat feet and cellulite, Barbie meets Ruth, the original founder of the doll, to find her imperfections accepted for the very first time (51:00). By helping Barbie, Ruth is placed in opposition to the company she helped create, drawing a distinct line between herself and Mattel. 

The film is trying to tell us that Barbie was never intended as a perfect, impossibly proportioned doll whose primary purpose was to look good, rather that this was the influence of a misguided corporate machine that corrupted Ruth’s original plan. When she reappears at the end of the film, we learn that Barbie can truly be whatever she wants to be, that the brand’s slogan isn’t just a gimmick to sell more accessories. Mattel wants us to see Ruth and her empowering wisdom as the driving force behind the doll’s creation.

Step 1: Corporate Activism, Step 2: Profit

At the same time, the film’s discussion of feminism and patriarchy brings a radical update to a brand that has so long been associated with perpetuating traditional gender roles. Gloria’s monologue deviates from this legacy by taking aim at the problems caused by having rigid expectations of women. In keeping with social satires like The Menu, the film doesn’t really go on to suggest a realistic way of solving these problems, other than by simply repeating a “deprogramming mantra”, a barely believable contrivance. This underscores the fact that the film isn’t trying to achieve any social change. It’s just trying to fit the current zeitgeist, to move away from its sexist reputation, towards a new one that is more aligned with today’s prevailing social attitudes.

Of course, this is all academic if people don’t actually turn up to watch the film. But thanks to an extensive marketing campaign and rave reviews, the film has reached record-breaking viewership. Shortly after its opening weekend, it became both the highest grossing film of the year and the highest grossing live-action comedy of all time, reaching more than double the revenue of the first Transformers film.

Propelled by this remarkable reach, debates have erupted on whether the film is truly feminist or whether it is “anti-men”. Without getting into the merits of each set of arguments, the mere existence of these debates indicates that Barbie has been placed right where Mattel wants it, directly in the middle of the public consciousness. No longer is Barbie out-of-touch.

Rather than coming out of the film as an evil corporation, Mattel has, through Barbie’s rebellion, skilfully reinvented itself as a company that is supposedly more aligned with contemporary social issues and its founder’s vision of empowering women. 

The film is effectively a sweeping rebrand on a cinematic scale. Barbie is now more relevant, more popular, and more talked about than ever before. Not only has Mattel’s film broken records, its toy sales are likely to go even further.


Posted

in

,

by

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *