What CEOs can learn from Barbie
Where a company’s ‘superpowers’ meet a deep societal need, that's where enterprise value will be created in the future.
Image by | Mattel
The brand-new Barbie movie just hit $1 Billion at the Box Office this past weekend. In the history of Hollywood, very few people — 28 to be precise, all men — have had the sole directing credit on a billion-dollar movie. This billion dollar boxoffice club has two new members now, writer-director Greta Gerwig, and Barbie herself, the doll created in 1959 by female Mattel Founder Ruth Handler.
Knowing the Barbie brand of recent, this success is not a complete surprise. The brand has become synonymous with diversity and inclusion, empowering girls from all backgrounds through amazing new products, content, and partnerships, like most recently, a Barbie with Down syndrome, living into Barbie’s stated brand Purpose of ‘inspiring the limitless potential in every girl’.
What a remarkable success story, considering where Barbie had been coming from in the decades preceding its incredibly well-deserved resurgence.
In 1992, Mattel's brand new "Teen Talk Barbie" proclaimed: "Math is too difficult, let's go shopping”, cementing its cliché of the superficial Californian blonde, concerned only with appearance and material things.
To turn things around, Mattel had to go back in time and understand the original idea for the brand. When Barbie was invented in the 50s by a young Californian toy start-up called Mattel, company founder Ruth Handler had a clear vision: "My whole philosophy around Barbie was that young girls understand through her that they can become anything they imagine. Barbie should stand for the fact that a woman can choose for herself what becomes of her," the legendary Mattel founder later said.
And Ruth Handler's statement was not an empty marketing slogan: Over the decades, Barbie has often had careers that were much more unattainable for women than for men in their respective times. Fashion designer Barbie was born in 1960, tennis pro Barbie came in 1962, and college graduation Barbie followed in 1963, at a time when only 6.7% of American women had a college degree. In 1965, Barbie became an astronaut, 4 years before the first man set foot on the moon.
Unfortunately, these principles got lost in the consumerism of the 80s and 90s, until Mattel remembered the legacy of its founder and decided to send Barbie back to the future.
The company asked itself: What social value can Barbie bring in today’s world? How can the band’s heritage lead it into a new era? What hidden strengths can we use to make a relevant contribution to society again through Barbie?
In the midst of Barbie's new phase of self-discovery, a groundbreaking study by researchers at Princeton University was published with the following result: While boys and girls are similarly self-confident up to about the age of 5, girls believe less in their own abilities than boys, starting at age 6, due to cultural stereotypes. However, the study also found that successful female role models can close this ‘dream gap’.
Based on this, Mattel rediscovered Barbie's calling, and "to inspire the limitless potential in every girl" was defined as the central Purpose of the brand, not only as an advertising message but also as a product, innovation, and internal culture maxim: A new series of so-called "Sheroe" Barbies (a word mix of "She" and "Hero"), doll versions of actually existing women who have already broken through the glass ceiling, served as proof points that girls can achieve anything.
And the rest is history: children, parents, media, and culturally influential celebrities from all over the world have rediscovered their love for Barbie. Over the past several years, the brand staged a monumental comeback, growing massively in popularity, influence, positive societal impact, and sales, with the success of the Barbie movie being yet another win for the brand.
So is Barbie’s success just another story of a brand relaunch done right? Or is there a deeper insight that is important beyond the CMO office?
Barbie’s success is clearly based on an incredibly talented, creative, passionate, and determined brand team, and fantastic partners across several industries, such as Warner Bros. But it also has to do with the culture at parent company Mattel.
First as an external consultant, then as Mattel’s Vice President for Culture and Transformation, I worked closely with Mattel's global leadership team between 2016 and 2019, to help them re-discover Mattel’s corporate Purpose and create a purpose-driven culture across all of their brands, expressed today by the company-wide purpose “to inspire, entertain and develop children through play.”
The new Purpose was a result of a deep exploration of the two key elements of Purpose:
What are an organization’s unique capabilities, we call them ‘superpowers’?
How can those superpowers be put to work to create new value in society?
We dug deep into the developmental impact of play and discovered that in a world of AI and digital-everything, the most important 21st-century competencies for kids will be creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication. The best part: It turns out that all those competencies are fostered through purposeful play. We also analyzed Mattel’s superpowers, through which Mattel can help bring play to kids everywhere, and thus help prepare them for the challenges of the 21st century:
A broad brand portfolio and play patterns covering all ‘ages and stages’ (the 0-12 age spectrum)
An ability to create “wonder” by leveraging a deep bench of talented toy designers
The company’s unique global scale can create a truly global impact
A large catalog of beloved IP that offers immense potential to entertain and inspire kids everywhere
This thinking and the new Purpose that resulted create a company-wide springboard for product innovation, design, and new brand experiences, supported by making Purpose a central element across the entire end-to-end employee experience at Mattel, from how new employees are being onboarded, to how they are being developed, recognized and compensated.
So this is what CEOs can learn from Barbie:
When leadership teams apply Purpose as a central principle across the organization, it can not only (re-)create love brands, but also ignite a purpose-driven culture that creates a sense of belonging and fosters innovation based on a clear vision for the future that everyone in the organization understands and is inspired by.
At Conspiracy of Love, this is what we do for companies like adidas, Sephora, American Family Insurance, and Microsoft. We help them unlock the full value of Purpose across their organizations. When our clients complete their Purpose journeys, a remarkable transformation takes place:
A clear vision, Purpose, and direction enables the organization to align and focus its efforts and make informed decisions
Galvanizing narratives inspire and unite individuals around a common Purpose, fueling passion and motivation to overcome challenges
An engaged and inclusive culture acquires and retains top talent, values diversity, promotes collaboration and fosters a sense of belonging, where empowered employees can bring their unique perspectives and talents to the table, fostering innovation, creativity, and a sense of shared ownership
A new sense of Purpose drives consumer love and brand loyalty.
Creating strategic clarity, galvanizing narratives, and an engaged culture, Purpose can help organizations not only thrive, but also cultivate resilience, adaptability, and sustained success in an ever-changing business landscape.
Just ask Barbie!
If you’d like to learn more about what we can do for you, please contact us at purpose@conspiracyoflove.co.
