Product & Brand Management

Does Mattel's Iconic Barbie Doll Need a

Makeover? - After Class Discussion

Submitted by:
(Group 8)
Jyoti Shankar Biswas
Naresh Bhole
Sonal Jain
Vatsal Mittal
Versha Kaushik
Key Learnings from Case

 No brand is immune to failure even iconic brands like Barbie can fail.
 With changing time and context brands need to adopt and adapt to remain relevant.
 Brands have influence on society, thus they should be carefully select the message
they are sending to its customers.
 Disruption due to competitors can impact any brand on matter how strong is the
brand.
 Controversies and sales have direct relation with each other. Positive controversies
lead to increase in sales and negative controversies mostly lead to decrease in sales
of the product or brand.

Challenges

 Declining sales
Despite this iconic status, sales of Barbie started declining in 2012, both within
North America and globally.
In 2012, sales of Barbie dropped by 14 % in the United States.
By 2013, Barbie’s market share in the dolls and accessories segment was less than
20 %.
In 2014, Barbie’s yearly sales was $1.0 billion which was the lowest in more than a
decade.

 Competition from other players

Mattel faces competition from other competitors which include, LEGO and Hasbro.
Hasbro was the largest competitor of Mattel and it had several brand lines, the most
successful of which was the Transformers.
The LEGO had the best performance in 2014 among the best three competitors in
the toys and games industry. Its annual growth was 16% and thus it surpassed Mattel
in terms of the sales to become the largest toymaker of the world.

 Shift in customer attitude

Mattel need to focus on today’s parent’s demands. They need to remind today’s
parents that Barbie allows girls to explore their limitless potential through the power
of imagination.

 Retailers
Retailers started focusing on removal gender stereotypes in the toy industry. The 2nd
largest retailer in the United States, Target, decided to desegregate its toys and
would no longer have separate boys and girls toy sections.
  Privacy issue
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a warning about a new Barbie
doll, called Video Girl Barbie, which had a built-in camera and video screen. The
doll could remember what the child had previously discussed with it and could
engage in two-way conversation, which led to privacy concerns, including whether
Mattel would collect the responses and use them in its future marketing endeavors.

 Question mark on intelligence

The brand identity of Barbie is “girl empowerment and thinking beyond limits” yet
some of its communication messages create a tabor in the society like Barite cannot
be an effective software engineer.

 Criticism and Controversies

Barbie Dolls were consistently surrounded by criticism and the controversies. The
discussion around the fact that whether Barbie represented as the cultural symbol or
not, and whether it was an appropriate role model for the young girls is also a
significant barrier.

Steps that can be taken by Mattel (Options)

 Advertisement which promotes Barbie as brand which empowers young boys and
girls to be confident no matter which ethnicity, race, body shape they belong to.
 Including more career options in the Barbie Dolls, so that they can cater to all
segments of professions.
 Mattel should extend the Barbie Fashionistas Line, they should add new body types
(curvy, skinny, short, tall) and more realistic features to the Barbie dolls to show the
true image of a girl.
 Barbie should also widely experience racial diversity with respect to clothing also.
 Mattel should break all the Gender Stereotypes and promote racial diversity around
the globe in different countries.
 Also, to break stereotypes they can launch Barbie dolls ranging from different ages
showing all life stages of women.
 They can launch Barbie dolls for physically challenged kids like Barbie Doll in a
wheel chair or a bald Barbie doll for kids suffering from Cancer.