Analysis Of The Barbie Doll Brand And It's Relevant Business Challenges

The brand is both assumed and expected to going concern- not only to stay alive but also keep them in prosperity. Classic and constant tension arises during the lifecycle of every brand: companies want to be progressive and dynamic while at the same time wish to hold back their roots and heritage that made them success. Barbie is a brand own by Mattel, Inc. which is market leader in toy industry (Hoovers 2018).

Gross sales of Mattel’s barbie brand worldwide have shown a significant decrease from 2012 to 2015 (Statista 2019). Barbie has entered its maturity stage for a long period of time. The market position of the Barbie had started to shake in 2004 due to the releases of the Frozen Doll. It has found the difficulties to maintain market leadership in the strong competitions and new enters, as well as other confrontational forces such as raises of digital game play.

In this essay, I will discuss 3 possible suggestions offered to revitalize Barbie’s brand equity from two aspects, namely, expanding brand awareness by increasing usage and improving brand image through attracting new customers and changing brand elements.

Expanding Brand Awareness

Barbie has established the top-of-mind awareness in terms of “iconic dolls” which fulfills the depth of awareness. Thus, in this section we will focus on how to widen this awareness by increasing its frequency of consumption.

Target customers of Barbie are three to eight years old little girls (Aitken 2016). Barbie has used “Imagine The Possibilities” film as reminder advertisement for its Career Dolls series which achieved a big success. This advertisement may see as a guideline that it is only appropriate to play Barbie dolls alone. Therefore, Barbie can film another advertisement with a campaign of “Meet Other Barbies” with a group of girls playing their barbie dolls together. The main theory behind is to increase the occasions to play Barbie dolls.

The additional benefits attached will be girls can build up skills through this playing process, such as communication skill when talking to others; organization skills when they alternatively be the host for this play, and interpersonal skill when they experience little argues and solve the problems ultimately. Such an approach will broaden the usage situations.

Improving Brand Image

To revitalize Barbie’s brand equity, another approach is to improve brand image which can improve the association attachment by consumers. In this part, I will focus on two methods, namely, attracting new customers and changing brand element.

Attracting New Customers

Barbie’s current target customer are little girls aged from three to eight, while their mothers are the one who actually pay for their bills. Majority these mothers are Millennials who probably also grown up with Barbie dolls, hence they are familiar with the brand. If Barbie were to expand their product line into apparels, it may incline the mothers to purchase from the brand too.

Given that Barbie has previous interaction with Victoria’s Secret models, potential collaboration with the brand is deemed possible. The company has made customized dolls for Gigi and Bella Hadid after their runway show in 2016 (Matera 2016). Victoria’s Secret (VS) models can be seen as fitting representors as their trained body shape mimics “barbie dolls”. In addition, the target market of VS, Millennials, matches with potential target for Barbie’s new category.

Thus, VS is an appropriate brand to be collaborated with. Barbie can open this market by showcase their clothing through the most prominent Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Through this event, Barbie could gain a significant exposure to their new clothing and reach out to their potential customers. For Barbie, it is also a movement to recapture its previous customer using a new category.

Changing Brand Element

To integrate the two suggestions above, Barbie is facing new opportunities to expanding its market. Therefore, it should adopt a more defensive approach. In my suggestion it will focus on adaptability for brand elements.

Currently, the slogan of Barbie is “you can be anything” which only promoting dolls (Appendix). The concentration is only on one product category that appeals to the younger target segment. In order to coordinate with the product extension to adult segment, the slogan should be updated to a more general sentence, for example “Be Part of Anything”. Such that the slogan is more compatible for both market segments.

Brand logo usually presents a brand’s personality. Hence, Logo for Barbie also need to be adjusted. Research has shown that people will make judgement of the brand within 90 seconds, and most of them are assess this judgement based on color (Gillett 2014). The hot pink on the logo shows an innocent and youthful image. To better fit into the expansion, the color needs to be tuned to a lighter pink which conveying romantic (Artitude Design 2018) which is more adaptable to both little girls and their moms. In addition, the font of the logo also needs adjustment. Current one for Barbie is gimmicky, which does not support the suggestion above. The font needs a more modernized, such that the typeface is not too girly. Therefore, the brand identity of Barbie will be mixed and matched after the expansion by modifying the brand elements.

Building on the successful film “Imagine The Possibilities” which rose Barbie’s sales has increased by 23% and 16% in the second and third quarters of 2016 respectively. In my opinion, Barbie can work on more creative films like this, which matches with my first suggestion of expanding brand awareness by increasing the frequency of usage. It would seem to work better as films can create stronger emotional associations towards the brand (Barbie). Therefore, the Barbie is able to reinforce its brand salience by increase brand awareness and climb up towards brand image of the CBBE model.