Barbie approached us with a simple and scary (terrifying) question: How do we relaunch an American icon? By returning to their 57-year-old core belief that Barbie exists to show girls their limitless possibilities, we found that their future laid in their past: a return to imagination. By focusing on imagination we showed that Barbie's body changes were not reactionary, they were a profound evolution to address what we've known all along: Imagination comes in all shapes in sizes.
Recognition: D&AD Impact Wood Pencil, YouTube Ad of the Year Award - Shortlist, The One Show - 2x Merit, APG 2017 Creative Strategy Grand Prix, Creativity Online - Editor's Pick
The announcement began with the cover of Time magazine, and was quickly followed online by a video we created with Oscar-winning documentarian, Rory Kennedy, to show the story behind the new bodies, the reason for the change, and the effect they were having on girls.
The reaction was immediate, with Time, USA Today, CBS News, Elle, Vogue, Harper's, Buzzfeed, Mashable, E!, The Today Show and others quickly picking up the announcement and running with it, and we quickly trended globally with #Barbie and #TheDollEvolves.
On the day of the release, we hunkered down in a war room starting at 3 a.m. to get ahead of the news cycle and proactively create social content based on the day's news. (That's me in the striped shirt and vest on the bottom left!)
While this video quickly gained steam on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, on Instagram we leveraged Barbie's passionate following to drive more traffic to the announcement with two painfully cute :15 teasers.
In the first 24 hours the news garnered 949M impressions, the highest for the brand in a single day. The video alone has received over 50 million global views.
Moreover, the work...worked. Coupled with the launch of a line of dolls with three new body shapes, the campaign spread across social media, paid advertising and TV ads, and is attributed with boosting Mattel’s share price by 36% while also reversing a two-year sales decline.
Art Director: Tu Phan | Copywriter: Ian Hill | Creative Directors: Amber Justis, Kevin Thomson
For social content, we created a mixture of 360 videos and interactive units where consumers could see the details of the change.
We created dozens of social assets for Barbie’s owned channels. Here’s a small collection of the content.