What do football-loving Dads and little girls have in common? Their love of Barbies of course!
Well, maybe that wasn't the first answer to pop in your head, but after witnessing Mattel's new campaign for Barbie, it is difficult to think of anything else.
During the NFL Playoff game this past weekend, Mattel launched a new digital marketing campaign, Dads Who Play Barbie, with a heart-warming commercial. The commercial shows a variety of Dads putting aside their love of sports to play Barbie with their young daughters, complete with high-pitched Barbie voices and all. Directly following the commercial, Barbie released a series of videos on Youtube with more background on each of the father-daughter pairs.
The commercial sparked an incredible response on social media, filled with nostalgia and plenty of "awwww"s to go around. There was even an article posted to CNET titled "'Dads Who Play Barbie' ad is the real Patriots-Steelers winner."
While this campaign is nothing short of adorable, it really shows how far Mattel has come in
modernizing the Barbie brand to fit into today's society. It wasn't too long ago when Barbie was being constantly criticized for a lack of racial diversity and sensitivity to different body types. Parents even began to see Barbie as a negative influence on their children. However, Mattel finally caught on to this and started adapting. First came Barbies of different races, and more recently, Barbies of different body shapes and sizes. They also began to focus more on empowering young girls and showing parents a more positive image by releasing their new "You Can Be Anything" tagline. Though, Mattel did more than just adapt their product and messaging to fit into today's society; Barbie went digital. Mattel launched the campaign with commercials and new digital and social media efforts in order to directly target these apprehensive parents. The switch to digital has been more difficult for some companies than others, but mixing adorable little girls playing Barbies with their supportive Dads makes for a campaign bound to be a success.
Well, maybe that wasn't the first answer to pop in your head, but after witnessing Mattel's new campaign for Barbie, it is difficult to think of anything else.
During the NFL Playoff game this past weekend, Mattel launched a new digital marketing campaign, Dads Who Play Barbie, with a heart-warming commercial. The commercial shows a variety of Dads putting aside their love of sports to play Barbie with their young daughters, complete with high-pitched Barbie voices and all. Directly following the commercial, Barbie released a series of videos on Youtube with more background on each of the father-daughter pairs.
The commercial sparked an incredible response on social media, filled with nostalgia and plenty of "awwww"s to go around. There was even an article posted to CNET titled "'Dads Who Play Barbie' ad is the real Patriots-Steelers winner."
While this campaign is nothing short of adorable, it really shows how far Mattel has come in
modernizing the Barbie brand to fit into today's society. It wasn't too long ago when Barbie was being constantly criticized for a lack of racial diversity and sensitivity to different body types. Parents even began to see Barbie as a negative influence on their children. However, Mattel finally caught on to this and started adapting. First came Barbies of different races, and more recently, Barbies of different body shapes and sizes. They also began to focus more on empowering young girls and showing parents a more positive image by releasing their new "You Can Be Anything" tagline. Though, Mattel did more than just adapt their product and messaging to fit into today's society; Barbie went digital. Mattel launched the campaign with commercials and new digital and social media efforts in order to directly target these apprehensive parents. The switch to digital has been more difficult for some companies than others, but mixing adorable little girls playing Barbies with their supportive Dads makes for a campaign bound to be a success.
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