The Barbie brand brought its girl-power message to a pinnacle of girl-power, unveiling its newest ad campaign at a WNBA matchup between the Indiana Fever and the Chicago Sky.
The new campaign, titled “Give Limitless Possibilities” was shown during the game, which also celebrated former WNBA player and legend Sue Bird as the 2024 Barbie Role Model.
The Barbie brand is still using “You Can Be Anything” – the message it launched in 2015 – as its tagline, but the new campaign expands on that with a short film showing children playing with Barbie dolls as adults talk in the background about traits such as curiousity, imagination, and confidence that they wish they could give the young girls and children in their lives.
Barbie Giveaways And Lots Of Power Pink
At last night’s game at Wintrust Arena in Chicago, there were giveaways of Barbie and Chicago Sky belt bags and t-shirts, a Barbie-branded photo opportunity and hair-braiding stations featuring Barbie’s signature power pink shade.
Executives at Mattel, the owner of the Barbie brand, emphasize that Barbie has always been an athlete and sports fan, noting, as they put it in a press release, that “Barbie has never been afraid to trade in her heels for sneakers.”
But the brand also emphasizes that girls who are involved in team sports tend to have higher levels of self-confidence.
The surge this year in the popularity of the WNBA, fueled by Indiana Fever and college basketball phenom Caitlin Clark, and the ongoing popularity of women’s soccer and tennis, has Mattel leaning into sporting events as the perfect venues for brand partnerships.
Barbie Entering Multiple Playing Fields
Mattel announced last month that it was partnering with AthLife, a company that facilitates themed events with professional and minor league sports teams, to create gameday events featuring Mattel brands.
Barbie was the first of the Mattel brands to benefit from that partnership, with a Barbie-themed Major League Baseball game in Houston between the Boston Red Sox and the Houston Astros earlier this month. A similar event is scheduled for the New York Mets vs. Atlanta Braves game in Atlanta September 26.
Sports fans – and Barbie fans can expect to see that signature pink at more sporting events, possibly even NFL football games.
“Right now we are talking to the National Hockey League, we were at a major league baseball game. Barbie shows up in unexpected places. You can expect to see Barbie theme nights at a number of different sporting events,” said Krista Berger, Senior Vice President of Barbie and Global Head of Doll at Mattel, in an interview.
Barbie has a long history of being a sports fan. The brand released a WNBA Barbie in the late 1990s, and the first athletic Barbie sport doll was released in 1962, Berger said. “So sports has been part of the brand DNA since almost the very beginning,” she said.
Turning role models into dolls
Sue Bird, who was a star player for the Seattle Storm for 20 years, praised Barbie’s history of supporting women in sports.
“This summer, women’s sports have had a platform like never before across cultures, and the Barbie brand has been there every step, holding a megaphone to spotlight the limitless possibilities for girls and women in sports and beyond,” Bird said.
Mattel created as Sue Bird Barbie Role Model doll and is selling it on its Mattel Creations fan site.
As part of its ongoing celebration of Barbie’s 65th anniversary, Mattel created a number of role model likeness dolls for female athletes from around the world, including Venus Williams, and created several collections of sports-themed dolls.
With the “Giving Limitless Possibilities” campaign, the Barbie brand is hoping to supercharge the “You Can Be Anything” tagline “with fresh meaning, Berger said.
“We’re leaning into the shared humanity, the relatability of the brand, by celebrating doll play in all its messy, joyous, sometimes loud, forms,” Berger said. “We know that the benefits of doll play and of gifting Barbie are limitless – imagination, empathy, self-expression, confidence, so much more.”
“We’re really exicted to highlight our mission of inspiring the limitless potential in the next generation,” she said.
The Barbie movie, the highest-grossing movie of 2023, also did a lot to make it cool to cheer for Barbie in new venues, even sports arenas featuring male teams with lots of male fans.
“We’re definitely seeing an expanded audience and a more engaged audience, excited to engage with the brand in new and interesting ways,” since the huge success of the movie, Berger said.
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