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Is 50-Barbie Still a "10" for Mattel?

By on March 11, 2009 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

If you hadn’t heard, Barbie had a birthday. Yup, in March the plastic hottie celebrated her big 5-0.

To celebrate, Mattel - Our Toys - Barbie promoted the heck out of its idollic (sic) Ms. B, grabbing nearly as much media attention as the First Lady’s bare arms, the $40,000 Jennifer Aniston haircut and the Cathay Pacific tantrum lady combined. 

And while Mattel’s hot, flashy babe celebrate, this hot-flashing Baby Boomer wonders how, if not why, Barbie always seems to transcend the decades.  After all, the anorexic-looking model has become a fashion don’t, the bejeweled beauty crown has somewhat tarnished, and recently a West Virginia state lawmaker has introduced legislation to ban the sale of Barbie and similar dolls who he finds promote physical beauty to the detriment of girls' intellectual and emotional development. But through all this, the ubiquitous “pink one” continues to endure the winds of change.  

Admittedly Barbie’s sense and sensibility perplexes me. She came out of the Sixties Feminist Movement practically unscathed.  She later entered the world of business with her own successful beauty salon. Like such notable fashionistas as Donna Karan/DKNY, Kimora Lee Simmons  and Daisy Fuentes who have taken large space at Macy’s, JC Penney, and Kohl’s, Barbie has earned her rightful place at FAO Schwartz.  She not only has been able to ascend the glass ceiling, she earns well more than the average woman’s salary of 80 cents on the dollar,

The question is: How has Barbie continued to mirror the images in advertising, film, and MTV, from early days of Mad Men to Madison Avenue? The answer: Mattel has continued to play its Barbie brand card well.

Barbie’s 50th party celebration is just another example of her parent company’s integrated strategic/creative success.  First it rounded up all the usual rich and famous subjects, including Karl Largerfeld who custom-dressed Barbie for display in the windows of Paris's trendy Colette boutique.  And a "Barbie room" was being installed on the first floor to present Jeremy Scott’s new collection of Barbie clothing.   

Next there came Fashion Week, where Barbie seemed to dominate the runways, with a variety of designers dressing their models as the female wonder.  Even Tarina Tarantino debuted a Barbie Doll collection. 

The Wall Street Journal published a piece on Mattel’s New Shanghai Barbie Store, a six-story emporium complete with a spa, a cosmetics counter, a cocktail bar and offerings from chi-chi designers Vera Wang, Patricia Field, and Judith Lieber.  Barbie’s sleeveless ivory wedding dress from Ms. Wang costs $15,000. 

I read in The Motor Report about the deal between Fiate Centro Stile and Mattel, who joined forces to offer a special Fiat 500 dedicated to the “pink one,” formerly known for her Ferrari.

Even the hospitality industry jumped on the Barbie “brandwagon”. According to Hotelchatter.com , the Milwaukee Iron Horse Hotel was throwing a Barbie birthday bash, inviting guests to bring a Barbie to its Branded bar, entitling them to drink specials and their very own pink boa.  And if you’re headed to the UK for more celebrating, the May Fair London’s pink Schiaparelli Suite is ready for your arrival.   

And seemingly unfettered by the mortgage industry climate, Mattel moved Barbie into the fire and flood zones of sunny Malibu, building an expensive 3,500 sq. ft. manse overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  I hope Mattel provides her plenty of insurance.  According to a report in Associated Press,  Barbie's real-life Malibu Dream House designed by Jonathan Adler  boasts wall-to-wall pink flooring that would make even pop singer Pink blush, a closet full of pink peep-toe heels that Legally Blonde’s Elle Woods would feel comfortable in, and a pink Volkswagen New Beetle with motorized pop-up vanity in the trunk that a Mary Kay saleswoman would die for.  An Andy Warhol portrait of Barbie valued at over $200,000 hangs on the wall. 

Following the festivities, the majority of Barbie's custom decor will be shipped to the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas, to furnish a special pink-tinted Barbie Suite soon available for bachelorette parties, birthdays or anyone who wanted to live the Barbie dream. Other items will be available from the "Jonathan Adler Loves Barbie" collection would launch in September.  

As always, Mattel remains zealous in its attempts to protect Barbie’s image over the years, launching a series of perceived copyright violation and defamation lawsuits, including the Danish group Aqua, whose hit song ‘Barbie Girl” had lyrics, like “Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky.”  Mattel lost.

This all being said, we all know that if Barbie were a REAL woman, her physical proportions would have her toppling over the runway. I imagine if Tim Gunn were consulted, he would tell Barbie to dress less like a 21-year old and more like the graceful, aging woman she has become.  And while skimpy tight fashions may work for the Real Housewives Orange County, bet your bottom dollar that even Rachel Zoe would prefer to see Barbie appear like Elizabeth Hurley rather than Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls on the red carpet. 

I even hear Barbie may be getting a tattoo soon. Who knows where?  Maybe Ken.

Comfort Brands

By on March 4, 2009 in Uncategorized with 2 Comments

I have been listening and reading with bewildered awe the vehement anger that consumers have felt over Tropicana’s re-branding, which they debuted earlier this year. And while any discussion about Tropicana is so two weeks ago, the whole discussion has had me thinking about something all together different: Comfort Brands.

In an economic climate where fear and stress are running high and people are going back to basics in spending and consumption, I am beginning to wonder if perhaps, as marketers, we are learning a big lesson in the idea of “if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.”  

I discovered an interesting post by Ernie Schenck about his idea of Creative No-Fly Zones. In this response to another blog entry about how creativity is changing, he discusses the notion that the United States is in a cultural downslide and how advertising is perhaps the biggest culprit and vehicle for the breakdown of our culture. Ernie is speaking more specifically about how, in advertising and marketing campaigns, we are trying to push buttons and gain traction by delivering bad creative that is smarmy and cheap and, while quite possibly funny at times, denigrates and erodes our culture and society.

And while I agree with his notion of Creative No Fly Zones in terms of elevating the level of work we do without resorting to cheap and gimmicky ideas, I also wonder if we need to perhaps review product categories and Comfort Brands from the sense that perhaps there too we need to establish some Creative No-Fly Zones.

I was sitting in a kick-off meeting with a client last week where we were discussing their rebranding and re-launch for 2009. As we began to brainstorm and discuss the implications of a rebrand, the whole Tropicana packaging debacle came up. I stood there stymied by what I was seeing and hearing: outrage and passion and frustration all mixed together and pouring out of 6 very well-mannered, professional people. Over orange juice packaging?

As Marty Neumeier talks about in The Brand Gap, a brand or product is not what we (the marketers, product managers, and advertisers) say it is, it is what the consumers say it is. So whether you call us all alpha consumers, brand loyalists, or product evangelists, we all have brands that we are immediately drawn to for various reasons.

Which brings me back to the notion of Comfort Brands. Clearly the Tropicana packaging held more brand equity than the product managers at PepsiCo. or the folks at The Arnell Group had tested. Is it just a sign of the times that consumers, feeling the chaos and the sea of change all around them, don’t want to see iconic brands change right now? If PepsiCo. had launched this packaging in 2007 or 2010 would the reaction have been entirely different? What if we changed the packaging for Cheerios? Pillsbury Flour? Crisco? Would people have noticed the shift?

In order to stay relevant in this ever-changing world we have begun the process of re-invention with everything we can. Are consumers coming to a place where they are tired of change so much that they are going to start dictating what marketers can and cannot manipulate for bigger market share and returns?

If a product is not what we say it is, its what the consumer says it is, are we going to begin to see and feel the pressure and opinions of consumers dictate how and what we market? Have we permeated too far into the consumer’s comfort zones? Are consumers beginning to develop Creative No-Fly Zones for us with those brands that they have (or possibly will) deem to be Comfort Brands?

Is Old Skool PR Ready for The Brave New World of Social Media?

By on March 4, 2009 in Uncategorized with 14 Comments

I recently engaged in a lengthy Twitter dialogue (as lengthy as that gets) with Robert French, @rdfrench , an insightful teacher of public relations at Auburn University.  Our topic?  The biggest changes occurring in PR during the past ten years.

His question got me thinking.  We read every day about another newspaper or magazine calling it quits, as traditional publishing struggles to create a sustainable business model in this brave new world of social media.  Print and broadcast media have been segmented, de-fragmented, and literally co-opted by new media tools, technologies, and platforms.  Readers and viewers do everything from create and interact with content via blogs, YouTube, vlogs, Flickr, Twitter, Digg, et al, to control where and how they view content both online or off, via Tivo, Hulu, and the rest.  You literally can’t keep up, no matter how fast you’re tweetin.’

My take? PR hasn’t changed nearly enough in the past decade.  PR should be leading its own industry evolution to adapt to the wild, wild west of social media.  Are we doing enough?  The old rules no longer apply.

As an old-school PR vet, I began my career building contact databases consisting of thousands of reporters, editors, and producers… clearly, the ground has shifted under our feet.  The shift happened subtly, yet with profound implications for the PR business.  Does it still make sense to use news releases as a core tool of outreach?  If real-time, personal communication blasted out 24/7 in the form of mobile data is now the norm, should we still focus our resources and priorities on how media used to function in producing news content for our society?  

Today’s social media environment demands collaboration and engagement with your audiences.  Often directly, no media required.  There are great examples of pioneering new efforts to inform and mobilize the grassroots via social media.  Witness the Obama campaign.  Ditto for boutique PR agencies forging new paths, whether harnessing social media for clients (@TDefren at SHIFT Communications, @briansolis at FutureWorks) or achieving remarkable success as “virtual” operations  (@missusP at PerkettPR).  This ain’t your grandfather’s PR, kids.

As the latest imbroglio over Skittles’ home-page-cum-Twitter-newsfeed experiment attests, one can always get attention.  In the old world, all publicity was good publicity.  By that measure, Skittles’ execution was brilliant.  By today’s standards... it’s a lot less clear.  PR practitioners need to cede control.  Accept that “engaging” may be the new PR, as much or more so than educating and influencing.  How about focusing on helping clients create and produce original content, whether blogs or otherwise? Craft stories designed for them to interact directly with their customers via social media.  Help them identify whom to target in social media conversations, how, where, when and why.  In short, facilitate and enable conversations. Then get out of the way.

Would love to see some of the behemoths in the PR industry (you know who you are) take a leadership role in re-defining PR for this new era of communication and marketing.  Not by attaching a “new/social media” arm or other reactionary move, but by reconstructing the business with social media integrated at its core.  We’ve made progress, but still have a long way to go.    Who knows, maybe we’ll even improve and evolve our own image as a profession in the process. 

What are your ideas for the new PR?

The World Awaits?

By on March 3, 2009 in Uncategorized with 3 Comments
visa_black_2aSo today I came across a banner ad on buy.com that was introducing “The Black Card” by Visa. “The world’s most prestigious and versatile credit card” boasts a limited membership, 24-hour concierge service (whatever that means), an exclusive rewards program, luxury gifts and, wait for it, a Patent Pending Carbon Card…all for the low annual fee of $495. $495? Seriously?

Is it just me or is this the absolute worst time to launch a card like this? This is Visa’s contender to Platinum Card® from American Express as they carry about the same features, benefits and price tag. Visa would typically have called this a “Platinum” card if they hadn’t totally devalued the word by saturating the market with it on every card they offer, which is what they did to the word “gold” years before that.

Although the “experience” is like the AMEX Platinum Card, what Visa is alluding to is the elusive American Express Centurion Card aka the Black Card--a card so special that they don’t even advertise it. In fact, there’s no mention of it at all on americanexpress.com. It’s the Sasquatch of credit cards; the Loch Ness of luxury. Many have only heard rumors of such a card and only a few actually claim to have touched one (no doubt while working at a swanky boutique somewhere in New York’s meatpacking district). Those rumored few who hold the American Express Black Card use it to buy islands or Learjets not groceries at Sam’s Club or tires at Costco. And with a $5000 initiation fee and a $2500 annual renewal, you can see why. All of that aside, it’s the mystery that makes the American Express Centurion card so desirable. The fact that they don’t have to advertise at all, or even acknowledge its existence, is marketing genius. And the result: scores and scores of people applying for an AMEX Platinum card and spending their little hearts (and wallets) out in hopes that someday, they’ll get that exclusive invitation. That’s creating desire. And to this, Visa appears to be, well, colorblind.

Marketing aside, you have to ask yourself this: Do we really need cards like these in today’s economy? I don’t think so. I think what we need are cards that don’t keep hiking up interest rates for those in trouble. I think we need cards that offer you cash back when you pay your card in full every month – now that’s a reward. I think we need more cards that give a percentage of your purchases to charities. I think we need cards that identify those with spending problems and rather than keep increasing their credit limits, they offer them a low-interest rate to pay them down while also lowering their credit limit until it gets to something they can manage. Or cards that identify those same people and offer to close their accounts while transferring their balance to a low interest, or even no interest, loan to pay it off without screwing up their credit report. We need cards that help you out not help you get into trouble and prey on you when you do. If you really must have a card with color, go to the UK and get an American Express RED card, part of the (PRODUCT)RED campaign. That’s a color worth having.

We’re living in a world where thousands of people are being laid off from work every day and even more are going hungry or homeless. And yet the Visa Black Card offers this tagline: The World Awaits. Clearly we’re not living in the same world.

The Link Between Customer Experience and Brand Loyalty… or

By on February 20, 2009 in Uncategorized with Comments Off
What Have You Done for Me Lately?

A recent study from Forrester Research confirms what most would presume to be true:  a business’s customer experience is often closely linked with its brand loyalty.

Customer experience was evaluated based on usefulness, ease of use, and enjoyability.   Not surprisingly, customer experience strongly correlated (in most cases) with buying more products or services from the company, a likelihood of recommending the company to others, and the reluctance to switch to competitors. 

Apple, Amazon, Canon, The Wynn Hotel.  These are just a few of the brands that consistently deliver delightful customer experiences for me.   They all had me at “hello.”   For some, I’ll pay a higher price without question and without any consideration of alternatives.  For others, they’re my first and often only resource for online purchases.  For still others, I rarely fail to respond or commit to whatever promotional offer they send my way.

It seems so obvious, but too often we forget that the main reason for being in business is for your customers.  If you’re not prioritizing them, improving your services and products for them, and engaging them in your continued development and refinement of such… someone else will.

More importantly, as nearly every product or service is commoditized over time -- particularly in this economy, it’s a customer’s experience with your brand that can often be your most significant differentiator.  It can either make or break your relationship with customers.  And it can be the game-changer for your entire sector (i.e., see “coffee”).

What have you done to delight your customers lately?

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