As you know, Mattel has revamped their Barbie product so that it represents a larger range of women worldwide, with regards to shape, skin colour and hair colour. However, Marketing Magazine is asking if this is too late for the company. Sales of Barbie dolls have declined over the last few years, with a lot of this being attributed to the fact that mothers are increasingly uncomfortable with a very tall and thin Barbie, with fears that their children could wish to emulate her appearance. As well as this, the dolls represented such a small percentage of the world’s population, with girls of African, Middle Eastern, Polynesian and Oriental ancestry being largely under represented (there have been non-caucasian Barbies in the past but this is the first real shift to doing this on a larger scale).
So, how have Mattel dealt with this?
They’ve unveiled a series of new Barbie dolls that maintain the beauty and glamour of the originals but are now ethically diverse and varied in their body type. It’s about time; in a world where it has become increasingly unfashionable to promote one cultural standard of beauty, young girls playing with Barbie dolls should be able to see a representation of themselves marketed as a standard of beauty. The traditional Barbies will still be sold; and they are still hugely popular with young girls. There is definitely still a place for blonde, blue eyed Barbie. However, beauty, as well as being Caucasian, is African, Middle Eastern, Oriental, Polynesian, and any combination of these and it’s about time this was represented more to young impressionable girls. As well as being culturally diverse with different hair textures, the dolls will now be petite, curvy or tall, depending on what the buyer is looking for. This can only be good news for young girls who want to play with dolls that look like them.
Will this improve sales for the brand?
Marketing Magazine says that “it will be hugely interesting to see which versions prove to be the most popular” but that the “Barbie brand is salvageable because the marketers at Mattel have listened to their most important audience: mothers who buy them”. Initial focus groups run by Mattel revealed that the girls tested “showed strong preference for those (dolls) that most closely represented themselves, either because of the skin tone or the dolls’ hair texture. It will indeed be interesting to see what happens to sales; making the dolls more diverse can only be a good thing.
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