Barbie is the greatest branded content play of 2023

Welcome to my newsletter, Shrug Diaries, where I share what I’m learning, thinking, and hearing, plus a curated mix of links worth your time. Some of the topics covered include culture and business, media and content, work and life. Sign up to receive this regularly here.?

$1.5 billion.

That’s the amount of money that Mattel, the world’s second-largest toy maker, earns annually on Barbie – representing a third of its total revenue in 2022. You probably know why I’m opening the first edition of my newsletter like this. Chances are, you haven’t been able to venture anywhere on or offline without running into something related to the monocultural pink hit that is the new Barbie movie, which has smashed expectations, generating more than $750 million globally and setting a record as the 7th highest grossing second weekend ever.

Thanks to an incredibly smart and ambitious advertising push, plus the added halo effect of “Barbenheimer,” I think we can safely say that Barbie is EVERYWHERE in the culture right now. And while much has been and will be written about the success of the movie itself, what is less talked about is that it’s essentially a piece of brand content for the Mattel corporation itself.

What is brand content?

Brand content, for those unaware, is a relatively newer practice in the world of strategic marketing and communications, designed to bring awareness and understanding of a company itself, rather than its products and services. The brands who do it best know that the content they make should be so compelling, entertaining, or insightful on its own, and just happen to be coming from that brand, rather than a direct advertisement for the company. Brands you know and love like Nike and REI have been leading the pack on this for years, funding great documentaries or shorts. B2B companies have been dabbling in it as well; I led the Brand Content team at Refinitiv, a financial services company, where we dabbled in branded podcasts, documentaries, and YouTube shows.?

Mattel’s big bets

While some companies’ adventures in brand content are solely an effort by the marketing department, the Barbie movie represents the beginning of a new corporate strategy laid out by the Mattel’s CEO Ynon Kreiz, who told the New Yorker his thesis is that they need to “transition from being a toy-manufacturing company, making items, to an I.P. company, managing franchises.”

This of course is not the first time a company has reinvigorated its business by betting big on Hollywood. Lego, DC Comics, Transformers (Hasbro), and of course Marvel have all successfully ridden the IP-led wave.

But what made this a fairly risky bet, and a very new one for Mattel, is how much creative control they ceded to Greta Gerwig, the film’s celebrated co-writer and director. Most managers of a brand tightly control their image, and Mattel is no exception. They famously sued MCA Records in 1997 for the Aqua song “Barbie Girl.” The new Barbie movie goes so far as to actually make fun of Mattel, highlight a number of corporate embarrassments and missteps, and heavily lean into the many fair criticisms of Barbie over the years.?

Barbie’s just the beginning

Mattel hopes to replicate the success of Barbie with more of its characters, too. Here’s just a taste of what future movies they’ve already announced, and you can tell by the list of names attached, they’re not messing around.?

• Barney, produced and played by Daniel Kaluuya?
• Polly Pocket, starring Lily Collins, directed by Lena Dunham?
• Major Matt Mason starring Tom Hanks?
• Hot Wheels, directed by JJ Abrams
• And more, including Uno, Magic 8 Ball, and beyond?

What can companies learn from Barbie about great brand content?

While I don’t expect Pfizer to go and make an action movie with Tom Cruise about their COVID-19 vaccine, I do think there are a number of key lessons we can learn from the major early success of the Barbie movie:?

1. Start with the audience first.?

99% of companies who produce content quite selfishly start with themselves. They ask, “What can we communicate about ourselves?”

Successful brand content asks the question, “What does our audience / decision makers want?” Entertainment? Insights and answers? Commentary and analysis? Find the intersection of what your company can offer and what your audience actually wants.?

2. Hire the right creatives and trust them.

Finding great creative talent is hard enough, but for brands looking to do this, you have to give them a certain amount of creative control to do what they do best. You can find great creatives outside the company, but it might be wise to either find or hire fantastic creatives in-house as well. For Mattel, this is Robbie Brenner, a 20-year film veteran and the producer of Dallas Buyers Club, who now leads Mattel Films as Executive Producer. Functionally, she serves as the go-between Hollywood talent and Mattel.?

3. Don’t take your brand too seriously.

I think Mattel sets a new bar here for being willing to poke fun at itself and take criticisms seriously. This approach won’t be right for every brand, but I do think it’s important for brands to think seriously about what will connect with their audience and (hopefully) the culture, and that will often mean a little bit more fun, and a little bit less preciousness.?

4. Believe the content is great on its own and fund accordingly.

Brands should definitely look for and measure some kind of ROI on this, but honestly, that’s an entire topic for another day. For brands to do content right, they have to treat the content as its own thing, in this case, a high-quality Hollywood blockbuster, rather than a little film to sell more Barbies. This means appropriating the right resources, talent, and investment, and generally making a few long-term big bets.?

5. Plan and invest in a sustained rollout matching the ambition of the content.

Something I’ve seen far too many times in my career is loads of resources and dollars put into the creation of the content itself, and in comparison, a tiny amount of thought put into actually launching it. As in, going to the social team a week before launch and asking them to make it go viral. The success of the Barbie movie is in no small part thanks to the masterful campaign that Warner Brothers Discovery created and the marketing industry can’t stop talking about. As Warner Bros. president of worldwide marketing Josh Goldstine said in a podcast last week, the team developed more than 100 different partnerships - from that very cool Barbie dreamhouse Airbnb to a collab with Progressive’s Flo. You can feel the amount of planning and effort put into the campaign itself, a good reminder for us all trying to make great branded content.?

So what do you think? Does the success of Barbie signal a new chapter in the world of branded content? Will we see more companies take content seriously? And of course, what did you think of the movie itself? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.?

Go deeper on Barbie

• After “Barbie,” Mattel is raiding its entire Toybox (New Yorker)
• Barbie is about selling more than dolls for Mattel (Bloomberg)?
• The ‘Barbie’ deep dive with Greta Gerwig! (The Ringer’s Big Picture podcast)

Link mix ??

Here are a few links I think you might find interesting:

• Always read Matt Levine on Elon
• PJ Vogt (formerly of Reply All) is back with a new podcast
• A BTS excellent Twitter (erm, X?) thread on the 15th anniversary of another little Christopher Nolan project, The Dark Knight
• Barbie Ken x Kendall Roy is everything
• Have really been enjoying veteran Bloomberg presenter Emily Chang's new show, The Circuit

Shrug Diaries is a production of Shrug Content , a content and consulting studio based in Minnesota, operating globally. Our offerings include content & editorial strategy, podcast production, LinkedIn coaching, website development, and more. Shrug Content is also the producer of the podcasts Connection Request and Climate. Money. Work. Learn more at shrugcontent.com.