BARBIE
A DOLL CAN HELP CHANGE THE WORLD
Capabilities:
Coding for kids. Junior engineering. Robotics for babies (that’s a real book title). Parents increasingly wanted their children to learn hard skills and thought of doll play as having less developmental value and being ‘just for fun’ – which wasn’t great news for toys like Barbie.
This is the story of how we showed that playing with dolls can be just as important as learning C++.
2.7x
increase of brand equity benchmarks
150%
increase in empathy-related attributes
40%
rise in Barbie's sales
For development, parents valued STEM-focused educational toys over dolls. But where did that leave Barbie?
Rather than repositioning Barbie as a toy that teaches hard skills, we helped parents rethink the importance of dollplay, showing its ability to help raise a more empathetic generation.
Mattel teamed up with Cardiff University for a formal study – and the results revealed that playing with dolls can help children develop a range of social processing skills. All these are key determinants in their future emotional, academic, and social success.
Based on these findings, we created ‘A Doll Can Help Change the World’: a one-minute film that shows real kids playing with Barbie dolls. As the children read to their Barbies, talk to them, take them to visit their friends, and tuck them into bed at night, it becomes clear that the play is teaching them patience, kindness, being understanding – and, above all, empathy.