Special Feature - Mattel BLE Keynote

The Mattel of today

Mattel president and COO Richard Dickson delivered the keynote address at BLE 2022, which took place at London Excel from 20th-22nd September. In his standing-room-only talk, he spoke about Barbie’s rise to fame, her 2014 fall from grace (when the body positivity movement saw the doll come under fierce scrutiny) and her astonishing climb back up to become the world's No.1 Global Toy Property. After his keynote, Richard sat down with Toy World’s John Baulch and Rachael Simpson-Jones, as well as Josh Silverman, Mattel’s global head of Consumer Products and chief franchise officer, to discuss the upcoming Barbie Movie and the company's lofty goals for brand growth.

Toy World readers are already familiar with Barbie’s history and ethos, but one part of your talk might raise some eyebrows – that Mattel wants to triple the Barbie consumer products business by 2025. Is there scope to achieve this when the Barbie brand is already so huge?

JS: If you look back over the brand’s history, there was a period at its peak when consumer products was doing extraordinarily well: when we measured Barbie’s CP success against that of the overall Doll business, it was actually one for one. CP was a hugely important market for us a time when Barbie was rising back up from quite a heavy fall. We were working with lots of different retailers, great licensees, fashion collaborations and more, and as we all know, things have progressed since then.

Today, our toy business is so much larger than the CP business, but CP remains there for the taking. We need to start having much more robust conversations with our licensing partners and providing the right assets so our partners can create great products, and we are also continuing to drive leadership from a strategic perspective. Today’s Mattel is very different to the Mattel of yesterday, and tomorrow’s will be different again. With a raft of films and TV on the way, and with franchise models that we believe will unlock value proposition, that goal of tripling the business – which admittedly seems very big at first – suddenly becomes very do-able.

RD: It really is. When we talk about Barbie, we say ‘brand’, not ‘doll. When a girl wakes up in the morning she wants some element of Barbie in her day – not just doll play, but Barbie fashion, animated content, music and much more. The scope is endless.

The Barbie movie, which is slated for release July 2023, is generating much discussion and excitement: it’s fair to say consumers perhaps weren’t expecting Greta Gerwig, the woman behind Lady Bird and Little Women, to be in the director’s chair. Do you think the film is going to be a major new catalyst for the Barbie brand?

RD: Oh, for sure, the movie is going to create another level of conversation about Barbie. But it’s important to remember that the brand doesn’t depend on this movie. Barbie has gone 63 years without a movie, and she’s done pretty well anyway. Greta’s story is, of course, going to be phenomenal – some of it was filmed in London and I was lucky enough to spend a little time on-set – but it’s not the only Barbie story. The movie will be a huge tentpole moment for Mattel and Barbie, and will drive enormous sales of Barbie licensed merchandise, but Barbie will always be expressed in numerous different ways.

Managing the brand as a pop-culture icon rather than a doll changes the limits of what you can do with Barbie. Whether the creative is content or products or live experiences, as long as they’re within the guardrails of the brand’s DNA then Barbie, true to the message she imparts to today’s girls, can be anything she wants to be. The movie is fun and while it flirts with pop-culture conversations, it doesn’t go over the edge of comfort. It’s a fine line to tread, but Ryan Gosling, who stars as Ken, treads it fantastically in his interviews when discussing the ‘Ken-ergy’ he brings to the role and the ‘Kennaissance’ that’s taking place right now thanks to the movie.

We’re in a good place with Barbie and the foundations are solid, which means we can stretch the narrative. The key for us is working with people who respect the brand, which Greta, Ryan and Margot [Robbie, starring as Barbie] do. It’s liberating to empower them all to go and have fun with Barbie, rather than restrict them by dictating what they can and can’t do. That attitude leads to missed opportunities.

In your keynote, you also talked about Mattel’s shift to an entertainment led company, the 13 films currently in development and the 30+ TV shows. What’s the key to managing such a vast number of projects, as well as the wider culture change?

RD: It may look like all that has happened overnight, but trust me, it hasn’t. It’s taken two years of hard work to get where we are today on the content side of things, part of which was spent finding the right talent - people who understand the space and are authentic within it – and then empowering them to go and do what they do best. Robbie Brenner, for example, is executive producer of Mattel Films and is very well respected by the Hollywood community for her ability to create great content. Robbie has been leveraging our portfolio of IP and exploring the opportunities it gives us. Fred Soulie is out SVP & general manager of Mattel Television. He’s a natural in the space, has worked at lots of different studios creating brilliant content, and has done a tremendous job for us in a short period of time. And Josh here, of course, has come in with incredible expertise in consumer products and franchises.

What I’m saying is, our pivot to an entertainmentled company might seem sudden, but it’s been a long time in the making and it’s required some serious strategising. We’ve obviously got more to do - no company can say it’s the finished article - but this work is central to our evolution from ‘just’ a toy company into an IP-driven entity that invites all kids to engage with our stories, whether that be via publishing, theme parks, live events, movies, TV and, of course, toys.

We understand that Hot Wheels is one of Mattel’s other brands benefitting from its own movie. How does the brand compare to Barbie, and how will the film measure up?

RD: Barbie is a great case study for how the Mattel Playbook guides the thinking on our brands, but Hot Wheels also has an incredible story to tell. The brand has doubled in the past five years, and for the past three consecutive years it has enjoyed its best year ever. 2022 looks likely to go the same way.

JJ Abrams [Star Trek, Super 8] is producing the Hot Wheels movie, which will be further bolstered with TV content in the coming months. Hot Wheels is an underrepresented brand in consumer products and live experiences such as the Hot Wheels Legends Tour spans the generations and causes such huge excitement. Digital gaming is a no-brainer too. Barbie might hog the spotlight, but Hot Wheels is revving up in a big way too.