Lyss Greve

The real genius behind Barbie's success wasn't the $150 million marketing budget. Prior to the film's launch, Mattel (owner of Barbie) pushed their licensing agreements to 100+ brands. Its why they felt *everywhere* Brands that collaborated include: - AirBnB (rent Ken's dream house) - Burger King (pink burger, ew) - Xbox (custom hardware) Those agreements typically look like this... 1. Small brand asks big brand to collab 2. Big brand requests minimum royalty 3. Small brand struggles to hit that # And then proceeds to complain about it. For the movie release, Mattel did the opposite. They actively pursued brands. Lowered their minimum royalty figure Plus, streamlined the product approval process. It worked great. But isn't a "obvious" move. There's precendent for the opposite. Hasbro, another toy conglomerate, has been restrictive with the licensing of their major franchises, like: → Transformers → Dungeons & Dragons → G.I. Joe Meaning they fully control the marketing, the films, and the products sold post release. To do this, they bought a production studio for $3.8 billion in 2019. Last year, they sold it for $500 million. Yikes. Moral of the story? Crowdsourcing you're marketing works. Barbie gave other companies' marketing teams an easy opportunity. Leverage us to create a unique drop. It can be pink, fun, trendy, you name it. Just get people to talk about the movie. Doing so helped them reach billions of consumers with other people's licensed products. ...and the brands paid them to do it. – at Austin, TX