How the Bratz Beat Barbie
Baseline magazine's August issue has a cover article chronicling the fist fight between Barbie and the Bratz dolls. The article is really about competitive intelligence. Mattel, the maker of Barbie dolls, had the information that showed Barbie's popularity was waning. Girls wanted "attitude and ethnicity, not pert and pale." Tweens "were losing interest in traditional Barbie, attracted to pop stars in heavy makeup and trendy clothes." For tweens, Barbie was a baby toy. Mattel knew the phenomenon called age compression was occurring in their consumers -- girls wanted to grow up fast -- and Mattel wasn't doing anything about it. MGA, the maker of Bratz dolls came along at the right time -- when the industry was making a shift -- and had the right product to capitalize on the shift. In the first six months of their introduction, MGA sold $20 million of Bratz dolls. It would take 14-months for Mattel to follow with My Scene dolls that matched MGA's racy dolls. Since then, new players have joined the market, feeding girls the grown up image they crave: Integrity Toys' Janay and Friends; Tolly Tots' Girls on the Go; and Disney's Princess.
Baseline as usual, does an excellent job at the technology deep dive -- going to details, while maintaining the business context so it all makes sense. I won't summarize their analysis of competitive analysis software and processes -- nor point out the specifics of how, despite having the data, Mattel's systems couldn't help the company extract information from it. As well, there were the psychological problems. Mattel was complacent, secure in their unassailable position in the industry. No one could take them on. Or so they thought. I won't go there -- instead, I'd like to turn to industry shift -- the fact that tweens are "growing up" faster today, than ever before.
This is going to become a huge cultural problem. Children coming rapidly of age, but being unprepared for the realities of being a grown-up -- both emotionally and physically. It is something that we as a society, have allowed to happen to the future generations. Obsessed as we are with going beyond selling, to capturing minds, we've targeted the least prepared for a marketing onslaught. Baseline chronicles the efforts Mattel takes in understanding its target market. There is something wrong with a society that preys on their young. Yes, I am placing guilt on all of us. It's not the corporations -- the big and mighty companies that are doing this -- they're simply the channel. It's not just complacency. It's choice. There are parents working in those big, bad companies. There are parents working in those marketing firms. There are child psychologists that were trained to heal, but are instead applying their knowledge for nefarious ends. They are all us. We have allowed it to happen by not stopping it. We've allowed it to enter our homes by not stopping it. We've allowed it to take over, by not parenting.
Where will this future take us? Maybe this will not have significant impact to the coming generations -- individuals may be scarred -- but not entire societies. But what will we become several generations from now? That future is being built today. Our every action shapes that future. Just how will we shape it?
Related reading:
Baseline as usual, does an excellent job at the technology deep dive -- going to details, while maintaining the business context so it all makes sense. I won't summarize their analysis of competitive analysis software and processes -- nor point out the specifics of how, despite having the data, Mattel's systems couldn't help the company extract information from it. As well, there were the psychological problems. Mattel was complacent, secure in their unassailable position in the industry. No one could take them on. Or so they thought. I won't go there -- instead, I'd like to turn to industry shift -- the fact that tweens are "growing up" faster today, than ever before.
This is going to become a huge cultural problem. Children coming rapidly of age, but being unprepared for the realities of being a grown-up -- both emotionally and physically. It is something that we as a society, have allowed to happen to the future generations. Obsessed as we are with going beyond selling, to capturing minds, we've targeted the least prepared for a marketing onslaught. Baseline chronicles the efforts Mattel takes in understanding its target market. There is something wrong with a society that preys on their young. Yes, I am placing guilt on all of us. It's not the corporations -- the big and mighty companies that are doing this -- they're simply the channel. It's not just complacency. It's choice. There are parents working in those big, bad companies. There are parents working in those marketing firms. There are child psychologists that were trained to heal, but are instead applying their knowledge for nefarious ends. They are all us. We have allowed it to happen by not stopping it. We've allowed it to enter our homes by not stopping it. We've allowed it to take over, by not parenting.
Where will this future take us? Maybe this will not have significant impact to the coming generations -- individuals may be scarred -- but not entire societies. But what will we become several generations from now? That future is being built today. Our every action shapes that future. Just how will we shape it?
Related reading:
TweenSpeak Consumer Socialization of Children: A Retrospective Look at Twenty-Fice Years of Research [PDF] Not of Whole Cloth Made: The Consumer Environment of Children [PDF] The Impact of Pre-School Childrens Requests on Their Parents Choice of Brands:An Empirical Analysis [via Google] Children as Consumers
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