Barbie, breaking family stereotypes

It was a sunny and warm evening and I was sitting next to my girlfriend enjoying a cold beer at a bench facing the Thames river. We were commenting about a marketing stunt of a household cleaning brand showing parents taking care of the house. We found as a big step forward the brand portraying men as an active character of the commercial. 

After taking a sip of my beer and inspired by the discussion, I realised a funny fact, why are many of the largest consumer good firms across the world still promoting their products only to mothers and why dads aren't playing a primary role as part of firms' advertisements? 

Honestly speaking, many large firms are completely neglecting the current state of society. Families are moving from patriarcal structures where men are the breadwinners towards more egalitarians ones where men and women share parental responsibilities. Stereotypical commercials show a clear disengagement between marketers and the inherent values, attitudes and beliefs of the people they serve. Depressed by the gloomy horizon I decided to drain my beer in one go.

A few days after and still not fully recovered of my heartache, I was checking a marketing website where I found the new commercial “Dads who play with Barbie” ads (find commercial below) which shows dads playing Barbie with their daughters at home. My first reaction was to laugh, however, I quickly realised that I was falling into stereotypes.

Barbie’s commercial is a superb response to the advertisers’ challenge I highlighted above. From my perspective, this ad stands for the values of the so called modern families.  These are families where mothers are encouraged to work and fathers to spend more time at home with their children. Furthermore,  the key priority for them is to spend quality time with their kids. 

This new family reality also translates to the way parents purchase toys and play with their children. Parents are keen to purchase more gender neutral toys, moreover, they are eager to engage on “real play” time where they get fully immersed into the imaginary world of their kids and play a role in their kids’ magical world where everything is possible. 

Barbie has done a tremendous job adapting to the needs, values and role models of modern families through its products. In the early 90s girls played with Barbies that were housewives and had to undertake the stereotypical housekeeping activities to Barbies becoming veterinarians, doctors, professors and even astronauts (see image below).

The brilliant “Dads who play with Barbie” ads mentioned above is part of  'You can be anything' marketing campaign. This marketing stunt has a higher purpose behind it, from the one hand it inspires girls to be anything they want to and from the other hand it incentivises parents to spend time in their kids' imaginary world which is an investment in their real world. This campaign is not only full of purpose but it has achieved great financial results growing the brand by 7% value growth making of Barbie an almost 1 billion dollars brand.

Barbie is a fantastic example of a brand with purpose, that looks beyond stereotypes and puts the people it serves first.