Social media brings Barbie and Ken together again!

Digital Chameleon Blog

Social media brings Barbie and Ken together again!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Did you know that Barbie and Ken are back together? Why should you care? Because in the last year Mattel has created a cheeky, engaging, viral and successful social media campaign that other marketers can learn from. Barbie is back, and she’s social media fabulous!

I grew up with Barbie… and Ken, Midge, and Skipper and all the clothes and accessories I could get my hands on. I had the Barbie beach house, as well as the cool convertible they tooled around Malibu in. This campaign has given Barbie and Ken a supercharged overhaul and made them cool and relevant once again. Through social media, Mattel has breathed new life into their classic characters by giving them a voice and letting their fans interact with them. It’s a brilliant, cheeky, and engaging campaign.

In July 2010 Barbie started a Twitter account, got onto Foursquare, and started posting videos on YouTube. That was all in order to promote the new Video Girl – a Barbie with a video camera embedded in her, so you can record videos with Barbie and post them on YouTube. She started a scavenger hunt on Foursquare, and tweeted clues to her followers.

In February 2011, Mattel created on their biggest social media campaign to date – Reunite Barbie & Ken. Such a reunion would generate loads of buzz, and the volume could be turned up high via social media. Barbie had continued tweeting and checking in since July, and now Ken had Twitter and Foursquare accounts and both were on Facebook. Cheeky videos were posted on YouTube, and they easily went viral.

The campaign engaged the user by asking them to vote on whether or not Barbie should take Ken back. Fans, followers, and “likes” got a say in what happened between the famous pair. You know how the story ends - Barbie did decide to get back together with her old beau (thanks to her fans), and Mattel has extended the campaign by providing more ways users can be involved in the love affair. People can have a look at some of the things Ken did to win back his love, they can download music, and they can take part in the “Genuine Ken” contest to find the “perfect” man.

If you grew up with Barbie, Ken, Midge and the gang as I did, you can’t help but smile at the way these icons have remained relevant (OK, more than that – they’re positively COOL!) with a campaign that revolved around social media and building community.

But the campaign didn’t stop with social media – Mattel invested in billboards around the world. Posters at Times Square from Ken shouted, “Barbie, I want you back!” Not only did this reinforce the message, but those who weren’t aware of the online campaign were driven there through offline media.

Today Barbie has 1.9 million friends on Facebook, and over 44,000 follower on Twitter. For an overview of the campaign don’t miss the video on YouTube.