“Frozen” is a highly popular Disney film from 2013 which features a blonde heroine who triumphs despite obstacles that get in her way. This character, Elsa, was sold in doll form and unseated Barbie from the top of the Christmas toy chart in 2015.

The Barbie idea is simple, scalable, and steadfast:

We believe in a world where girls can be anything.

In 2015, this meant showing what happens when girls believe they can be anything through young girls showing up in surprising careers – veterinarian, professor, and soccer coach.

In 2016, this meant a new range of dolls with four body shapes, 27 skin tones, full posable joints – and in 2019, the introduction of a disabled doll.

In 2017, this meant engaging Millennial dads and showing how their time invested in their daughters’ world paid back on their futures.

In 2018, this meant tackling the Dream Gap, the ways in which girls develop a lack of self-confidence that makes them less likely to believe they can be anything.

And throughout, we’ve marked our new role models as ‘Sheroes,’ bestowing the glory on women who were inspiring the next generation.

98% of Millennial moms had grown up with Barbie, but they had stopped buying the doll for their daughters.

Why?

Because it’s not 1959 anymore.

As Hillary Clinton said in 2015, “there’s never been a better time to be a woman.” So it’s not surprising that Millennial moms were looking for an alternative role model with a purpose.

But a lost piece of brand DNA fell in our laps one late night, all the way from 1959 – a quote from Barbie creator Ruth Handler:

“My whole philosophy of Barbie was that, through the doll, the little girl could be anything she wanted to be. Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has choices.”

And that type of free play develops the prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain that helps people regulate emotions, solve problems and make plans.

It prepares children for adulthood.

We would need to remind moms that playing with Barbie is much more than just make believe. It’s the time when a little girl tries on all of the possibilities of who she can become.

Focusing our attention on what Barbie enables, versus what she looks like, paid back to the business by reversing a two-year sales decline in under two years.

But this wasn’t just an initial campaign success – in Q1 2019, Barbie reported a 5-year high sales achievement, growing 12% in Q4 2018 alone, and the fifth consecutive quarter of growth.

Overall, the focus on Barbie’s core purpose has returned Barbie to being a billion-dollar brand – the first time since 2014.

While turning around perceptions with Millennial moms was important to drive immediate purchase, we also needed to address a broader media narrative that insisted on using Barbie as a stand-in for anything that seemed vapid.

Each campaign wave has delivered nearly universal positive sentiment figures, and brand advertising for Barbie has consistently reached beyond the initial mom audiences and prompted a large-scale reappraisal of the brand.