Time spent in her imaginary world, is an investment in her real world.
Studies show that girls who have loving, communicative, relationships with their fathers from early childhood are less likely to suffer from a lack of self-confidence and self-reliance as they grow up. In short, the more involved a dad is in his daughter’s imaginative play, the more he contributes to her real-life development. We linked this insight to the benefit of playing with Barbie, namely when a girl plays with Barbie she imagines everything she can become, and highlighted how dad and daughter playtime with Barbie helps little girls achieve their full potential.
The campaign was praised for championioning little girls and for breaking down gender stereotypes. It received 462 PR Placements garnering 671 million impressions with 99% positive sentiment.
"Mattel has had a lot of success modernizing the perception of Barbie, by focusing on her power to help girls imagine a powerful future for themselves. Now, the brand is subverting gender roles in a new campaign that shows fathers playing Barbie with their girls.”
— AdWeek
“Dads Who Play Barbie” ad is the real Patriots-Steelers winner.”
— CNET
“This Ad Is For All The Dads Who Play Barbie With Their Kids. Because dolls and dads do go together.”
— Huffington Post
Reach
The campaign has received 94M views across broadcast, digital and cinema; with the long form video receiving over 2.1M views.
Engagement
Above average on Twitter (4.8% vs 3% for typical posts) and Facebook (500+ comments vs 30 for typical posts).
The Dads Who Play Barbie was an integrated campaign executed through:
-
The campaign’s center piece was a 90 second film on YouTube, which was sectioned into three 30 seconds cuts and several 15 second cut-downs for use in other digital platforms, TV and cinema. The clips featured real dads and daughters playing with Barbie in various professional roles including a doctor, a firefighter, an astronaut, a teacher and a paleontologist. These play moments were completely unscripted, so throughout the campaign moms and dads saw imaginations running wild, genuinely funny moments, and of course the sweet tender connections between dads and their daughters.
-
Given that families watch American football games together, we launched the “Dads Who Play Barbie” campaign with a 30-second spot during the NFL playoffs in which a self-described “typical man’s man” admits his Sunday afternoon ritual of watching football is now often interrupted by Barbie time.
-
For the first time, an entire page of the Wall Street Journal was Barbie pink. We put an ad in the middle of the investing section to play up the idea that “Time spent in her imaginary world is an investment in her real world.
-
Had a few high impact placements in areas with high traffic.
-
We sent play kits to influential dads to encourage more dad and daughter playtime and invited dads to proudly share their own stories using #dadswhoplaybarbie. We also used Instagram to share the unique things dads can learn from their daughters when they play Barbie and to run the #dadswhoplaybarbie challenge which invited dads to submit videos of themselves playing Barbie with their daughters.
-
Barbie created their first dad dolls ever - a one of a kind Mario Lopez doll and a one of kind James O’Connell doll. We used a partnership with People magazine to showcase how both of them play Barbie with their daughters