Lisa McKnight: Transforming Barbie | The Provocateurs: Episode 29

Okay, well, thank you, Steve. Thank you, Dez. Great to be with you both today. It's a real pleasure, so thank you for inviting me. I have been in what I'll call the brand marketing space for over 30 years. I graduated from Denison University, go Big Red, a small liberal arts school in Ohio, as a history and media communications double major. From there, I thought I actually wanted to go into broadcast journalism. I had an internship in San Francisco, where I was born and raised, at a local NBC affiliate station. I loved the idea of being a journalist, love storytelling, I'm curious, I love investigating different topics. But when I found out the reality was that my first job would not be in San Francisco, it would be in a small rural community called Watsonville, California, which is the Artichoke Capital of the United States, I said, okay, I got to do a pivot here because I really decided I wanted to live in San Francisco and then figure out a career from there. So I started to look at advertising, and my first job was at Grey in the media department, which I loved. I worked on Bank of America, which was really interesting, I worked on a grocery chain, and loved that. But then I had a sobering experience a year into it where we lost the Bank of America account, and so I lost my job, last one in, first one out. That was tough to process, but I realized then that I actually wanted to pivot more to account management than media. Soon thereafter, I started to work at another boutique agency in San Francisco, and then from there went on to Grey. So I had many years in advertising, worked in all sorts of sectors, lots of good experiences working for Taco Bell and Fairmont Hotels, those were two favorite clients. What I loved about advertising was not only the creative process and the opportunity to help clients solve problems through communication strategy, but I also loved getting exposed to different industries and getting a crash course on the business world. That got me interested in business and made me realize that I actually wanted to be more of a stakeholder and work for the client themselves. That took me to the Gap in San Francisco, where I was marketing director for Gap Brands. We had a good, better, best strategy between Old Navy, which was one of their newer brands, Gap, and Banana Republic. I absolutely loved the job, but then life took over. I moved to Los Angeles for my husband's career. We got married in the late 90s, moved to Los Angeles, and started working at Mattel. I had met some people at Mattel when I was working at the Gap, if you can believe it. Back then, we had a Barbie collaboration. We just did another Barbie collaboration last year tied to the movie, so pretty crazy how this all comes full circle. I knew a few people at Mattel, started to work at Mattel in the late 90s, and since then I've had many careers within the career at Mattel. I've worked under six CEOs, different leadership styles, but have always had a passion for brands. I think that's what's exciting about Mattel. We're absolutely a toy company, or at least our origin is in toys, but we're intentionally focused on brand building. More recently, under our new CEO Anon Kiss, we're pivoting to being an IP-driven company, so it's a really exciting space to be in. Again, thank you for having me.

Well, of course it was Barbie. I have fond memories playing with Malibu Barbie, a popular doll from the 70s. I have a younger sister, and we played for hours on one of our bedroom floors and made up stories. Ken was certainly in the mix, there was a camper, we went on a lot of adventures. But I will say, growing up in San Francisco where there was a lot of fog back then, unfortunately with climate change there's less so, but it was a foggy, colder city. I definitely had this fantasy about the Southern California Malibu lifestyle and played that out when I was playing with my Barbies.

Well, it's been an incredible journey. I will share, and I've said this many times, but there's a huge team effort behind this brand. It's a massive brand on a global scale, and I like to say it doesn't take a village, it takes a large metro area to steer this brand. But it's been really rewarding over the past eight plus years leading this transformation. We really had to take stock over eight years ago on the brand perception. Barbie was losing relevance, we were not keeping pace with culture. We always still had a kid audience, but parents that had grown up themselves playing with Barbie no longer felt good about their kids playing with Barbie, and they certainly didn't want to give Barbie as a birthday present. We learned at their friends' parties, the social currency was waning, and the brand was viewed as very one-dimensional, too perfect, an unrealistic standard of beauty. Nobody knew who she was and what she stood for. So it was very sobering, and frankly we were in denial for a while. Finally we realized we have to mobilize, and we started by going back to the origins of the brand and taking inspiration from the vision of Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler, whose sole purpose for creating Barbie was to inspire girls to believe they could be anything when they grew up. We used that purpose as the North Star for the brand to inspire the limitless potential in every girl. That started to guide our communication strategy, but then the biggest undertaking was we had to evolve the form factor and the product itself because she was not representative of the world that kids were seeing around them. That was a very big decision to make. I give all the credit to my partner and our head of design for Barbie and Dolls, Kim Culmone, who said to her team, 'If you were going to create Barbie today, what would she look like?' Obviously she would look very different. So the team created five different body types and introduced different ethnicities, face sculpts, hair textures and fibers, and eye colors to the line, rapidly evolving the entire face of Barbie to be inclusive and representative of the world around us. That absolutely took some time, but has made the brand now the most diverse doll line in the world. We have over 175 different dolls. In addition to that, we had to also practice what we preach. If Barbie is supposed to be the original girl empowerment brand, then we should use the brand to showcase real women role models, help girls see that they can be anything by showcasing these trailblazers. So we created a line of products called Inspiring Women, where we honored historical figures, everyone from Katherine Johnson to Amelia Earhart to Sally Ride to Maya Angelou, created dolls of them in their likeness. We also created a role model doll line of women today that are breaking boundaries and trailblazers, to reinforce that you can be anything. We know seeing is believing. And then, of course, I would say the boldest move of all was taking Barbie to the big screen, which was a six-year journey that started in 2018. I could go on and on, but I'll pause here.

Well, I love it. I love that association with these strong, powerful women. That is exactly what we set out to do. We had to massively shift perception and really move beyond the physicality of the doll and what Barbie is to what she inspires. That enabled us, when we got into that headspace, to work with the amazing Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and the filmmakers on the movie.

You're right. Barbie has been telling stories, and we've been creating movies for over 20 years. Barbie's first animated movie, a 70-minute direct-to-video film, was Barbie and the Nutcracker, and we had created a series of successful kid-targeted stories and movies. But interestingly, Barbie was always playing a character. It was Barbie as Clara in The Nutcracker, Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses, Barbie and the Princess and the Pauper. Also, I will share that a lot of those stories had Barbie positioned as a princess in a fairy tale genre. As I mentioned earlier, when we fast forward to about 10 years ago, the playback we were getting from today's kids and moms was that they didn't know who Barbie herself was. What does she stand for? What's her personality? Because she'd always played these characters. So we created a vlog for Barbie to speak in first person and to start talking about herself, her day, her interests. We also created an Instagram channel called Barbie Style, where she's viewed as an influencer and tastemaker traveling the world. So we started to play around with her voice and dimensionalizing her. That gave us confidence that there could be a story to be told about Barbie herself. Now, having said that, as a company, Mattel has been contemplating doing a feature live-action film about Barbie for decades, so that was never a new idea. But really it was the combination of the transformational work we had done on the brand that had started to make her viewed as a more positive role model and multidimensional, which got the interest of Margot Robbie as a producer. Combined with our CEO, Anon Kiss, joining the company, who comes from an entertainment background, he really became the catalyst for us working with Margot on this film. From there, everything followed. A year later, Greta signed on to write and then direct, and the cast was built. We've always wanted to tell a story about Barbie, but timing is everything. I was in a couple rounds before Anon joined the company with other producers and filmmakers, and we just never had the right story. It was always a little too expected. Again, because we had done the work to modernize Barbie and evolve her, we started to attract very interesting people again, like a Margot, like a Greta, to tell her story in an unexpected way.

Like I said, we knew we wanted to tell a Barbie story. We didn't know what the story was, but we certainly knew we didn't want something that felt too expected. It was really Margo's push to do something broadly unexpected, but it was really Greta when she signed on. I'm such a fan of hers. Growing up in the Bay Area, she's from Sacramento near San Francisco, and Lady Bird really hit home for me. I've got a sister, a mother-daughter relationship, that coming-of-age story is very relatable. She's an amazing storyteller, especially with female protagonists. When she came on, we knew, wow, this is going to be really interesting, this is going to be a take that we had not expected. Now, having said that, it was a multi-year journey with them. The first script that we saw absolutely made us uncomfortable. Greta acknowledged that she and her partner at the time, now husband Noah Baumbach, co-wrote the script in lockdown. This was in 2020, and we got the script at the end of 2020. They were in lockdown, and there were a million societal things happening beyond that. So I was absolutely nervous. Now, by the way, as I mentioned before, team effort. Anon was very involved, and we hired an amazing head of our Mattel film division, Robbie Brenner. Robbie and I would tag team. Robbie would provide story notes, and I would provide the brand notes. But we were pushing into territories that made me uncomfortable. I think we just had to appreciate that if we were going to do something at all, it had to be provocative, there had to be tension for it to be successful. I will say right out of the gate, we always said we wanted to tell an amazing story. We did not want to create a film to advertise toys.

Many sleepless nights, and lots and lots of discussion. My first reaction to that marketing message was, 'That's a hard no.' Why would I ever put out in the world, 'If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you'? I was like, that is going to get picked up and played back to us in surround sound. Why would we ever do that? But again, big picture, it's all about the creative collaboration. I did have confidence and know that we were working with the best creative talent in the industry, and that everyone also had Barbie's best interest in mind. No one wanted to torpedo the brand. There were just different approaches. The expression I've used a million times is I had to get comfortable being uncomfortable. It was very difficult. I've got an amazing team. We spent a lot of time discussing pros and cons. We got cultural consultants that we work with, we worked with all sorts of folks just to troubleshoot scenarios and sort of play out worst case. What we appreciated at the end of it all was we're at a point today in society where authenticity matters. To show that we were self-aware about frankly the polarizing nature of Barbie would really go a long way and be well received. So that was the final choice. We were going to go for it. I think the bravest thing of course is the satire on Mattel itself, and Will Ferrell as the CEO of Mattel. It's not exactly the most flattering portrayal, but you were brave enough to do it.

I would love to talk about the Dream Gap project. This was a good example of walking the talk. That was something that we set forth to do with all this transformational work. If Barbie is the original girl empowerment brand, what are we doing to serve girls? What is the state of girls today? We uncovered some research from a professor at NYU that starting at the age of five or six, girls start doubting their capabilities and their competency and their intelligence, and start thinking that they are less than boys. There's this gap that's created in their confidence. We thought, okay, that's horrifying, and why is this happening? How do we mitigate that? How do we close that gap? So we started to do a lot of work. We created this social mission platform, the Barbie Dream Gap project. We started to raise consciousness around this issue. There's a fact that parents Google 'Is my son a genius?' more than they Google 'Is my daughter a genius?' Boys are enrolled in more STEM courses than girls. There are these behaviors that are real. So we got fact-based information, started to create consciousness around this, and then use the Barbie brand to try to remove barriers where possible. We've done a combination of things. From literally creating, as I mentioned earlier, these role model dolls, especially of women in career areas where women are underrepresented, in tech, in finance, in manufacturing, all sorts of areas where women are underrepresented. We started to create dolls of real women leaders to tell their stories and to show girls that they can be these amazing people and have these careers when they grow up. We also created a curriculum that we're testing right now in schools in the LA area to help remove these barriers and to give girls skills around leadership. We've been working with a ton of partners. We've always said from the get-go we can't do this alone. So lots of nonprofit organizations that are in service of girls, whether it's Girls Inc., Black Girls Code, Latinas, we're directing marketing and funding to those organizations for them to do the good work to connect and touch girls and remove these barriers and obstacles. To date, I think we're at 25 million girls that we've impacted positively to help them believe that they can be anything. It's a long journey, but very proud of the work that the team has done, and the commitment not just of the team at Barbie but Mattel. We are a very purpose-driven company.

Again, I think inclusivity is such a core value of the brand and also of Mattel. To reflect this level of diversity in the line to help everyone feel seen is really powerful. It gives everyone value and confidence and helps them use their voices in micro leadership situations and ultimately when they grow up to be macro leaders. To help normalize some of these disabilities is important, and to create empathy is really important. Interestingly, this is more about doll play in general, not specific to Barbie. We've done clinical studies and know through neuroscience that when a child plays with a doll, even alone, it helps trigger empathy in them because they're role playing a situation and they're walking in the shoes of the character that they're imagining. It's really powerful. So absolutely, inclusivity and representation matters.

I would say a key thing is you cannot stand still. There's a million books and authors about this topic, but it's the whole expression that we've heard, 'What got you here won't get you there.' What we've really learned is enduring brands do not stand still. You have to stay connected to culture, you have to be consumer-centric, whether you like the feedback or not. One thing that we learned early on in the Barbie journey was that perception is reality. Even though we had been doing all this work to transform the brand, not everyone had been exposed to that work. Barbie had 60 years of legacy prior to the movie, and there was a deep perception that people had about the brand. Some people loved Barbie, and some people did find her polarizing. So really appreciating having that consumer-centric mindset, and then adapting and evolving.

I think that's all about the environment that you're operating in. Mattel is a collaborative company and is a company built on deep relationships and trust. Trust gives you the feeling of safety. I would say that allowed me and others to take some bolder swings. We felt like we had the unwavering support of the company. Now, to get that support, you've got to earn it. You've got to be a good communicator. Steve, back to Ibtihaj Muhammad and that story. When we launched that doll, I underestimated what the reaction would be to creating a Barbie doll from a Muslim faith background. There was some tough reaction from certain parts of the world, France in particular, and I had not prepared our European team, I had not prepared our CEO, I had not prepared our board of directors. Everyone got letters and emails. It was crazy. Again, it was polarizing. There was a lot of fandom, but there was also some discomfort. So I say that because what I've learned now is I've got to bring everyone on the journey with you. Build the trust, get the support, build the scaffolding around you so when you make these leaps and these big decisions, you've got that support system. It also means that if you're making a truly difficult decision or a truly strategic decision, you can't hold yourself to the standard that everyone is going to be on the same page as you.

You absolutely have to take that onto yourself and make sure that it's maintained. As I mentioned, I've worked under six CEOs, so there's been a reset each time a new leader has taken the helm. I provide continuity to my team, but there have been many times where I've had to educate and manage up the need for that support system. Nothing can be taken for granted. It's something that's got to be an active muscle.

Absolutely, protect the team.

I would say a few things, kind of stating the obvious for decompressing, but exercise is important to me. Whether it's literally walking my dog when I get home, I've got a rambunctious two-year-old little terrier, or hitting the Peloton, it's definitely a time when I decompress as well as think. Because we are in rapid fire mode at Mattel, and I'm sure many executives are, and it's hard to go from meeting to meeting. So you need the end of the day to kind of process what just happened and to take stock. Frankly, I sometimes play conversations over in my head when I'm on the treadmill and I come up with different answers, and I'm like, 'Oh, I wish I had approached something this way.' I love when I'm on the Peloton, I like doing the scenic runs. I love transporting myself to Portugal, Japan, British Columbia, and also planning those next trips because I'm a big traveler. But I would say definitely exercise, and then it's also absolutely connecting with family, friends, loved ones, and just processing, catching up, and connecting to people that are really important to me in my life. As for podcast guest recommendations, I'm impressed with Sean Tresvant from Taco Bell. His company and the work he's been doing was recognized at the same time Mattel was in Fast Company. It's interesting to see how they've created a lifestyle brand, and they're definitely doing a lot of things that are contrary to the norm. They're on the edge in their respective space, and it's interesting to see what they're doing.