Barbie’s movie is taking the box-office by storm giving hope to Mattel to revive the sales of the iconic doll. A shift in strategy toward entertainment and a lot of movie tie-in products that are sold-out according to Mattel – are the company’s hope in moving the business forward, writes eToro analyst for Romania, Bogdan Maioreanu.
Following a very strong start with over 337 million worldwide, the second weekend has seen Barbie still in the front of the US Box Office, adding a massive 93 million dollars between Friday and Sunday. Ticket sales for “Barbie” declined just 43% from its debut and resulted in the seventh-biggest second weekend in history.
The movie success created a real Barbiemania in the business world, as Mattel has signed more than 167 product collaboration agreements. Special product lines can be found in Zara, Primark and GAP stores, among others. Crocs has produced a special edition of its shoes, Aldo created clear pumps Barbie branded and Fossil a line of watches. These deals, with the huge success of Barbie, should bring Mattel at least $100 million.
Companies offering Barbie gadgets can also count on similar profits. Virtual content is offered in Xbox’s Forza motorsport with an exclusive Barbie pack featuring cars from the movie. Even game controllers in very bright pink can be purchased. AirBNB featured the Barbie house, companies like the US insurer Progressive and even Google are trying to capitalize with their advertising strategy on the highly successful movie. The movie is already launching fashion trends, like the barbiecore with very pink clothes, shoes and makeup.
Barbie is the first motion picture featuring the iconic doll since its launch in 1959. Starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the movie is part of the new Mattel strategy to create a bridge between its toys and the entertainment industry. Success examples are coming from Lego with the themed construction sets and the movies and Hasbro with Transformers, GI Joe and Clue movies that linked physical toys and games to theatrical releases.
As a result there is no surprise that Mattel is trying to capitalize on the notoriety of the Barbie brand. A glimpse in the new Mattel entertainment strategy was given by the TV show Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge, a home improvement show transforming regular houses into Barbie ones, on HGTV, with over 4 million viewers.
Mattel is using a similar strategy to promote some of its other brands, such as toy cars – with TV productions such as Hot Wheels – Ultimate Challenge where teams of mechanics were creating real size cars from Hot Wheels scale models. The Hot Wheels show was the 16th most popular show on the NBC network and 98th overall on TV, and was watched by a total number of 1,085,000 people. The sales of Hot Wheels toys are on an yearly upward trend since 2017.
The Barbie brand value has doubled in the last couple of years and before the film’s release was estimated at about 700 million dollars. If the trend is kept after the successful movie release its value can reach more than 1 billion dollars. Since its creation Barbie rose to the rank of most popular doll in the world, with sales of billions of dollars. But society is evolving and children are moving more and more from physical toys to gadgets and screens. In Q2 this year, Mattel Dolls sales increased year on year with 10% primarily due to growth in Monster High, Disney Princesses and Frozen but Barbie sales declined.
However, after the company published its Q2 results, investors tempered their enthusiasm. Mattel’s share price lost 3.47% last week but is still up almost 16% year to date. With the Barbie movie on track toward gains of over 800 million dollars, not surprisingly, Mattel is preparing 16 more movies using its brands. The next are expected to be Hot Wheels and Rock’em Sock’em Robots starring Vin Diesel.
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