And the positive impact it’s had at the checkout has been noticeable. “This can allow you to recoup the upfront cost on the increased margin of product sales you make as a result.”īuild-A-Bear Workshop released Honey Girls, a film based on its popular range of girl band-themed stuffed animals, alongside Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions in 2021. “The approach that different companies may take is determinant of its success as an ad tool to drive sales,” John adds. But there are ways to structure deals or arrange payments that can help mitigate this. The cost of producing a feature film with a full line-up of Hollywood A-listers, akin to Barbie, is prohibitively expensive for most companies. “These brands are realising that if they can get people to spend 90 minutes with their IP while watching a movie, it could have a really positive effect on sales.” Funding a shift to films “By opening up its IP to Hollywood, Mattel is playing heavily into the strength of nostalgia among a generation of adults that used to buy its products,” says Zoe Scaman, founder of brand strategy studio Bodacious, which works with businesses to open up their IP to new audiences and revenue opportunities. “The industry seeks to create that one-to-one relationship with children and one of the few ways to continue to do that is through the creation of its own content,” she adds.Īnother factor influencing this trend is the growing adult market for toys. Where once toy companies could reach a guaranteed audience through TV adverts during Saturday morning cartoons, younger audiences’ attention is now split between video games, social media, YouTube and other video-on-demand services. “But one of the things that has created this recent resurgence is the decline of traditional advertising methods for toys.” “The intertwining of storytelling and toys is pretty fundamental,” says John, who also worked at Hasbro in the 2000s when the business first went through a similar pivot with the release of the robot-battling blockbuster Transformers. Lego is working on a third Lego movie and, following the box office success of Dungeons and Dragons, Hasbro has films based on its GI Joe, Beyblade, Monopoly, Action Man, Furby and Cluedo brands in development.īrands are realising that if they can get people to spend 90 minutes with their IP while watching a movie, it could have a really positive effect on sales These include a horror-themed Magic 8 Ball movie, a “surrealistic” project based on the purple dinosaur Barney, a heist flick based on the game Uno and a JJ Abrams-produced Hot Wheels film. Mattel alone has 45 films based on its IP in development. The idea is not revolutionary, as Sharon Price John, the current CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop and director of Mattel’s Barbie division from 1994 to 1999, notes: “The intersection of entertainment and the toy industry has been happening for years.” However, a cursory glance down the list of upcoming box-office releases suggests this strategy is undergoing a resurgence. And it wants to do this by translating them to the big screen and in the process capturing a new audience. In essence, Mattel set out to breathe new life into its popular roster of brands, which alongside Barbie includes Hot Wheels, Thomas & Friends and Uno. In response, Kreiz’s long-term strategy shifted away from retail and towards capturing the “full value of Mattel’s IP through franchise management”. The year prior, the company had made an operating loss of more than $339m and the bankruptcy of Toys ‘R’ Us was cited in Mattel’s financial results as having had a “significant impact” on its revenue. This new vision for the business was set out by Ynon Kreiz, who became Mattel’s CEO in 2018. It also marks the first major step in the company’s business transformation from toy maker to an intellectual property-driven outfit. The buzz that the film has generated is no coincidence – Mattel’s Barbie division has spent $100m on marketing this year, according to Media Radar. The film represents the Mattel doll’s first live-action film appearance and has successfully captured the cultural zeitgeist as millennials flock to post their best Barbie-inspired outfits on TikTok (videos featuring the Barbiecore hashtag have more than 570 million views). It is almost impossible to escape the bright pink posters signalling the imminent release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie.
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