Advertising & Product Integration Insights – Succeeding with Barbie

Interestingly, when we look at metrics one would anticipate benefiting from the Barbie association, lift did not occur. Specifically, comparing the Chevy Barbie TV ad to the Equinox EV launch ad, the Barbie TV ad did significantly worse on Reputation and did not enhance the GEI™ score. This is despite the fact the Barbie ad features a diverse trio of actresses from the movie (Margot Robbie, America Ferrera, and Ariana Greenblatt) throughout the ad, while the Equinox TV ad only shows an average woman charging the vehicle for :02 seconds of the :30 commercial.

The above Chevy Barbie TV ad was tested after the movie’s opening and scores are against the general population overall. However, if we look at the scores by different demographics, the ad did do better among specific populations.

• Gen Pop ABX Index is 95
• Hispanics ABX index is 103
• HH with Children Under 18 ABX Index is 116
• Within Age by Gender, Men 35-54 ABX Index is 122

Note: Men 35-54 is the segment with highest ABX scores for all Chevy ads, Barbie did not impact that trend.

To understand what is driving these scores, ABX looked at verbatims. The verbatims show us foremost how careful an advertiser needs to be with co-branding. Several respondents reported on their Barbie™ and Barbie movie feelings not with their comments about the Chevy vehicle: “Liked the movie. Ad reminded me how good the movie was”; “Liked Barbie movie, ha,ha” or “Hate Barbie. Wrong association.” and “Barbie is a horrible person.” Generally, the over 55+ year-old responses were the most negative. An overall take-away from the verbatims is that the ad does not stand on its own as a strong Chevy Blazer EV message enhanced by Barbie. Many were confused by the brands’ mash-up. From the verbatims the ad appears less successful among those who have not seen the movie.

Importantly, among the audience most responsive to Chevy ads overall – M35-54, their love of Chevy outweighed the Barbie connection with comments like, “Love the vehicle and it’s design,” and “like the brand of car in the ad”.

Earlier we noted the higher ABX Index of 103 among Hispanics and we were interested in whether America Ferrera playing a leading character may have been responsible for that boost. However, the Hispanic actress had no mentions in the verbatims and the Hispanic/Spanish group was the most polarized vs. other demographic breaks. The majority of Hispanic/Spanish ratings were either excellent or poor. Comments spread from “I have been looking at this vehicle since the movie came out” and “Super fun and clear the ad was for Chevy Blazer” to “The ad was muddled. An EV SUV is interesting but Barbie is all that stuck in my mind” and “talk about piggybacking, yuck.”

Conclusion

Does this mean the Barbie license did not work for Chevrolet? NO!

What this analysis does is reinforce the value of creative pre- and post- testing. While a simplistic take-away might be that Barbie just doesn’t translate to a family SUV. A deeper analysis indicates that the Chevy Barbie ad did not say enough about the car itself.

More likely, it means that Chevrolet could have made more effective use of the license in its advertising. It is always a difficult creative challenge to combine brands. How is the whole better than the sum of the parts? We do not know what creative restrictions Mattel and Warner Bros. placed on Chevrolet. However, some creative recommendations from the analysis could be:

• The ad shows a scene from the movie, but those who have not seen the movie may not know why Margo Robbie is diving into the back seat. It is not a scene that plays well out of context.
• In the movie, the Chevy Blazer EV outruns the bad guys. Speed and pick-up is a consumer concern for EV’s overall. “WOW Mode – 0-60 in under 4 seconds” was displayed as a product benefit. But, many people could have missed this product benefit because it only had approximately :03 seconds of airtime. Perhaps the airtime could have been extended. That scene could have also been extended to include additional product benefits, versus a superfluous earlier scene of Ken.
• The ad shows movie scenes but makes no direct endorsement. In fact, the blue Blazer EV SUV is the car of the Hispanic mom character played by America Ferrera, not Barbie. Perhaps an endorsement by the actress saying I drove this car on set and liked it so much I bought one for myself would have had more creative impact.

At the start of the Barbie movie, the narrator says, “Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him.” It appears from a creative effectiveness standpoint that sentiment is true for Warner Bros. and Mattel versus their licensees. For Warner Bros. and Mattel, since the movie opened, every day has been a great day. However, for partners adding Barbie to their advertising, the licensee has to be very careful with their advertising to avoid having more of a “Ken” experience.

Appendix A

Selection of the 100’s of Barbie IP partners in 2023