Most con­sumers like­ly have fond mem­o­ries of toys they played with as chil­dren. Toys estab­lish mem­o­ries that can last a life­time, accord­ing to Mat­tel Pres­i­dent and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Richard Dick­son, who spoke recent­ly at Adobe Sum­mit. But that’s not to say once a toy man­u­fac­tur­er has a suc­cess­ful brand, it can rest on its lau­rels, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion.

Bar­bie is a prime exam­ple. Accord­ing to Dick­son, Mat­tel grew com­pla­cent and lost mar­ket share as a result, but even­tu­al­ly rein­vent­ed itself, and Bar­bie, to regain rel­e­vance. Here’s the kick­er: Mat­tel did so with­out los­ing what made the Bar­bie brand spe­cial in the first place, which has since become a roadmap for the rein­ven­tion of Mattel’s oth­er brands. Here’s why look­ing back­ward helped Mat­tel and its toy brands move for­ward, and how research and data helped Mat­tel over­come fear of change.

‘Kids are of the moment.’

“If you’re a 70-year-old com­pa­ny in a 1,000-year-old indus­try with a port­fo­lio of lega­cy brands, kids are of the moment – how do you last this long?” Dick­son said at Adobe Sum­mit. “Rel­e­vance is an incred­i­ble chal­lenge.” But, he said, Mat­tel has “a remark­able trans­for­ma­tion in progress.”

‘Our first big idea wasn’t a toy, it was a mindset.’

Find­ing the way for­ward some­times begins with under­stand­ing what made a brand spe­cial in the first place, Dick­son said. “For Mat­tel, in 1945, our founders thought of the busi­ness as a cre­ations com­pa­ny, not a toy com­pa­ny,” Dick­son said. “We start­ed in a garage and Mat­tel was design-led before we knew what that meant. Our founders were design­ers and inven­tors in an amaz­ing hive of cre­ativ­i­ty in post-war Cal­i­for­nia, which is a place where incred­i­ble things hap­pen in garages. But our first big idea wasn’t a toy, it was a mind­set.” The brand’s con­vic­tion was that bold risks on insight­ful, inno­v­a­tive ideas would delight chil­dren and build a busi­ness, Dick­son said. For a long time, it worked. Until it didn’t.

‘At some point, we stopped looking into the future…’

Look no fur­ther than Bar­bie. Or, as Dick­son put it, Mat­tel trans­formed the sim­ple paper fash­ion doll into an icon and it became a break­through brand. Mat­tel also rein­vent­ed the toy car by infus­ing it with rev­o­lu­tion­ary design in Hot Wheels, he added. “We also looked beyond tra­di­tion­al mar­ket­ing and our founders bet every­thing on TV,” Dick­son said. “They believed in the pow­er of this new medi­um long before any­one talked about con­tent strat­e­gy and TV was a wild new exper­i­ment.”

This ten­den­cy to always look for­ward helped pro­pel Mat­tel to the num­ber one toy brand and Dick­son said Mat­tel sought to retain its orig­i­nal garage mind­set to avoid com­pla­cen­cy, which, for a long time, made Mat­tel an unstop­pable brand. “We rev­o­lu­tion­ized the indus­try, but, at some point, we stopped look­ing into the future, became near­sight­ed and failed to rec­og­nize how fast the indus­try was chang­ing,” Dick­son said.

‘Sometimes the most valuable invention is reinvention.’

Not only did play itself start to be seen through the prism of child devel­op­ment – play with a pur­pose – but com­pe­ti­tion extend­ed far beyond toy com­pa­nies and into media and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies. “Every­one is com­pet­ing for time,” Dick­son said. “From a world based on 30-sec­ond TV spots, we evolved into an omnichan­nel uni­verse in which play is chang­ing and media, con­tent, games and brands are merg­ing seam­less­ly.”

How­ev­er, Dick­son said Mat­tel was sim­ply repeat­ing what worked in the past and its ideas start­ed to lack pur­pose. “We devolved from an inno­v­a­tive com­pa­ny to a pack­aged goods com­pa­ny,” Dick­son added. “Our brands lost rel­e­vance, Mat­tel lost its way and our per­for­mance suf­fered. But some­times the most valu­able inven­tion is rein­ven­tion. So we start­ed to ques­tion every­thing, embrace uncer­tain­ty and relent­less­ly exper­i­ment, putting results before the process and break­ing down bar­ri­ers to col­lab­o­rate and share as nev­er before.”

‘Girls had to love her again and moms had to like her a bit more.’

Mattel’s biggest brand – and biggest chal­lenge – was Bar­bie. To wit: By some esti­mates, three Bar­bi­es are sold every sec­ond, which means more Bar­bi­es are sold every year than babies are born. “Bar­bie was long one of the biggest, most valu­able kid brands, but quar­ter by quar­ter, it lost its pur­pose and the Bar­bie empow­er­ment mes­sage was too broad and unfo­cused,” Dick­son said.

Fur­ther, Mat­tel start­ed mak­ing Bar­bie brand deci­sions that were sub­jec­tive and incon­sis­tent. “We need­ed to dis­rupt Bar­bie with­out los­ing the things that made the brand great in the first place,” Dick­son said. “So we start­ed by lis­ten­ing to con­sumers – kids, moms and cul­ture.” Con­sumers still talk about Bar­bie, so there was a pur­pose inher­ent in the brand DNA, but Dick­son said the chal­lenge was mak­ing these ideas rel­e­vant 57 years after the brand was cre­at­ed. “Rapid rel­e­vance was our only way out,” Dick­son said. “We had to cap­ture the every­day con­scious­ness. Girls had to love her again and moms had to like her a bit more.”

Ergo, the brand start­ed with big, mean­ing­ful changes like diver­si­ty by launch­ing more than 20 new dolls to reflect the “won­der­ful, com­plex world girls expe­ri­ence and see today,” Dick­son said. In fact, per the Bar­bie web­site, the 2016 Fash­ion­istas line includes four body types, sev­en skin tones, 22 eye col­ors and 24 hair­styles. But rein­ven­tion also meant intro­duc­ing a flex­i­ble foot to “[lib­er­ate] Bar­bie from high heels and to fur­ther con­tem­po­rize the brand,” Dick­son said. In addi­tion, he said anoth­er impor­tant cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tion is that girls said Bar­bie was their best friend and would love her to talk back to them. “We’re all talk­ing to Siri, why can’t we engage Bar­bie in a con­ver­sa­tion?” Dick­son said. “So we intro­duced Hel­lo Bar­bie, which cre­at­ed a cul­tur­al rip­ple and fur­ther con­tem­po­rized the brand, includ­ing a sto­ry in the New York Times Mag­a­zine [that called it] ‘the most advanced of a new gen­er­a­tion of AI toys’.”

In oth­er words, Dick­son said, Mat­tel reframed the con­ver­sa­tion with­out rein­vent­ing the brand. Plus, because moms were becom­ing increas­ing­ly crit­i­cal of Bar­bie, Mat­tel sought to engage them in a con­ver­sa­tion about what Bar­bie is real­ly about and what the val­ue is of girls’ play with Bar­bie and – again — “reframed the con­ver­sa­tion del­i­cate­ly with­out rein­vent­ing the brand” thanks to some help from this Imag­ine the Pos­si­bil­i­ties video that ends with the lines, “When a girl plays with Bar­bie, she imag­ines every­thing she can become,” and, “You can be any­thing.”

To date, it has near­ly 21 mil­lion views on YouTube alone, but, per Dickson’s fig­ures, it’s 50 mil­lion views over­all with 500 mil­lion engage­ments.

‘Mattel’s silence was perceived as resistance.’

“Barbie’s fig­ure [became] a source of con­tro­ver­sy and Mattel’s silence was per­ceived as resis­tance,” Dick­son said.

“Mat­tel under­stood and sym­pa­thized with moms, but our fear of mak­ing a mis­take and mess­ing up the most pop­u­lar toy ever led to inac­tion. But research and data, includ­ing many, many con­ver­sa­tions with kids and moms, led to insights, which lead to action.” That also includ­ed the release of more body shapes such as curvy, tall, and petite join­ing the orig­i­nal doll in Jan­u­ary 2016. “Its cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance war­rant­ed a Time Mag­a­zine cov­er sto­ry and a vast amount of cov­er­age, includ­ing mil­lions of exchanges…and that’s con­tent mon­ey just can’t buy,” Dick­son said. “Bold deci­sions sparked cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tion and Bar­bie and Mat­tel are lead­ing once again.”

‘We’re re-establishing ourselves as a creations company that inspires the wonder of childhood.’

Now Mat­tel is apply­ing this rein­ven­tion for­mu­la to oth­er brands, such as Fish­er-Price, Thomas and Friends, Bob the Builder, Pol­ly Pock­et and Bar­ney to “accel­er­ate every brand and cre­ate new cul­ture at Mat­tel,” Dick­son said. For exam­ple, thanks to a part­ner­ship with Google, Mattel’s 3D View-Mas­ter has been updat­ed as a vir­tu­al real­i­ty device that works with Google Card­board. “It took kids any­where around the world. If there was ever a brand for VR, this is it,” Dick­son said.

“And we’ve part­nered with Google to rein­vent it as a state-of-the-art learn­ing tool.” And Thing­mak­er, which orig­i­nal­ly let kids make their own toys by pour­ing plas­tic into molds, has been rein­vent­ed as a 3D print­er. “We had a brand ahead of its time,” Dick­son said. “Work­ing with Autodesk, Thing­mak­er is now a 3D-print­ing machine that allows kids to cre­ate and print a range of indi­vid­ual toys.” Then there’s Hot Wheels, which Dick­son described as “an amaz­ing suc­cess­ful brand for almost 50 years” that is now incor­po­rat­ing pop cul­ture, like “Star Wars”. “We see a lot more part­ner­ships, but that’s only part of the Hot Wheels sto­ry,” Dick­son said.

“We’re encour­ag­ing boys to be more imag­i­na­tive and invit­ing them to cre­ate new toys. We used to be very pre­scrip­tive about how to set up [Hot Wheels], but now we encour­age them to do it on their own.” That includes efforts like Track Wars, Hot Hacks and Hot Wheels Labs. How­ev­er, when it comes to core brands like Bar­bie, con­tin­u­ous rein­ven­tion is key, he added. “These are a few exam­ples of how we’re chang­ing the fun­da­men­tals of Mat­tel into a fast-paced democ­ra­cy of ideas with bril­liance through­out the orga­ni­za­tion,” Dick­son said.

“What’s the next big leap? Most of our plans are secret, but we’re re-estab­lish­ing our­selves as a cre­ations com­pa­ny that inspires the won­der of child­hood. We’re not just a toy com­pa­ny, but an orig­i­nal cre­ations com­pa­ny instill­ing pur­pose into [our brands].”