• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, January 27, 2025

Mattel’s not just toying around anymore. 

Culture is the new media. Legacy brands like toymaker and American institution Mattel are facing the new reality of radically fragmented audiences and media.

Since 2017, the company's media partners have increased 189%. The only way to rebuild anything like traditional reach is to tap into a cultural ether that transcends media.

Co-branding projects, celebrity partnerships, entertainment tie-ins, trend-watching, and influencers are just some of the ways we have been watching brands adjust to the demise of “reach.” 

But under Executive Vice President Lisa McKnight’s leadership of both the Barbie brand -- and now as chief brand officer for all of its franchises -- Mattel is pioneering a deeper understanding of post-media branding. You can’t just surf culture -- you have to make culture.  

The Barbie cultural juggernaut of 2023 was just the most visible example of the company’s reorientation from being a toymaker to being an intellectual property (IP)-driven entertainment company. Fourteen more movies are planned around Mattel brands.

The company followed its global big pink success (+16% in 2023 Barbie sales) with a massive Hot Wheels revival among kids and their parents.

An increased focus on in-house creative resulted in over 6 billion YouTube views just of Mattel’s own media in 2023.

More recently, a single TikTok video of an otherwise innocuous UNO card game brand has attracted up to 35 million views.  

Tapping into post-TV kids and their “kidult” parents requires a new emphasis on storytelling mapped against media choices. The company has flattened old siloes so that ideation for each brand is collaborative across marketing, media and creative at an early stage.

This has led to more compelling assets, a 180% increase in media uploads and a 61% expansion of social reach.   

While other brands spent 2024 chasing bottom-line performance and fleeing from social impact, McKnight and Mattel embraced both the big idea and meaningful branding.

Icons like Barbie and Hot Wheels already enjoy full penetration of markets and goodwill, but now the company is redefining their meaning.

McKnight is credited with having transformed the Barbie brand from a fashion toy into an emblem of female empowerment. The global Barbie Dream Gap Project is an effort to close the gap between gender stereotypes and true potential -- and it claims to have touched over 25 million lives.

And as one of the largest manufacturers of plastic playthings, Mattel is leaning into sustainability by recycled sources for product and packaging. They’re not just toying around anymore.  

With over 26 years at Mattel, McKnight is that rara avis -- a marketing veteran whose institutional knowledge drives the company into change rather than from it.  

The new reality is that big brands can still have big ideas, but they will need to look and act more like entertainment and media companies in order to execute them.