Best/Worst Marketing Campaigns of 2006

In a year in which Pole Dancing Kits got taken off the toy shelf, French Maid Halloween costumes were all the rage for teen girls, and Nelly Furtado’s boast “Promiscuous” topped the charts, talking heads keep telling us girls are doing well and there’s a boy crisis.  If we let down our defenses, marketers have even easier access to our daughters.  Here are the top and bottom 5 ways this year’s marketers have played into our worst stereotypes and our grandest hopes for raising healthy daughters in this marketing-saturated world.

Worst: 

Dora the Princess:  Dora’s makeover from adventurer to little princess, from exploring the world to selling stereotypes through her kitchen sets, lip gloss, and cash registers, is one of the worst marketing decisions for girls.

             

Bratz party plane with “juice bar”: Bratz hot tubs, a runway board game, makeup kits, movies, Saturday morning cartoons, and a magazine market to girls a teen life that sets them up to drink their cosmos, flirt with boys, and go clubbing just as soon as they get into middle school. Thankfully Bratz padded bras for 6 year olds were pulled off the market in Australia where they were they tested for sale at Targets.  Disingenuous marketing types claimed that these helped little girls be modest as they developed.

American Girl selling body consciousness:  When American Girl was bought out by Mattel, it didn’t take the new parent company long to partner with Bath and Body Works to sell body lotion, fragrances, and even lip gloss to the little girls who buy these dolls to enact early American history.  Barbie collector catalogues are being sent to all the American Girl owners now, with categories like “pin up girls”.

Boys Only Movies:  Ice Age 2, Cars, The Wild, and Over the Hedge.  Girls who encountered any of the massive marketing for these movies will have seen over and over the “boys only” message. Only boys are permitted to get wild and crazy, to be leaders, rescuers, goofballs, and sidekicks, to go on adventures, to save the day.

Victoria’s Secret Stuffed Animal Giveaway: Victoria’s Secret’s Pink line sold at the front of the store was clearly a way to bring younger girls into the store and get mom approval. Why else would they give a cute toy away to anyone who purchased an item from the Pink line, featuring sweats and p.j.s rather than the black lace thongs and see-throughs at the next counter.

   

Best: 

Dove Campaign For Real Beauty:  Dove dove into the Superbowl commercial scene with their Campaign for Real Beauty and a powerful statement about the impact of media ideals on girls’ self esteem.  They followed up with an ad showing first a physical and then a digital makeover of a model, designed to illustrate why our perception of beauty is so distorted. They use real little girls, all shapes and races, from cute to awkward, but all beautiful.

Maria Sharapova “I feel Pretty” Nike Ad.  In spite of all the sexy photos and Sports Illustrated swimsuit shots, this funny ad puts it all in proper perspective on match day. The fans, cameraman, ball girl, line judges, and commentators—all singing lines from the song-- “ I feel pretty, oh so pretty. I feel pretty, and witty, and gay”—to Sharapova as she drives to the match, walks into the stadium, and readies herself to play, stop abruptly after her first powerful strokes.  The message: it ain’t about pretty; it’s about skill and power.

Super Mario Princess Peach Finally, Princess Peach gets to do some rescuing. The ad shows a group of little girls dressed in princess peach outfits running through tires, crawling through mud, and breaking through barriers to save Mario.  It’s great to see pink as a power color!

Mother Love.  While T-mobile made a lot of people laugh at the stereotyped chatty cheerleading teen, we love the Cellular One commercial that undoes a typical mother/daughter argument –  “Why do you insist on treating me like an adult?” shouts the teen girl. “Because you insist on acting like one,” the mom yells back.  This ad called “Mother Love” ends with “You’re the most grateful little…” 

Girls Go Tech Ad Campaign: The Girls Scouts and Ad Council teamed up to create a series of GirlsGoTech print, radio and TV ads that show parents supporting young girls’ passion for science.  In a TV spot a young girl asks her father why the sky is blue.  When he sweetly responds, “To match your pretty eyes,” she replies, “Nope. Not even close,” and gives him the scientific explanation.  In a radio spot a mother and her young daughter sing a version of Twinkle Twinkle that describes the birth of  star:  “Twinkle twinkle little star, You’re a ball of gas that’s very far...” This campaign won a Grand Good Award from the Advertising Women of New York, and for good reason.

               

Worst Negative trend:

Increase in product placement in children’s movies and toy sets, viral marketing, and creation of entertainment based around a brand or product character.

Best Positive trend:

Parent Power and a new level of involvement: U.S. parents successfully protested Hasbro’s plans to create Pussycat Dolls, based on the sexy singing group; Australian protest prevented the Bratz “bralettes” from hitting Target stores there; British citizens caused a store in London to pull a pole-dancing set sold in the toy department of a London store.

Comments

[demandit]

Great thoughts!

I bought your book a month ago or so... I'm looking forward to reading it. It's next on my to-be-reviwed list.

*cheers to the new year*

[Michelle B]

Nice round-up.

The AG brand was expanded to products other than the historical dolls before Mattel came into the picture in 1998. The Bath & Body Works relationship was forged in 2005, so maybe AG's parent company deserves a bit more credit?

That aside, do you think there's a healthy way to offer products that align with preteen play patterns (like emulating the behavior of older girls/adults)? If so, what has Mattel/AG done wrong here?

Perhaps using the AG mailing list for Barbie collector catalogs has more to do with marketing to the purchasers of AG products (adults) than young girls.

[Jennifer]

Great list-- I wonder what '07 will bring. Personally, I'm wondering if the recent controversy over models and body image will spill over into this year and begin to cause real change.

[Becky]

The Dove makeover ad was interesting and useful. But the self-esteem program? My daughters don't need to learn about self-esteem from a corporation, complete with beauty bag and product samples.

[Barclay]

Comic about Little mermaid influence...

http://www.wordsandpicturesonline.com/12-18-06.html

[Sharon Lamb]

Hello all. We're not sure how to acknowledge that these comments were written by Lyn but we're both here reading you!
--- We just added demandit to our list of online resources for the paperback, due out this year. Thanks in advance for reviewing us!

----Michelle, thanks for the info about AG. But the new catalogs, since Mattel, are different in ways that concern us. More on that coming soon. In response to your question about preteens, our concern is the way the desire to emulate teens and adults has been channeled into a narrow kind of body consciousness in young girls who, when left to their own devices, would not care about how they smell, whether their nails are done, or if they have lip gloss on. It's not the desire to look to older girls that bothers us, but the way being a "teen girl" is narrowly defined as caring about makeovers, appearance, and body when we all know that being a teen can also be about a thousand other great activities and interests.
Maybe the Barbie Collector catalogs, with its line of "pin up" and runway model Barbies are not meant for girls (although they list girl ages as appropriate in the catalog), but it came addressed to Lyn's 11 year old daughter.

---Yes, Becky, we agree. Let's leave that to educators and parents, people whose concern for girls' self-esteem doesn't make them a ton of money. We don't uncritically embrace Dove and certainly not their parent company Unilever, which has questionable marketing campaigns. But given that all these corporations are about making money and given that they have a choice about how to do it, we were glad to see a little education and something other than stick thin models in ads.

---Hope you are right, Jennifer, that '07 will bring positive change! There's lots of concern about the sexualization of little girls toys and clothing--hope that will also have an effect on what's available to girls.

barclay -- Will check out Little Mermaid spoof!

[Paul Marobella]

I have a daughter and I'm a marketer. I love what you're doing on this blog and have read with intent interest. Your perspective on Dove being a great campaign, I couldn't agree more. Even their latest entries into the campaign with the boomer women has given the brand message more legs. Keep up the great work.

[Sara no H.]

I realise I'm late to the party, but I was wondering whether I might get some clarification re:

"Boys Only Movies: Ice Age 2, Cars, The Wild, and Over the Hedge. Girls who encountered any of the massive marketing for these movies will have seen over and over the “boys only” message. Only boys are permitted to get wild and crazy, to be leaders, rescuers, goofballs, and sidekicks, to go on adventures, to save the day."

I saw all of those movies save The Wild (though I did see its twin, Madagascar) but not the advertisements for them -- and I'm assuming my feminist glasses must need polishing because I can't figure out what's really "boys only" about these films, unless it's simply the sheer number of male characters.

(Okay, so that bit in Over the Hedge where they give Stella a makeover and send her to seduce that Persian pratcat is ringing an alarm bell, but honestly that's the only thing I can come up with...)

[Jennifer]

Girl Rocker Avril Lavigne is in Over the Hedge, FYI...

[Coach Outlet]

I won't accept such sort of family though it is quite comfortable. I prefer the family with mom which is not rich but ample in my heart

[Replica Louis Vuitton]

The most damaging decisions are the missed opportunities, the decisions that didn't get made in time.

[Sexy Bikinis]

Plus, the red shoe together with the white and black lacecover will make you really feel (and appear somewhat bit) like Spiderman