Mattel and Mastercard Execs Talk Barbie and More

Mattel’s chief brand officer Lisa McKnight and Mastercard’s CMO’s Raja Rajamannar shared insight on how they’re building brand trust, addressing young consumers and using AI during a Variety in the C-Suite panel presented by Canva at the Cannes Lions on Tuesday.

During the session, which was moderated by Variety’s co-editor-in-chief, Ramin Setoodeh, McKnight said Greta Gerwig’s movie “Barbie,” which grossed $1.4 billion worldwide and became a pop culture phenomenon, gave the 80-year old Mattel flagship brand a major boost, as well as helped “broaden the audience and aperture for the brand.”

“We certainly continue to engage with fans and parents and young girls that love Barbie, but we reached a group of women and men that had not been as familiar with what Barbie was up to recently,” McKnight said, adding that the brand is now capitalizing on this growing fanbase to “market lifestyle products, gaming and even more content.”

The exec said the success of “Barbie” is also serving as “the blueprint” for Mattel’s next big theatrical release, “Masters of the Universe” next June. In terms of broadening the appeal of the brand, McKnight pointed out to the newfound popularity of Ken following Ryan Gosling’s performance in Gerwig’s tentpole.

“Up until the movie, we’d sell about one Ken to 10 Barbies and we’d sometimes fondly refer to Ken as an accessory,” she joked. The movie, she argues, “gave him his own identity and a new platform and there’s a lot of now interest in Ken. In fact, Mattel recently struck a partnership with LeBron James, who is their new Ken Ambassador. “You’ll see more programs with role-model men dolls coming soon,” she said.

Rajamannar, meanwhile, quipped that Mattel and Mastercard are both “geriatric brands” because they’re turning 80 and 65, respectively, but noted that their advanced age doesn’t preclude them from innovating and thriving. Both McKnight and Rajamannar said they have a competitive edge due to the trust that their brands have built over those years.

“Mastercard is the 12th most valuable brand in the world,” Rajamannar said, citing the 2.7 billion consumers globally who have a MasterCard. “It’s not about how old the brand is, but how concurrent and current the brand is in its manifestation, and one of those most important dimensions of manifestation is trust which is so critical for the financial services category.”

He says another aspect is “transparency,” and showing “how genuine you are, and how purpose driven you are…and not keep chasing the new shiny pennies, but consistently delivering value to the consumers on areas that they care about is how you win trust and keep trust.”

Speaking of addressing younger consumers, Rajamannar said Mastercard was “prohibited from talking to young consumers because you can’t lend money to a 10-year-old, 12-year-old or whatever it is.”

But they’re aiming at engaging younger audiences from 16 and up, by “trying to identify what are these youngsters are passionate about and how can we show up in a native organic way in those spaces.”

Rajamannar said one area that young people are really into is electro music, so Masterclass is now sponsoring over 85 electronic dance music festivals; another is esports. “We are the first global brand to have gotten into the esports space, partnering with Riot Games,” he said, adding that Mastercard also sponsors the world’s number one esport, “League of Legends,” among others.

When it comes to Mattel, McKnight said they’re interested in addressing not only children, but also their parents who have the buying power. For that latter demo, the exec said Mattel is absolutely relying on social and working with a lot of amazing influencers and creators.”

McKnight said today’s young parents “don’t wanna hear about the benefits, even the developmental benefits of products from a brand. They don’t want Fisher-Price to tell them. They wanna hear from a peer or someone that they respect and find to be influential. And so it’s really important that we tap into those audiences that way,” the exec said.

Comparing social media platforms, McKnight said Mattel was investing more and more with TikTok. “That channel continues to get incredibly popular,” she said.

The pair also discussed the role of AI in their respective jobs. Over at Mastercard, Rajamannar said AI is “probably the single biggest enablement” in both “the B2B space and the B2C space.” In the latter, AI is helping the company because they’ve “trained their AI engine on every single RPF (request for proposal) from the past and the outcome of that,” which would, in the past, take Mastercard’s salespeople “about seven weeks to come to what we call as draft zero, and then they start working in the product offering, the pricing and all that.”

McKnight, on the other hand, said that while Mattel is using a “bunch of different tools,” they’re only meant to “accelerate work and productivity” for their “incredibly talented creative teams.”

“Certainly at this point not replace that important human talent. And, and again, creative instinct, really finding nice success with packaging with a lot of our products, and the packaging is about storytelling,” McKnight said.

Looking ahead at Mattel’s 80th anniversary bash, McKnight said the company is talking to 80 partners about “different ways to celebrate play around the world, and bring play to kids and different communities that are underserved.”

She mentioned Mattel’s ruby red anniversary commemorative toy line that could yield an “iconic Hot Wheels Corvette,” or a “Barbie in gorgeous ruby red finishes.”