IMC Hawks Blog

Tag: Mattel

  • The “Face” Behind the Letters

    Game night has long been a valued tradition in families across the globe, but with new technology some of the long-standing board games have been pushed to the side for virtual games on systems such as Wii and Xbox Kinect. Scrabble, for example, has been a part of the game world for over 60 years, but how often do families still bring out their Scrabble boards?

    Earlier this year, the advertising agency Pereira & O’Dell took over Mattel’s games account. This November, Pereira & O’Dell have released several 30-second spots in several different countries to bring back the association of Scrabble and fun. These advertisements bring personalities to three of the Scrabble squares: P, Q, and Blank. At first, the image of Scrabble pieces as faces on human bodies may seem a little strange. However, after viewing the advertisements a person may find themselves attached to the pieces.

    Each of the Scrabble pieces has their own unique personality. When you “meet Blank” you might notice that he seems to be a bit arrogant and definitely the life of the party. After all, everyone always wants to draw the blank square during the game, right?

    Q, on the other hand, is a bit of a loner. He has his heart broken by U and seems to be a bit timid. What is there not to love about the bashful, lonely Q? A viewer may almost feel guilty for hating the Q piece in the Scrabble game. It is heart-warming to see that, in the end, Q gets the girl.

    Pereira & O’Dell definitely get points for being clever with these advertisements. The strange image of the pieces having personalities seems to work, however, the question is: will the viewers relate to the pieces? Mattel wants to bring people together over their Scrabble game board for decades to come but only time will tell if it will actually work.

  • True Life: We Live in a Barbie World

    The Barbie Doll is an icon in American history.  Young girls have been playing with Barbie since 1959 when the doll was first introduced.  Jill Barad president of Mattel, which manufactures Barbie said, “99% of girls ages 3 to 10 own at least one Barbie doll.”  Though Barbie has been considered anatomically incorrect, teens and women everywhere consider Barbie to have the perfect body.  According to the Media Awareness Network, “Researchers generating a computer model of a woman with Barbie-doll proportions found that her back would be too weak to support the weight of her upper body, and her body would be too narrow to contain more than half a liver and a few centimeters of bowel.”  Even with realizations such as those mentioned above and professional opinions, teens and women are continuously looking for ways to get the “perfect” body that clearly doesn’t exist.

    With the media’s portrayal of skinny bodies, tiny waists, and big busts, beauty products and diet plans are constantly growing and becoming more profitable by the day. Women become insecure with their body image because they are surrounded by the unattainable beauty presented in the media.  This overwhelming presence of thinness presented in the media can easily bruise women’s confidence and self-esteem. Living in the culture of thinness can ultimately lead to self-destruction. However, some marketing companies, such as Dove, are fighting against this stereotype and defining what real beauty truly is.

    The Dove® Campaign for Real Beauty was created in September 2004 to encourage women to voice their opinions on the issue of the definition of beauty. Through these discussions, it was obvious that the definition of beauty that the women knew was extremely limiting and virtually unattainable. The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report found that “among the study’s findings was the statistic that only 2% of women around the world would describe themselves as beautiful.” Since these horrifying findings, Dove has put forth amazing effort to break beauty stereotypes and make people realize that beauty is not what the media portrays. The first jab at the media came when Dove aired a commercial that featured real women whose appearances were not of the norm. Dove asked their viewers to judge the women’s looks and vote at their website. The options for the voting consisted of questions such as “oversized or outstanding?” and “wrinkled or wonderful?” Since the campaign was created, these commercials have made an impact on women around the world. Dove has seen an increase in the percentage of women who can describe themselves as beautiful.

    -Kelsey Bendig, Andrea Blanton, Brooke Keller, Brian Burch