We interview Lauren Pickering about her roles at Barbie & Maybelline New York. Lauren's incredible career in marketing means she has spear-headed many brand collabs in her time in senior marketing management positions at both Barbie & Maybelline New York. We are so excited to chat to her about how collaborations with brands such as Australian Fashion Week, The Langham & Peter Alexander came about. Read full interview below ...
Collabosarus:
Lauren is the Head of Marketing & Communication at Toorak College and she previously held the positions of marketing manager at Barbie, as well as Group Brand Manager at Maybelline New York. I would love to start with your time at Barbie. The brand is very top of mind at the moment, given everyone's seen the AirBnB x Barbie Malibu Dreamhouse collab, which I absolutely love. I'd love for you to share a little bit about your time at Barbie, your role at Barbie and some of the collabs that you spear-headed while you were there.
Lauren:
I've definitely been lucky enough to work with a number of incredible brands throughout my career, and of course Barbie being one of them. It's a brand with so much history. It's a brand that sparks so much conversation. Some of it good and some of it not so good and it's a brand that as a little girl, I just adored. So being her custodian for a number of years was really a privilege.
My role was the Senior Marketing Manager and it was a really broad role and a very hands on role. My team and were doing everything from customer research which meant visiting homes and watching little girls play with their dolls.
We would also get to select which products we would launch into the Australia or New Zealand market and then there's the fun stuff - forecasting, budgeting, sales presentations, licensing agreements and of course all things related to advertising and communications, which is where we got to flex our creative muscles and do fun things like collaborations.
Collabosarus:
Collabs are so fun!
Lauren:
Collaborations definitely played a huge part in the role and in a large part that's how Barbie has stayed relevant for 60 years. Being culturally relevant and reflecting today's society is really what has given Barbie longevity in a toy industry where so many brands come in and out.
During my time we had two key strategies for collaborations. One of those was to connect to mass fashion and that's because we wanted our Barbie fans to be able to wear the brand with pride and those fans could be young, they could be old. We did some great collaborations with the likes of Peter Alexander, Miss Shop and with Target where we launched some really adorable party dresses.
The second strategy there was to collaborate with partners that would facilitate our customers to have an experience with the brand that was beyond just playing with the doll. So to that extent, we've partnered with The Langham and produced a range of mother and daughter high tea events, or it can be at village cinemas and brought one of the Barbie movies to the big screen.
We also worked with a company called the Entertainment Room and they brought the Barbie live musical show to Australia. On school holidays, we would do a series of shopping centre shows and character meet & greets.
Collabosarus:
It's all about the collaboration type. I love how all of those examples are really different in terms of their execution. There were live activations, experiences, product collaborations and limited edition pyjamas with Peter Alexander. I love that. How do you go about determining what collaboration type you explored at Barbie?
Lauren:
Barbie in particular, is flexible and collaboration types could be product types, events, experiences or even social messaging. The AirBnB collab is relevant at the moment, but there's another collaboration that Barbie's doing currently and it's with Virgin Atlantic - they've launched a range of aviation themed dolls.
To make this a more impactful collaboration, they're using the hashtag #seeherfly and it's about encouraging the next generation, the female pilots and aviation workers to embrace what is traditionally a male-dominated industry.
There's so many options when it comes to collaboration types and as long as it's rooted in something that makes sense, you do have flexibility to shift and change. At my time, we very much focused on product collaborations and experience-based collaborations because Barbie, throughout her 60 years has gone through phases of popularity.
The movie Frozen launched when I was at the helm of Barbie and Princess Elsa was the character of choice for many girls. It meant that Barbie and we as a team had to flip our mindset from Lead Brand to Challenger Brand to find ways to connect with our customers and for them find a reason to put Barbie in the trolley. By drawing on Barbie's fashion credentials and nostalgic appeal, Barbie could excel, where Elsa potentially couldn't.
Collabosarus:
A theme that has come up a few times is flexibility - these big, massive brands being quite flexible in their approach to collaboration. I'd love to ask, whether it's products or activations, at what point in the conversation does choosing the collab type come up? Are you identifying collaboration partners first and then discovering what you can do together or do you have an idea such as "we want to do an event" and then approach brands that way?
Lauren:
It's a mix. There's a myth that goes around that brands like Barbie have 1,001 collaboration opportunities to pick and choose from and that bringing a collaboration to life is as simple as clicking your fingers. That's absolutely not true. Everything has to have a reason and focus on the customer. At the end of the day, it's about making sure that what we're doing makes sense to elevate our brand or improve the customer experience. There were a lot of pitches that we made to different brands that were rejected for a number of reasons.
Sometimes it's brand related, sometimes it's who's in charge of making those decision and there's a lot of pitches that we received that we said, "oh I don't think that that feels quite right" at this stage. The ones that made sense were ones that really brought something different to the table.
I'll use the Peter Alexander collab as example - Peter Alexander is quite cheeky and irreverent. Barbie at the time was very much questioned about her body shape and she's more serious. Partnering with Peter Alexander is a great way to show the kitsch, fun side of the brand and give the Barbie fan-base a reason to buy another set of pyjamas.
In terms of timing, from memory the Peter Alexander collaboration started with a conversation and a relationship about 18 months before we launched pyjamas. It moved relatively quickly. We approached them and our first line of the pitch was "Do you want to get in bed with Barbie, Peter & Ken?". This spoke to the heart of their brand. You've got to work with good people and people who get your vision.
Collabosarus:
Absolutely. Relationships are at the heart of successful brand collabs. A lot of people get stuck when it comes to who to contact and how to pitch. When you were at Barbie, where did opportunities come from and who were they directed at?
Lauren:
Anywhere & everywhere! As an example - Fiona from The Langham called and we happened to be at our desk and answered the phone that day. She said - "I'm wanting to create this mother and daughter high tea event and I feel like we need something for the girl to make the experience a little more special. Would you mind providing 100 dolls to this event?" We said - "Hang on, we're all about experiences like this involving mother and daughter as there's nostalgic at play - this could be something even bigger". From there, we began to snowball the idea and it became a fully fledged design menu with crown cup cakes and pink fluffy marshmallows and 101 different menu items that related to The Langham and Barbie. We took our Barbie character to the event and the girls got to take selfies and The Langham were fantastic in being really flexible to those ideas. This phone call was approx. 1 month before the first event.
When somebody has thought of a creative, relevant idea and the stars align, it can happen! It's often 12 to 18 months in advance and you're right in that having a contact and building a relationship is that first step, which can take time. For that very reason alone, Collabosaurus is an incredible platform, but you've got to build a relationship slowly. Slot in that pitch or that idea in good time, not during the first interaction.
Collabosarus:
When it comes to other reach outs, are there any pitches that stand out?
Lauren:
I find that pitches that resonate with me are one's that sway away from the obvious in some way, shape or form or an idea that's really born out of the desire to surprise and delight customers. Those two things really stand out for me. If I'm reading a pitch and I can start to visualise how it would come to life or start to build idea upon an idea, then I know that we're heading in the right direction.
You want to share your vision in a pitch and you want to share some of the arsenal that might be able to make it happen, but you don't want to lead and give them a plan that's set in stone because then you don't feel like both partners have solid input. A good collaboration is one that benefits both partners equally, so when I pitch I like to really share my vision. Not necessarily the outcome, the vision and plant that seed of possibility that allows both brands to workshop and snowball ideas.
Collabosarus:
I love that - win-win always and flexibility again! As both Barbie and Maybelline New York, are you able to speak to the actual marketing or growth impact that you saw off the back of collaborations?
Lauren:
The great thing about collaborations is that the impact can be product or sales-based. It can be a perception-based. It can be immediate, it can be long-term. It really depends on the program that you develop.
At Maybelline back in the 90s and early 2000s, the brand was very much a girly-girly, pastel-pink brand and it's seen a significant transformation in the last 15 or so years. Part of that was to move away from being known only for mascaras, but part of it was also to start to associate ourselves with fashion a little more.
So back in 2010, we sponsored Australian Fashion Week. Sponsorships are great, they get your name out there. They're often a ticket to the game, but it was how we leveraged that sponsorship and collaborated with a number of different Australian Designers that really had the impact. We worked with a range of designers to create their look books and do makeup for the runways and in return, we got to shoot some incredible content for our social media platforms and for YouTube, which showcased that we could get runway ready looks from this mass, affordable brand.
That was invaluable in terms of impact - the collaboration and the sponsorship had so many layers. The products that were used on the runway, saw sales spikes. We had limited edition products that were launched that sold out instantly. Our social media engagement reach went nuts and we had a lot of people uploading their own looks using our products.
Seeing the brands perception and transformation change from being very young (almost a teen brand), to a brand that's more appealing to women in their twenties & thirties now was incredible.
Collabosarus:
From your perspective, how did this approach really leverage the whole impact of the collaboration as opposed to - if you hadn't done the packaging for example, would it have had a different outcome?
Lauren:
Behind Maybelline and Australian Fashion Week, there were lots of layers. We've got a sales team and they had PR teams & event teams and so that collaboration had a lot of layers. Sales promotions, competitions to attend the event and sit front row, behind the scenes content, runway looks, limited edition products, media events, you name it, we had it and all of those layers linked back to some sort of objective, which was perception-based and sales-based for Maybelline.
Collabosarus:
What's your advice when it comes to approaching a fair deal? How do you make sure that it's fair and win-win for both brands?
Lauren:
In my experience and to be completely transparent, there have been a lot of monetary exchanges during our collabs. I mentioned sponsorships before - the power is not necessarily always in a sponsorship, but they're often a ticket to the game. Barbie x The Langham was a non-monetary collaboration and it started with understanding what you have to offer and then knowing what you're willing to exchange for it - that can be a product, an event, a database, your reputation etc.
Again, it comes back to what's going to make that collaboration benefit both parties and what's going to be in it for the customer. What's the value of what you're offering or bringing to the table?
Collabosarus:
Do you have any tips or advice for marketers considering collaboration as part of their marketing strategy, but feel hesitant?
Lauren:
Some of the most successful campaigns I've run have been collaborations. My advice would be to ask a couple of questions - why do you want to do a collaboration? You've got to have some sort of objective. With potential partners, what crossover opportunities might exist? Is there a link that make sense or is there a link that can be forged. This could be milestone or event-based opportunities - eg. Valentine's day or Back To School. It could be a demographic type - eg. Tennis Players or Tennis Fans or it could even be a location-based opportunity - eg. Pitt Street Mall or Mornington Peninsula.
Then, brainstorm some partners that you'd love to work with. I used to have a post-it note where I'd write brands that I'd love to work with. Saying things aloud or jotting them down is the first step to making it happen, then just go for it!