Taking Tea with Barbie

Posted on by Chief Marketer Staff

At 10 a.m. on Oct. 10, every Wal-Mart store in America, all 2,500 of them, will put up a poster on the front door inviting girls of all ages to attend a Barbie & Me Tea Party that is being billed as the “largest promotion of its kind that Wal-Mart has yet featured,” in the words of the promo’s creator, R.J. Schlitt, president of R.J. Company of Atlanta.

The centerpiece of the promo is Barbie Doll licensed merchandise from backpacks to girls’ briefs, with Mattel’s new tie-dye Barbie as the star of the show.

The event will be announced via Wal-Mart in-store radio, cash register receipts, and an FSI toy circular to be released nationally 10 days prior to the event.

On Tea day, greeters will show young participants to a registration table, where the girls will be asked to write answers to questions on seven “scavenger hunt” cards. One relates, for instance, to the Barbie Fashion Doll Trunk by Tara Toy: “This Fashion Doll Trunk no one should be without.”

The girls will have 30 minutes (and no doubt plenty of help) to answer the questions. They will then scatter in different directions throughout each Wal-Mart store to try and locate the Barbie merchandise. There will be confetti, shelf-talkers for each of the products, and festive helium balloons designed to make it easy to identify the items. Mattel will provide 800 live Barbie models as an extra attraction in one out of three stores.

After finishing the scavenger hunt, the girls will turn in their cards and receive a free tie-dye Barbie as well as a wish list. “The wish list is a fun little thing. It has a poem and it lists items that (the 13) sponsors are promoting,” Schlitt says. They include Tara Toy, Hallmark, Pyramid, Kalimar, Tsumura Hanes, Colgate, The Bibb Company, and Wundies, among others.

On the front side, the card has all the promoted items and a Barbie & Me Tea Party logo.

At the end of the scavenger hunt, hosts and hostesses will have the girls and their parents gather in a refreshment area in a different part of the store for cupcakes and cookies (and coffee for adults).

License to retail “We’ve turned over a lot of stones to make this a turn-key, an operationally smooth-running promo,” says Schlitt.

R.J. Company began work internally on it September 1997, and one of the promo’s big achievements is that it brings licensed characters promotions “to a new level,” making licensees an integrated component in a retail setting, he says.

Schlitt says he thinks that licensors in the future will be “more eager to step up” to help develop branded promos for the licensees as a means to keep the brand before the public eye. But the promo will also give the licensees’ products “the attention they deserve for being involved,” he says.

According to Schlitt, a lot of the preparatory work consisted of getting buyers involved and obtaining their support. His group also presented the idea to focus groups of parents and children who were very excited by it, he says.

Schlitt also praised Wal-Mart: “They have done a lot from the operations perspective.”

Wal-Mart has put into each of the stores preparatory guidelines that are released on a monthly basis. The Barbie & Me Tea Party has been featured as a part of Wal-Mart’s monthly package for October, Schlitt says.

In a Wal-Mart managers’ meeting in Dallas last August, the company set up a whole Wal-Mart store format so that store managers could see the promo, familiarize themselves, and make its implementation a lot easier, he says.

But the biggest objective of all is to please consumers and licensees: “We want the kids to have fun,” says Schlitt. “We want the consumer to feel touched and pleased when they see that items that are being sponsored in the promo.”

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