Like most young American girls, I once played with Barbie dolls. In fact, my parents' basement used to be Barbie central. My sister and I had just about everything Barbie could ever want including a drive thru McDonald's, an amusement park, a stable, a grocery store, a doctor's office, a day-care center, and several dream homes and cars. All that was fine and dandy for girls growing up in the 80s and 90s, but now in this digital age Barbie needs a way to compete with all the technology gadgets and games that occupy kids' time. So now Mattel has brought "Barbie Video Girl" to life.
What's a Barbie Video Girl you ask? Well Mashable reports that, "Barbie Video Girl doubles as a video camera with LCD screen and comes with video editing software. The doll appears to be designed to get little girls excited about video production, a career path that may not be as geeky as computer engineering, but is still quite modern."
So basically we now have a doll that functions as a video camera. And on top of that Barbie is using Foursquare and Twitter to promote a scavenger-hunt contest starting next week. Participants follow Barbie to get clues and tips for the scavenger-hunt and then check in using Foursquare. Apparently there will be on-site challenges to complete and "street team" on hand to award prizes to the winners.
The thing that puzzles me most about this promotion and the use of social media is how effective it will be. I mean how many young girls (let's say around 10 and younger) are actually using Twitter or Foursquare? My guess is not that many. I seem to recall a study from the PEW Research Center that stated that few teens use Twitter, so I doubt kids even younger have adopted the practice. I know that if I had kids I wouldn't be too keen on letting them have Foursquare or Twitter accounts.
This leaves me to believe that this campaign must be targeting older fans of Barbie (much like the adult fans of Lego), bloggers, and moms of kids that love Barbie. And sure enough Barbie has over 16,000 Twitter followers. So I'm curious how these scavenger-hunts will pay off for the fashion doll of choice. I'm betting a lot of older women are going to be out there clamoring for a free doll. But maybe that's the plan after all?
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