MAC Builds a Doll's House
By Julie Naughton and Pete Born
MAC Cosmetics, the revolutionary brand that detonated the traditional definition of feminine beauty with RuPaul as an icon and raised a banner in the fight against AIDS, is once again dipping into the collective psyche. By building its spring color story around an 11 1/2-inch doll, MAC is trying to strike a chord of long-forgotten childhood fantasies driven by dreams of being Barbie.
"There's a great fantasy to Barbie," observed James Gager, senior vice president and creative director for MAC Cosmetics Worldwide. "There's a classicism to Barbie that will never go away." While designers like Diane von Furstenberg, Anna Sui and Zac Posen have created Barbie outfits and Puig has concocted children's Barbie fragrances, makeup is a great unclaimed opportunity, Gager noted, explaining that it's a chance "to revisit women's fantasies [from their youth] when they wanted to wear makeup and never could."
"If you ask most makeup artists and hairstylists who their first client was, most of them will say it was the Barbie head," said Gager of the life-size head-and-shoulders Barbie Styling Head popular in the Seventies and Eighties, which allowed users to practice hairstyling and makeup application. "We see Barbie as more than a doll — we see her as a fashion icon, and no one has really looked at Barbie as a vehicle for makeup before."
Many MAC executives expressed their belief in Barbie's universal, classic appeal, which answered the question of whether Barbie's upstart competitors were ever considered as an alternative.
So MAC has teamed up with Mattel, manufacturer of the 48-year-old doll, to create a color cosmetics collection and a $35 MAC Barbie.
"We pride ourselves on doing the unexpected," said Caroline Geerlings, senior vice president of global marketing for MAC. She and other executives said they were surprised that there are so many parallels in the artistic processes used for both Barbie and MAC products.
But while Barbie may inhabit a child's world, the Estée Lauder-owned MAC is aiming this project squarely at its decidedly grown-up constituency. It definitely isn't your daughter's makeup. "This is intended to be a very sophisticated makeup collection, designed for adults — not children," said Peter Lichtenthal, general manager of MAC Cosmetics. He estimated that the age target is women in their 20s and 30s and underscored the fact that is not a teen line.
But serious it's not: "It's a collection that's fun," said Lichtenthal. "One of the things that we do is bring fashion and glamour to the makeup market. This collection is about the fun of applying makeup, and about fashion and style."
Richard Dickson, senior vice president of marketing, media and entertainment, worldwide, for Mattel, has roots in the beauty industry — he served as vice president of brand management and merchandising for the Estée Lauder Cos. when Gloss.com, the e-commerce site he helped create and launch, was acquired by Lauder — which made translating the concept easier. And he thinks makeup is a natural place for Barbie.
"The core Barbie brand is broadly distributed in many different ways — including entertainment, apparel, publishing and room decor," said Dickson. "It's the largest lifestyle brand for women. If you grew up with Barbie, the girl in 1959, is 60-odd years old. This is a brand that's crossed generations, that has a legacy."
It also has one huge dollar count: The entire Barbie universe generates sales of more than $3.5 billion at retail globally, with the adult-targeted products such as apparel accounting for as much as $100 million of that figure. "The Barbie brand has evolved into a true lifestyle brand," said Dickson, who noted that the franchise has even headed into luxury doors such as Fred Segal, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom for apparel, and into more than 30 freestanding stores in Japan, as well as outposts in Korea and Taiwan, not to mention marketing deals with iPod and other consumer products giants. "Barbie's the perfect client," Dickson joked of being the doll's "agent." "She's very patient, and she never ages!"
Now that Barbie has her own makeup, could Ken be next? "We don't doubt that Ken has a future," said Dickson.
Speaking of style, MAC and Mattel spared no expense when it came to the shoot for the collection's in-store visual, which features two models, one pale-skinned and the other with chocolate-hued skin. The high-powered team included makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury, hairstylist Oribe, stylist Katie Grand and the photography team of Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott. "We wanted it to be the ultimate couture shoot," said Gager.
When Jennifer Balbier, senior vice president of global product development, MAC Cosmetics, began formulating colors, she decided to build the line around perfect doll-like skin and a variety of flattering pinks, which have been trends in the market. "I was seeing this play of translucent, doll-like skin all over the place — backstage at the fashion shows, in art I was buying, even on the floor at the Barbie factory," said Balbier, adding that Barbie dolls come in about 45 nationalities. "Our challenge was to replicate that. At first we were playing with MAC Pro products like face gloss, but we realized a regular consumer wouldn't do that — so we wanted to come up with shades for the mainstream MAC line that the consumer could use to get the same look."
The collection includes bright candy pinks, buttercup yellows and warm greens. "We wanted to make sure that we had colors, especially pinks, that would look good on a wide variety of skin tones," said Balbier, who added that low talc levels were one key to achieving the desired shades.
The collection consists of four shades each of lipstick and Lipglass, each $14; three Cremestick Pearl Liners, each $14; six shades of eye shadow, each $13.50; three shades of Liquidfast Liner, each $16.50; black mascara, $11; two shades of powder blush, each $17.50; two shades of Glimmershimmer, each $16.50; two shades of Beauty Powder, each $20; two shades of nail polish, each $10; a $45 makeup brush, and a makeup bag in black with pink stitching and lining, $15.
Packaging features a Barbie silhouette in hot pink on MAC's traditional black, and the Barbie script also appears in hot pink on several products. An image of Barbie will be debossed onto the eye shadows.
The line, which doubles as MAC's spring color collection, will be on counter Feb. 13 in all of MAC's 500 North American doors and in March globally in about 1,000 doors in 50 markets worldwide. The doll will be sold only at MAC freestanding retail stores; nearly 10,000 of the dolls have been produced. And as one unauthorized and unexpected test, someone put a MAC Barbie on eBay earlier this week and it sold for $105.
"We think this is going to be the grown-up equivalent of Elmo," said Dickson of the Sesame Street character, another of Mattel's most popular toys.
Both the doll and the makeup collection are limited edition, and executives believe they will sell through in eight weeks or less. While none of the executives would comment on projected sales, industry sources estimated that the MAC Barbie collection would do between $8 million and $9 million at retail in North America, with the lion's share to come from the cosmetics.
While national advertising isn't planned, a microsite promoting the collection will go live on Feb. 13. It can be reached via the brand's site, maccosmetics.com, or directly at barbielovesmac.com, said Laura Elkins, vice president of international marketing and CRM for MAC Cosmetics, who noted that the Barbie project is the first time MAC has done a microsite. A teaser campaign will go live within the next few days, she added.
Selected MAC stores will be outfitted as mini-Barbie boudoirs, said Gager, noting MAC's makeup artists will wear T-shirts designed for the collection in-store. Collateral items, such as hair bows, also will be at counter, he said.
