Ken breaks-up with Barbie

Hello, so today I decided to write about “Ken’s Breakup with Barbie”

It started as Greenpeace’s tactic to stop immoderate deforestation in Indonesia and save the 400 wild tigers that live there. Greenpeace’s activists took over the Mattel’s headquarters in California and hanged a sign that showed Ken saying “Barbie it’s over, I don’t date girls that are into deforestation” using the brands reputation and popularity to create a larger impact.

We can see the power that the image of a company has within its profit and overall image. Barbie belongs to Mattel, and Mattel uses paper packaging for Barbie’s and other toys from Assia Pulp and Paper (APP), known as Indonesia’s most notorious rainforest destroyer.

Taking advantage of the social media, Greenpeace made Ken’s angriness towards Barbie public. By making it public via twitter, facebook and youtube, Mattel got over 500,000 e-mails from people across the world asking them to stop buying from APP.

We know how important the way customers perceive a company is for its profits and market share, so it’s not a surprise that Mattel, largest toy company in the world, decided to take action and generate tactics to resolve the problem. This past October 5^th, Mattel’s vice-president announced that it couldn’t allow its supply chains to include products that came from deforestation.

Mattel’s new global policy includes:

• Avoid wood fiber from controversial sources.
• Increase the amount of recycled paper used in their business.
• Boost the use of wood products certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

We can now see how important sustainability is for businesses today, people are starting to get greener, and they are looking to buy from companies that share that value. If we stop and think that approx. 946,080,000 Barbies alone are sold every year, and the amount of waste the boxes generate, we can understand the impact that Mattel’s use of recycled paper boxes will have in the environment. Mattel was forced to take action if they wanted to keep their reputation, also to keep up with the customers standards and be able to compete with other competitors that did take action after knowing APP’s unmoderate deforestation.

Now we just have to wait and see if Ken takes Barbie back after her decision to stop deforestation.

Articles and Videos used:

• http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Barbie+goes+green+giant+Mattel+packaging+paper+from+rainforest/5505843/story.html
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Txa-XcrVpvQ
• http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/forests/asia-pacific/barbie/
• http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/success-barbie-and-mattel-drop-deforestation/blog/37176/