Computer Engineer Barbie – a year ago I would have said “Yeah right!”  However, this fall Mattel crowdsourced Barbie’s next career.  The choices for Barbie’s next career were architect, anchorwoman, computer engineer, environmentalist and surgeon.  The popular choice after a month long campaign is computer engineer.  However, little girls chose anchorwoman.

This is an interesting application of the lessons’ I learned from Rob Adam’s class as an MBA student at the Red McComb’s School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin - Validate, Validate, Validate your market.  While Barbie does not soothe an urgent customer pain, Barbie is the top selling doll with $1.3 billion in sales annually.  Product development for Barbie thought they polled their community of young girls but instead open the doors for crowdsourcing.  How did this happen?

According to the Wall Street Journal article, “Revenge of the Nerds: How Barbie Got Her Geek On”, a community of like minded technical women got together and changed the popular vote with over 1800 tweets encouraging the vote.  Encouragement came from organizations such as GeekGirlCamp.com and National Society of Woman Engineers.  What did Mattel do?

Mattel will be releasing both Anchorwoman and Computer Engineer Barbie and I’m happy about it.  As opposed to @BrandAutopsy, I feel that Mattel did give a real community of fans what they want by producing the Computer Engineer Barbie.  As a child, I loved my Astronaut Barbie and think she still rocks.  I know that I didn’t think about becoming a rocket scientist until I got that Astronaut Barbie at Christmas. 

So perhaps by crowdsourcing instead of communitysourcing, Mattel stumbled upon a new market – cool adult hip tech nostalgic women who want Barbie to look geeky without a lab coat.  Perhaps Computer Engineer Barbie can inspire a new generation of engineers and mathematicians.  Each of my four nieces will be getting a Computer Engineer Barbie.  Wonder what sciences engineering Barbie they’ll buy their nieces once they grow up? 

Your Chief Marketing Gunslinger,

Elizabeth Quintanilla

@equintanilla