How Mattel used AI to create packaging for Barbie dolls

Mattel used generative AI to prepare for Barbie’s important holiday season by packaging two of its newest dolls in box designs developed by Adobe’s Firefly AI platform. The toy giant used Firefly to generate the thematic backgrounds against which the Barbie dolls stand in their packaging. Holiday Barbie was set inside an image of a picture frame bordered by an intricate bow while a Sue Bird Barbie—made to resemble the former WNBA star—stands on a basketball court beneath stadium lights and a packed crowd. By using AI to generate these designs, which are in stores now, Mattel was able to cut down on the time required to launch the toys and visualize a broader range of creative concepts to bring them to life, said Chris Down, Mattel’s chief design officer. The effort suggests that brands are growing more confident using AI. The packaging on hundreds of thousands of toys cannot be quickly removed from shelves, if something were to go wrong, in the way that an ad could be pulled from TV, as Google was pressured to do after one of its commercials about generative AI fell flat with audiences during the Olympics. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs Mattel is not alone in embracing the new wave of technology, as more consumer marketers seem to be trusting AI tools to a larger extent than they did a year ago, including toy retailer Toys R Us. The decision to use Firefly came down to a bottleneck Mattel often experienced when designing new packaging, Mattel shared in an announcement about its new box design strategy. Early sketches of backgrounds were cumbersome to create, and sharing them with stakeholders and other reviewers required significant time, the company said. Designers needed to present several options, but not too many of them, because that would take even more time to iterate and review. But with generative AI, “creative opportunities become creative choices,” Down said. Recent news: Here’s Barbie’s first campaign from 72andSunny Using Firefly, the designers were able to explore a variety of themes and visualize them in little time, Down said. They started with a single prompt, such as, “gold square sculpted frame with intertwined red ribbons and red presents with gold bows, white background.” The resulting image required dozens of follow-up prompts to approximate what the designers had in mind, Down said. For example, a subsequent prompt for Holiday Barbie’s packaging design would be something like: “less ribbon, more frame,” followed by other thematic adjustments. Since the outputs never perfectly aligned with the initial vision of the designers, they needed to stay flexible, with the understanding that Mattel could deliver Barbie’s intended message through many different backgrounds, Down said. Once the creative work was done, the designers touched up the graphics using Adobe Photoshop. Even this process benefitted from AI, through features such as Generative Expand, which fits the images to different package sizes, and Generative Fill, which allowed the designers to add smaller creative elements to images. The amount of touch-up required for both packages was relatively minimal, Down said, mostly because the backgrounds were general and stock-like. But the more intellectual property involved in an image, the more post-production editing would be required, Down noted. This idea relates to a couple of shortcomings that Down noticed while using Firefly and other generative AI platforms. Firstly, creating generative AI artwork that uses a brand’s IP, from a model that has been trained on pre-existing IP, is not yet at a trustworthy level, Down said. Such an ability could be hugely beneficial to companies like Mattel and Disney given their business interests in creating content based on their media. Lionsgate is already exploring this possibility through a partnership with video AI platform Runway. AI also is inadequate when it comes to generating company logos, Down said. This is because the models still tend to produce certain tells that reveal their AI origins in their image outputs, which consumers are quick to pick up on. “I don’t necessarily want those on a Barbie package that sells half a million units,” Down said. Mattel’s experiment comes as Adobe gains more popularity in the AI market. Production company Studio Rx recently rebranded itself using Adobe’s AI tools. Meanwhile, the design giant is heavily promoting its AI to lay creatives through influencers. Sign up for Ad Age newsletters From influencer marketing to agencies, get the latest news and analysis delivered to your inbox Click here

How Mattel used AI to create packaging for Barbie dolls

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