Barbie IN 2022

What would you do if you had the power to change the world?

Five countries. 

Five mentors. 

Five little girls.

One PR team determined to find the answer.

The Barbie® You Can Be A Champion for Change Competition was designed to equip and empower kids aged 5-12 years old to embrace their inner changemakers and dare to dream they had the power to change the world. Five winners emerged - one from each of the participating Southeast Asian countries. 

We had the distinct honour of working with five passionate mentors who made the time to help us craft an intensive programme for the competition winners to cover different aspects of making positive change. We were joined by Princess Zatashah, Butet Manurung, Maria Poonlertlarp, Rebekah Lin, and Chesca Garcia Kramer. Each mentorship session was tailored to each mentor’s strengths to ensure they could impart an impactful and personal lesson to the winners.

This time, the fact that the competition was run online worked in our favour - allowing us to run a regional competition without having to board a single aircraft. As always, we did everything in our power to tailor the experience for both our winners and their mentors, making each step feel as hands-on as possible.

Watching our girls blossom over the course of the competition was truly a sight to behold. We got to learn alongside them from remarkable women dedicated to improving the world. It was a joy to watch the group grow closer and learn effective lessons that we hope will continue to drive them and inspire them to keep going when the going gets tough.

We hit the ground running in 2022 with the Barbie® Benefits of Play campaign. This campaign is built on a study Barbie® did in collaboration with neuroscientists at Cardiff University. The key findings of the study showed that doll play activates regions of the brain that allow children to develop social processing skills like empathy. 

Our journey with the Benefits of Play campaign started the year before, when we had the opportunity to sit down with Developmental Paediatrician, Dr Rajini Sarvananthan; Child & Family Development Specialist, Racheal Kwacz; and entrepreneur and parent, Audrey Ooi. The session was moderated by our friend, Daphne Iking and attended by parents eager to learn about The Missing ‘E’: empathy. We learned all about the importance empathy plays in raising caring and confident children and how doll play can be used as a tool to facilitate that. 

In 2022, we took the conversation a step further and sunk our teeth into practical ways to model and exploring empathy and creativity with kids over two livestreamed sessions. We invited Racheal back to our panel of experts where she was joined by Celebrity Mental Health Advocate, CP Sarimah Ibrahim; and International Artist-Illustrator, Love Limzy. 

Despite the quick turnaround time and the dense content to unpack, our past experience carried us through - giving us the know-how and the cool heads we needed to prioritise and strategise the execution. The right choice of experts matters a lot when it comes to nuanced content like this and we are fortunate that Barbie® has a really good eye.