It’s almost impossible to catalogue all the placements done by the little Mattel doll in her life (about 51 years long) and difficult to make a list of all the ways employed: recently she is appeared in some musical videos, PC, cars (Barbie Fiat 500) and in the last movie by Muccino in January (without underlining her appearance in 4 cartoon movies of which she is the main character).

Between February and March, on the buses of New Yourk (and we can rightly suppose in other American cities) there was her nice face to promote a competition. Her aim was to make the public vote about the profession of the next Barbie. However to leave such a freedom to the public can take a different direction from the expected one. The marketing managers of Mattel were sure about the Barbie “anchorwoman” … but a group of “Geek” sick of social networking have decided to subvert the result. Some voices here and there in the right places and in a few weeks Barbie has become a “Computer Engineer” with great surprise of Mattel direction that a few days ago made public the results of the competition. The idea of the competittion, the ads and all around is a genial idea but not really a product placement. All this story however has been discovered and related to the public by Ann Zimmeran on the Wall Street Journal and this is really a “Coup de Teatre”!