Jason Pickar

This is a bit of a change from most of my web-marketing talk. Let’s see how it goes.

If a brand wants to be extremely relevant to their target, then they have to fling themselves wholeheartedly into the sub-culture where they belong. Not 18-24 males, but really finding that truth to the shifts in society. If lucky, the brand can become an icon and be held in high regard by everyone in that group, integrating itself fully into their lifestyle.

American Girl is one of those brands that seemed to get everything right. They tapped into the pulse of every little girl, and sold them the perfect doll. You could then buy a multitude of outfits, even get the doll’s hair styled. Their marketing was tight, word on the playground started to spread (the original form of buzz marketing), and then American Girl dolls became the sought after plaything for pre-tween girls. They convinced the parents that all the money spent would encourage their child to “stand tall, reach high, and dream big.”

But for the icon-making machine to keep running, every cog needs to be in place to perfection. And, unfortunately for one little girl, that is simply not the case. According to her mom, a young girl named Etta was invited by a friend to go and spend $20 for a doll-hairstyling at the American Girl store in Manhattan. This 6-year old brought her favorite doll, one she had saved up for and bought herself. It happened to be from Target, and was only $29.99, compared to the almost-$100 price for an official “American Girl.” Little did she know her doll wasn’t good enough. Here’s what happened:

“This isn’t a real doll!” the stylist exclaimed. (Thank your stylist!–we never would have had the heart to explain it that way!). And to prove that a fake doll isn’t worth the plastic she’s molded out of, she refused to do the doll’s hair.

I’m not sure exactly what’s in it for your company, because you still stood to make $20 off of my daughter for doing the fake doll’s hair. I have two thoughts on that. Either her $20 wasn’t worth the same as someone else’s $20 (in which case I’ve learned something new too!) OR it was worth the $20 to you to be able to be the one to break the news to, I mean, to *enlighten* my little girl. You do promise to teach little girls, don’t you?

And she cried and cried and cried, and your stylist held her ground. That was a good lesson for her too. That feelings don’t have a place in “the heart of Manhattan’s prestigious shopping neighborhood” (another quote from your website).

I don’t care if it wasn’t the right doll, the best thing that “stylist” could have done was take the girl’s $20 and give the doll some nice hair. Why not accept someone’s money, even if it’s not an ‘official’ doll? You’re selling an experience, one that involved the girl waiting in line for a few snips of scissors. My most recent haircut was less than $20 (see below), so it’s not absurd to accept any doll that would be willing to spend some serious cash.

I know that there are probably lots of people who bring all sorts of ridiculous dolls and stuffed animals into the store, and there’s probably a policy. But when there’s a little girl crying her eyes out, don’t you think it’s time to put that policy aside and just cut some hair?