The Betches x American Girl Dolls Meme was a 360 campaign on Betches social channels aimed to increase awareness of the 35th Anniversary of The American Girl Dolls brand by creating memes around the iconic characters and their evolved personalities to fit into 2021 pop culture themes. Given Betches’ strong Millennial fan base, many who likely had American Girl Dolls when they were younger, there was an opportunity to reimagine these traditional characters and how they would relate to the grown up Millennial audience by taking on the Betches’ tone and voice.
The campaign had a goal of making 2.07M total impressions across their social platforms and digital newsletter which was ultimately surpassed by 255 percent throughout its two-day flight (May 5 - May 7 2021).
Taking a 360 approach to the campaign, Betches created memes on their Instagram page for each of the six dolls under The American Girl Dolls brand with a description of how Betches has reimagined the characters personalities in 2021. Each doll took on a new humorous and modern personality in order to become more relatable to the women who grew up playing with these dolls - tapping into the nostalgia of the brand to garner authentic engagement. Betches also incorporated timely events and popular trends, such as the pandemic and goat yoga classes to help ground American Girl Dolls as a relevant brand.
The first step Betches took to develop this campaign was consulting a very important source material - the American Girl Dolls Ranked By Betchiness Betches article from 2016. This gave a baseline how Betches’ would shape their personalities and what they would do if these dolls had more of a grown-up edge. For the deep-cut references, Betches pored over American Girl Dolls Wiki, refreshing each character’s backstory.
Following the research, Betches began developing each doll’s new goals. Kirsten, the pioneer doll, is now “that friend” who's a figurative pioneer - meaning your friend who is always prepared with homemade goods. Molly was always a good dancer, and a little awkward, and the rise of TikTok would give her just as good an outlet for her talents as a tap dance recital (and being a little awkward is a timeless trait). Once Betches curated the present-day personalities, the team designed Instagram memes along with corresponding Instagram Stories. In addition, the team wrote a custom Betches newsletter module to provide additional reach and engagement.
Betches overall approach to this campaign was collaborative across their content, social and partnerships teams. The American Girl Dolls team trusted Betches’ authoritative, comedic brand voice to ensure the branded content was relatable and highly engaging. From brainstorming and conceptualizing the different “present-day” personalities for the original dolls to vetting concepts with our advertising partner for approvals, the team ensured the success of the campaign by playing on the nostalgia factor with their audience. Betches is one of the unique platforms where you can take this approach with a very traditional company to ensure reliability due to the snarky, comedic voice of Betches.
The American Girl Dolls 35th Anniversary campaign succeeded with a 360 plan inclusive of an original meme, Instagram story polls and slide ups, and an inclusion within the Betches digital newsletter.
The overall objective was to drive awareness of the 35th Anniversary for the brand and the campaign over-delivered on all KPIs. It far exceeded its goal of 2.07M social impressions and produced a 255 percent delivery of 5.2M organic impressions. Betches’ Instagram meme carousel surpassed it’s goal of 1.45M social impressions and created 4.3M social impressions with a 5 percent engagement rate.
The Instagram post garnered over 37K total engagements which produced a 358 percent delivery and created thoughtful engagement among the Betches and American Girl Dolls community through followers tagging their friends because of how they related to the characters that they grew up alongside.
Overall, the campaign was highly successful and resonated with the Betches audience, delivering 152k+ Likes, 8k+ Comments, 191k+ Shares and drove 5,080 new followers.
Some comments on the meme carousel include:
“This is the post I was talking you about last night @handle”
“I almost sent this to you @handle but then I saw you already liked lol”
“Omg I am real-life Molly minus the Tiktok part…AG released all of the OG dolls for the anniversary and don’t think I haven’t about contemplated getting a new Molly doll w/o Limited Too gel in her hair…”
“I'M SCREAMING, tag yourself we both have Addy energy”
