Hasta La Creative!

GoldieBlox is back with a charged ad aimed once again at tackling sexism in children’s toys.

The spot, which is structured much like Apple’s famed “1984” commercial, features young girls decked out in all manners of glitter and pink (you know, “girly” things) lining up to grab perfect Barbie-like dolls while a “Big Sister” drones, over and over: “You are beauty, and beauty is perfection.”

What is it about Orwellian spots and hammers? Why is smashing things to smithereens so satisfying? Anyway, you can guess the ending.

This time GoldieBlox taps Metric’s “Help I’m Alive” for its soundtrack, which is a little on the nose since the chorus of the song says hammer a bunch of times. Though the company must have been pretty careful with its song choice after what happened last time.

While the spot certainly isn’t perfect, it’s still such a thrill to see advertising that’s so passionate about throwing entrenched gender norms out the window. 

Via Time.

Most businesses can only dream of growing big enough one day to advertise in the Super Bowl. So when an 18-month-old startup finds itself running an ad in the game for free, there's no playbook to plan what happens next.

Game maker GoldieBlox recently won Intuit's "Small Business Big Game" promotion, which promised a 30-second ad valued at $4 million in this Sunday's Super Bowl. While GoldieBlox proved itself a savvy marketer with a successful Kickstarter campaign and a highly popular video about empowering girls to invent, the business also ran afoul of intellectual property law and took some heat from the public when it used the Beastie Boys track "Girls" without permission.

Given the odd path that's led GoldieBlox to the big game, it's hard to predict how its Super Bowl ad, created by longtime Honda agency RPA, will be received and how the company will evolve in the year ahead.

So we decided to ask GoldieBlox founder Debbie Sterling about the contest, the controversy and the mission that have all shaped her company's unique fate. 

AdFreak: In some ways, it seems like you won a $4 million lottery, but it's not like you didn't have to work for it. How did you react to hearing you'd won the Intuit contest?

Debbie Sterling: It's almost hard to describe how I feel and how I felt the moment I found out we were the grand prize winner. I felt almost like it wasn't just a win for GoldieBlox; it was a win for girls around the world.

One hundred million people are going to see our message about empowering girls. It feels just incredible, incredibly validating that America voted for us and wants us for their daughters. It's not just an ad; it's almost like a revolution.

GoldieBlox seemed to have an early lead in the contest, especially when your video was going viral. Then the debate over the Beastie Boys track seemed to change the tone. Did you worry it would distract people from the contest and supporting your product?

There was a lot of misunderstanding in the media at the time. A lot of people thought that video was supposed to be our big-game commercial, which it wasn't. It was a really hard time for us as a company and me as an individual.

Soundtrack aside, that online video was pretty ambitious. How did it come about?

My team and I were having lunch at a Mexican restaurant, brainstorming ways to get girls interested in science and engineering. We came up with this idea to create a Rube Goldberg device out of toys.

We had remembered seeing the OK Go video, and we wanted to set it to a girl power anthem. We're a pretty small team, but we're really passionate, and we made it ourselves (with OK Go collaborator Brett Doar).

Surely you weren't expecting the clip to become as big of a viral sensation as it did?

You can never know if something's going to go viral. We had no idea. We made a video we felt kind of encapsulated our mission and we hoped would spark some interest in kids.

As great as it must have been to see the video getting all this love and attention, it must have been jarring when the legal debate started and it all got so negative so fast. 

It was a really hard time. The controversy around it, it took away from our mission. If you ever come visit GoldieBlox headquarters, you'll see we have written on the wall, "The mission is more important than the company."

The last I heard, the Beastie Boys had filed a countersuit looking for damages and fees. What's the status of the legal debate over the song? Is it still going?

There's still legal stuff going on.

So nothing's been settled?

I can't comment on any of the legal stuff.

Your team is small, and I'm sure allocating resources is a big part of your daily life. Between the Rube Goldberg video and the Intuit contest, how have you made time for product and R&D along with the marketing?

Our main focus is product. We put a lot of work into our product each day.

We think of our marketing and advertising almost as a product, too, in the sense that the videos we've been creating and the community we've been building on our Facebook page, on Twitter and elsewhere in social media, they're all kind of bubbling up to the same goal. In a way, it almost feels like our marketing and product are one.

For most global brands in the Super Bowl, there's a lot of debate about how many millions of products they'll need to sell to make the ad worthwhile, but obviously you're in a different situation. Do you have any sales goals or other metrics for how you'll define a win from your ad this Sunday?

For me, we've already won, because the ad sends a very clear message that girls deserve more than the "pink aisle" has to offer. Having 100 million people see that and talk about it at the dinner table, or have a dad encourage his daughter to invent something … that already is going to come out of this, and that's a win.

This time around it was free. So over the next year, you just have to set aside $5 million or so to buy your next Super Bowl ad.

Hahah, yes. I hope this is not our last Super Bowl ad.

Debbie Sterling graduated from Stanford University with a degree in engineering before becoming the founder and CEO of GoldieBlox. The company now sells three games available primarily through independent toy stores, Toys-R-Us and Target. She hopes to expand the brand into animation and video games in the near future.

The fair-use fight between Beastie Boys and GoldieBlox isn't over.

After sparring several weeks ago over the unauthorized use of the Beasties song "Girls" in a GoldieBlox commercial that went viral, the toy company deleted the video and uploaded a new version with a different track (see below). But that did not satisfy the band, which has now countersued, demanding that GoldieBlox hand over profits it earned from using the song without permission, reports Gigaom. The Beasties also seek damages, lawyers' fees and an injunction preventing GoldieBlox from using the song in the future.

The suit claims GoldieBlox is liable for copyright and trademark infringement and sets the stage for a judge to decide whether or not the company's parody of "Girls," with different lyrics, constituted fair use—as GoldieBlox contended in its earlier, preemptive suit against the band. Also interesting: The band says it first heard about the GoldieBlox ad when an ad agency that was submitting the spot to Intuit's "Small Business Big Game" Super Bowl contest (in which GoldieBlox is a finalist) inquired with Universal Music Publishing Group about whether GoldieBlox had secured the rights. (They would have heard about it eventually, of course.)

So, it seems likely that we'll get a decision on the fair use question after all.

UPDATE 2: The Beastie Boys released this statement Monday:

    Like many of the millions of people who have seen your toy commercial "GoldieBlox, Rube Goldberg & the Beastie Boys," we were very impressed by the creativity and the message behind your ad.
    We strongly support empowering young girls, breaking down gender stereotypes and igniting a passion for technology and engineering.
    As creative as it is, make no mistake, your video is an advertisement that is designed to sell a product, and long ago, we made a conscious decision not to permit our music and/or name to be used in product ads.
    When we tried to simply ask how and why our song "Girls" had been used in your ad without our permission, YOU sued US.

UPDATE: A rep for the Beastie Boys tells the Huffington Post that the band has not made any claim against GoldieBlox, saying: "There was no complaint filed, no demand letter (no demand, for that matter) when [GoldieBlox] sued Beastie Boys."

Original item below:
The feel-good ad of the month has taken a feel-bad turn. The Beastie Boys apparently have a problem with GoldieBlox's version of their song "Girls" in the overnight smash-hit "Princess Machine" commercial, which recast the track with new lyrics as an empowerment anthem for little girls. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the band has allegedly threatened legal action, claiming copyright infringement, and the toy company has preemptively filed its own lawsuit asking that its version of the song be considered fair use—a common defense in cases involving parody material. The sticking point for GoldieBlox may be that "Princess Machine" is expressly designed to sell toys, and thus is a commercial endeavor at least as much as it is a sociological statement, but it will be up to a court to decide. The Beastie Boys, meanwhile, risk looking like they're censoring a worthwhile message that has enthralled millions—though of course it's hard to protect your intellectual property if you're willing to look the other way now and then based on ideology or pressure from the public. You can read GoldieBlox's full complaint here.