“If you think about that film, it was at once leaning into the consistency of who Barbie was, while at the same time almost making fun of itself,” explained Greenspoon. In doing so, it created some tension and challenged the brand by reinventing who’s in the film. And it worked. Not only did it drive $1.4 billion at the box office and was the biggest movie that year, but you also saw doll sales in Barbie go up 25% in the two trailing months after release. The brand also rose 14% from a growth perspective over the course of that year.

The reason why it worked? Because Mattel stayed true to the core essence of empowerment. The brand could also take risks in every other part of the story, which goes back to being meaningful and different.

“As long as you can lean into the parts of your brand that the world or consumers trust, you can actually experiment and try new things around it,” shared Greenspoon. “But if you stray from that core message or the North Star of the brand, that’s when things start to become problems.”

Set guardrails to navigate tension and maximize budget

Great CMOs need to create rules and guardrails to ensure that the core elements that make the brand strong remain consistent, even as they tinker with tension.

Greenspoon shared a pricing example where a brand rule might be to stay a set amount above or below the average price. Having rules in place is especially important at a time when marketing spend is down. For instance, you want to stick to the fundamentals of a healthy split of brand marketing and product or performance marketing. So even if the budget is cut, split it in fewer places.

“Concentrate the investments so that you get more impact for the things that you do,” he said. “The biggest trap that people fall into is saying, ‘My budget’s down, so I’m going to cut all brand spend’… That’s a big mistake because you’re actually sacrificing more than just 2025. You’re sacrificing 2026, 2027, and 2028.”

Embrace brand tension to build future growth

According to Greenspoon, organizations with strong brand power—defined as the degree to which a brand drives penetration and growth—are 4X more likely to see future growth. As such, he sees investing in brand as an economic decision.

“You’re going to be more resilient, you’re going to command more pricing power, and ultimately, you have a higher likelihood to grow,” Greenspoon shared. “And for an investor, it’s a better dollar spent than in a company that’s just trying to harvest demand and get scale without building brand.”