{"id":2738,"date":"2006-12-30T06:23:20","date_gmt":"2006-12-30T06:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zmetro.com\/?p=2738"},"modified":"2006-12-30T06:23:20","modified_gmt":"2006-12-30T06:23:20","slug":"the_creation_of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/?p=2738","title":{"rendered":"The Creation of American Girl&#8217;s 2007 Girl of the Year &#8211; Nikki"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.emailthis.clickability.com\/et\/emailThis?clickMap=viewThis&#038;etMailToID=446965664\">Christina Binkley visits<\/a> Middleton&#8217;s American Girl (a unit of Mattel):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i> A little more than a year ago, executives at the dollmaker American Girl sat down to undertake a high-stakes marketing mission: cramming everything the company deems uplifting and authentic about American girls into a single plastic and cloth figure. The goal: to create a character so compelling that parents will pay $86 for an 18-inch doll and a paperback book.<\/p>\n<p>Working with a trove of customer feedback culled from its magazine, Web and book-publishing empire, the company determined that the typical girl these days is dependable, athletic and loves animals. She is also completely overscheduled and stressed out. She skis like a demon, rides horses, trains guide dogs, plans school parties, washes the dishes, battles popularity crises and helps her little brother with his math homework.<\/p>\n<p>The improbable result is Nicki Fleming, the company&#8217;s 2007 Girl of the Year &#8212; an annual event in which the Mattel Inc. unit releases, on Jan. 1, a new doll meant to capture the current state of girlhood. Nicki&#8217;s dog Sprocket, together with training treats, a collar and leash, sells for $24. Her horse Jackson with Western saddle costs $62; his tack box, curry brush and carrots are $34.<br \/>\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Mattel&#8217;s (<a href=\"http:\/\/clusty.com\/search?input-form=clusty-simple&amp;v%3Asources=webplus&amp;query=%22jill+barrad%22\">Jill Barrad<\/a> was CEO at the time) acquisition of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pleasant_Rowland\">Pleasant Rowland&#8217;s<\/a> American Girl for some $700M lead the way to the creation of Madison&#8217;s Overture Center.  Former Oscar Meyer CEO Bob Eckert currently runs Mattel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christina Binkley visits Middleton&#8217;s American Girl (a unit of Mattel): A little more than a year ago, executives at the dollmaker American Girl sat down to undertake a high-stakes marketing mission: cramming everything the company deems uplifting and authentic about American girls into a single plastic and cloth figure. The goal: to create a character [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,6,21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.zmetro.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}