According to Twitter ($TWTR) analytics data as tracked by Thinknum, the toy manufacturer Mattel ($MAT) saw a 44.32% change in followers on its official account during the month of March.
That tops any other brand over 100,000 followers that we track on our database, which includes Tesla ($TSLA), by double-digit percentage points. (Note: Screener combined both Mattel and Fisher Price Twitter account metrics, which is why it shows a 31.52% growth rate instead of 44.32%)
|
Name |
Number of Followers Gained in March |
Twitter Growth Rate March % |
Twitter Follower Count |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Mattel |
59,557 |
31.521% |
248,501 |
|
Indian Oil |
35,114 |
14.485% |
277,522 |
|
Shimamura |
22,690 |
9.479% |
262,059 |
|
KDDI |
27,205 |
8.207% |
358,710 |
|
Glencore |
6,914 |
7.224% |
102,628 |
|
Zoom Communications |
38,537 |
6.987% |
590,088 |
|
Informatica |
7,638 |
6.706% |
121,532 |
|
Micron Technology |
8,801 |
6.203% |
150,680 |
|
Bharat Petroleum |
8,942 |
4.617% |
202,608 |
|
Tesla |
136,641 |
3.920% |
3,622,260 |
Why was this the case? Blame #BTSxMattel, a collaboration between the Korean pop boy band and American toy company that singlehandedly made Mattel an overnight social media success story.
Mattel's meteoric rise on Twitter just goes to show how powerful, yet unstable, influencer marketing is and how it can affect an entire brand.
On March 18, 2019, Mattel released a post teasing the release of BTS dolls. Today, that post has over 50,000 retweets.
Compared to the post before that one, which had 34 retweets, the BTS collaboration was already a resounding social media success to Mattel, as it raked in about 10,000 followers between March 17 and March 19.
And the flood of followers, as well as teaser posts, kept coming.
As seen above, this March spike was only equal to a similar one in January when... Mattel announced that it would be producing the dolls in the first place.
The wave crashed on March 25, when Mattel fully announced its line of official BTS dolls to the tune of 61,000 retweets, 137,000 likes, and over 31,000 replies. At the crest of the marketing campaign, Mattel's Twitter account had a total growth of 44.32% from March 1 to April 1.
Now that Mattel is nearing 200,000 followers on Twitter, its next challenge isn't growth, but maintenance. Already since March 27, the brand lost about 4,000 followers, and recent posts are barely in the teens of retweets and replies.
Thus is the double-edged sword of influencers on improving a company's social media metrics, or even sales: BTS followers flocked to Mattel after the big release of boy band dolls. Now that the party's over and the dolls were fully announced, it appears that BTS may be taking its fans with them — or in less dramatic terms, accounts are unfollowing the brand after no longer having an interest in the company and only in the influencer.
Should Mattel continue to engage and capitalize on 59,000 plus new fans, it will retain potential customers that could signal future sales and success for the company. However, with its followers more than doubling since the new year, Mattel's meteoric rise on Twitter just goes to show how powerful, yet unstable, influencer marketing is and how it can affect an entire brand.