As we look at the Academy Award nominations this year, it’s amazing to think that one of the top-grossing and nominated films at the Oscars in 2023 was about a toy. Not only did the film Barbie earn over 1.4 billion dollars, but it also received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. 

How did a movie about a toy do so well? 

According to Writer and Director Matthew Luhn, with credits on over 10 Pixar films—who also helped bring Barbie to the screen in the animated films Toy Story 2 and 3, the answer is simple—Barbie succeeded because her character and story were based on personal experiences.

“Personal experiences are essential to crafting stories,” said Luhn. 

Along with writing and directing in Hollywood, Luhn teaches hundreds of Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, and organizations how to use their personal experiences to craft and tell stories to bridge the gap between business and heart to build stronger brands and more impactful business communications.

The doll Barbie was created from personal experiences.

“Most people think of Barbie as just a toy doll,” said Luhn. “Few people know the doll was created from the personal experiences of Elliot and Ruth Handler, the co-founders of Mattel. And who, by the way, were personal friends of my grandparents, Manny and Mildy.”

Luhn shares, “As a successful businesswoman and mom, Ruth observed her daughter’s scorn for boring baby dolls. Her daughter, Barbara, wanted to play with paper dolls instead because they looked and dressed like adult women, which was what she wanted to be. But these paper dolls would rip and eventually fall apart.”

Then in the mid 1950s, while vacationing in Europe, Ruth Handler came across a German toy doll known as Bild Lili, a plastic doll with an adult-like figure given as a gift between boyfriends to their girlfriends to show their admiration and love. 

Luhn explained that when Ruth returned home from her European vacation, she developed a durable plastic adult-looking doll for little girls and named it after her daughter, Barbara. A male doll was later named after Elliot and Ruth’s son, Kenneth.

Moreover, the Barbie doll was given a personality and a backstory. Her full name was Barbara Millicent Roberts, from Willows, Wisconsin, where she attended high school and was born on March 9, 1959. The birth date was based on the toy’s debut at the American International Toy Fair.

“The doll was successful because it was based on personal experiences,” said Luhn, “which were also used in advertising. Barbie was one of the first toys to use a marketing strategy based on television commercials. In 1959, the first Barbie commercial debuted Barbie, in all her plastic glory, wearing a sleeveless dress, wedding gown, and a zebra-striped, strapless swimsuit, in the top children’s show, The Mickey Mouse Club.” 

Barbie quickly became a phenomenon, and by 1965, 600,000 members had joined Barbie’s official fan club.

Barbie in Toy Story 2 was based on Matthew’s personal experience.

Speaking of personal experiences, the introduction of Barbie in Pixar’s Toy Story 2 was based on Luhn’s personal experience as a child working in his family’s toy store, Jeffrey’s Toys, in San Francisco.

“I pitched the idea for a Barbie doll to be included in Toy Story 2 based on my personal experience of organizing and staging the Barbie toys, aka ‘pink aisle’ in my family’s toy store,” said Luhn. “I dreaded having to straighten it up as a boy. I wanted to handle the Hot Wheels aisle. But I remember there was a Barbie swimming pool set with a sticker of water pasted in it that I found hilarious. So, I ended up coming up with the idea of including a Barbie scene and ‘pink aisle’ in Al’s Toy Barn in Toy Story 2.”

“I pitched a scene where the Barbie girls are at a swim party, having fun, and pretending that they’re swimming in a swimming pool, which was just a sticker of fake water,” said Luhn. “I also came up with the idea for a Barbie who would greet the characters, called Tour Guide Barbie, who would help them find Woody, who had been kidnapped in Al’s Toy Barn.”

After adding Barbie to Toy Story 2, Barbie received an even bigger role in Toy Story 3, along with her boyfriend, Ken, which Luhn developed with his story team. Barbie and Ken’s resurgence in the Toy Story films inspired Mattel to create the heartfelt comedy film Barbie.

“But Barbie in the Toy Story films and the blockbuster film Barbie would never have happened if it wasn’t for Ruth and her personal experiences with her daughter,” said Luhn.

Two ways to use your personal experiences 

“The best stories are inspired from your personal experiences,” explained Luhn. “There are two exercises I use to teach people how to create characters for entertainment and business, which you can also find in my book The Best Story Wins.”

“To develop a good story for a pitch or presentation, it helps to start with a memory or invoke a character from something that happened to you or someone else,” said Luhn. “It’s a great way to create original characters for books, movies, TV shows, and your next pitch or presentation.”

Here are the two methods.

1. Start with a memory: “It can be a real image, like a photo, or an image from memory,” said Luhn. Then, Luhn instructs people to answer a series of questions: When was it? Where was it? Who was it? What was going on? “By answering these questions,” said Luhn, “You start to build up the details around a great personal experience to use in a pitch or presentation.”
2. Invoke a character: Interesting characters are essential to a good story. “A lot of times, we create characters that are mentors or allies,” said Luhn. “So, you want to pull from people in your life that have inspired, instructed, or helped you through the good and bad times.” Similar to the memory exercise, Matthew has people answer a series of questions.
   1. It is? This answer physically describes the person or object. (For example, Mr. Armstrong was a tall hippy with long hair.)
   2. You are? This answer identifies the person’s relationship to you from when you knew them. (For example, Mr. Armstrong was my high school art teacher.) 
   3. Thou art? This answer tells why that person is special to you. (For example, Mr. Armstrong believed I had talent as an artist while I was struggling to pass my academic classes, and he encouraged me to submit my art portfolio to the animation college Walt Disney created, CalArts, in Los Angeles.)
   4. I am? This answer describes where that person is today. (My art teacher is enjoying his retirement painting landscapes from the back of his hippy VW van.)

So, the next time you are writing a 90-minute movie about a toy—or pitching a new product or idea, add a metaphor, experience, or testimonial based on a personal experience or person to add some humor and emotion to make yourself more memorable, impactful, and yes, personal.

For more on storytelling, read

The Universal Themes Of Storytelling From Inside Out 2 To The Boardroom

How to Create Inspiring Stories to Sell Your Business Ideas

The Five Traits You Need to Inspire Your Team Like a Hero

From Toy Stores to Toy Stories—How Jeffrey’s Toys in San Francisco Launched the Pixar Animation Career of Matthew Luhn