New Way Now: Mattel transforms customer feedback into action with Gemini and BigQuery
15Featured in this video: TJ Allard, Mattel’s lead data scientist, and Shaun Applegate, Mattel’s director of product quality analytics
Executive summary: On its journey to build a world-class data analytics team, Mattel, the leading global toy company behind iconic brands like Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Fisher-Price, partnered with Google Cloud to build an AI-powered feedback classification system and unleash the power of its customer data. Powered by BigQuery, Vertex AI, and Google’s Gemini models, the system analyzes millions of feedback points from a diverse range of sources in seconds — delivering a staggering 100x increase in data processing capacity and slashing analysis times from a month to a single minute. In addition, Google Cloud’s expert guidance enabled Mattel to develop the solution internally without relying on external vendors, realizing an estimated one million dollars in cost savings. Instead of spending hours manually collecting and tallying up data, Mattel can now transform millions of consumer interactions into actionable insights nearly instantaneously, driving faster decision-making and deeper connections with its loyal fans.
Challenge: Previously, Mattel relied on manual data collection and reporting, hindering its ability to respond quickly to product issues and understand consumer sentiment and emerging trends. To continue its legacy of empowering generations to reach their full potential, Mattel recognized it needed to move beyond retroactive listening and start understanding what customers need and want in the moment.
Solution: To pursue its vision of a world-class data analytics team, Mattel partnered with Google Cloud to build an AI-powered feedback classification system. Utilizing Vertex AI and Google’s Gemini models, Mattel refined and trained a consumer feedback model that collects, processes, analyzes, and labels feedback from a diverse range of sources in seconds, including social media posts, online reviews, and direct customer communications. BigQuery’s petabyte-scale analysis capabilities and tight integration with Gemini through Vertex AI allows Mattel to apply its models to vast amounts of data where it resides, transforming millions of customer interactions into actionable insights.
Results: The new AI system has already delivered significant wins: a staggering 100x increase in data processing capacity, dramatically faster analysis times from one month to a single minute, and the automatic labeling of nearly all incoming consumer feedback. Google Cloud’s expert guidance also enabled Mattel’s small team to develop everything internally without relying on external vendors, resulting in an estimated $1 million in cost savings. In addition, the ability to put insights into the right hands when they’re most valuable empowers Mattel to address issues quickly, drive product enhancements, and make smarter decisions — ultimately forging greater connections with its loyal fans.
Key takeaways and highlights from our interview with TJ Allard, Mattel’s lead data scientist, and Shaun Applegate, Mattel’s director of product quality analytics:
→ “Our focus is to turn data to insights to support and really just driving good decisions around making the best quality products that are on the planet. Three years ago, employees were writing tally sheets and taking months to report out information. What we were missing was to be able to do it from a holistic perspective — you didn’t know if that issue with that one individual product was a larger brand issue, a manufacturing issue, or a supply issue with damage. So, we're on this journey of creating a best-in-class analytics team, and now through the power of Google, we’re able to take the voice of the consumer from data to insights almost instantaneously.”
→ “Under the hood, we’re running everything in Google Cloud. Our data lives in BigQuery. We use Vertex AI for our AI platform. It’s how we access Gemini and this all resides in the Google Cloud ecosystem. So, we can do from beginning to end — ingestion to AI inference — all in one fell swoop. Partnering with Google Cloud was really easy for this entire project. Whenever we would get stuck, I had this superpower team of Google engineers I could just reach out to and they would immediately come back with answers in real time.”
→ “We're labeling our consumer feedback at almost a hundred percent. Taking this data systematically and being able to report back to the global brand teams has been a game changer. We also saw some significant savings by not having to go to an external vendor to build this out. With our small team, we realized about a million dollars in savings.”
Google Cloud products used: Vertex AI, Gemini, BigQuery
Learn more:
→ Mattel Collaborates with Google Cloud to Enhance Consumer Insights, Fan Engagement, and Product Innovation: https://goo.gle/46FXE2g