Sitting on Richard Dickson’s desk in Mattel’s El Segundo, Calif., headquarters sits a 2008 Holiday Sparkle Barbie. Clad in a gold lam & #233; dress, she looks like an aging, shrunken version of herself.

“What she looks like,” says Dickson, “is a cheap knockoff.” Dickson keeps her around as a reminder of what not to do. Why? Because the 41-year-old new general manager of the Barbie franchise is staging an epic marketing makeover — one that, if it works, could become a textbook case for how to turn around a brand.

& #8226;

Read the full

Fortune

story.