Kelly Clarkson's Broken & Beautiful, produced by Marshmello and Steve Mac, anchored the 2019 UglyDolls film campaign across the United States with a
Kelly Clarkson Powers the UglyDolls Campaign With Broken & Beautiful
Kelly Clarkson's "Broken & Beautiful" served as the official anthem for the animated film UglyDolls, released in the United States in April 2019, with the accompanying music video functioning as the campaign's primary promotional asset, directed by Jay Martin of production company Hound and produced by Marshmello and Steve Mac.
The campaign occupies a precise structural role in entertainment marketing. It is not a standalone toy advertisement or a brand awareness play in the conventional sense. It is a film-launch music tie-in, designed to position UglyDolls in the United States marketplace through the emotional and commercial reach of a recognised pop voice. Clarkson did not simply lend her name to the project. She voiced the lead character Moxy in the STXfilms production, performed the title song, and appeared in the music video — a convergence of creative responsibilities that made her the singular connective tissue between the film's narrative, its soundtrack, and its promotional strategy. Atlantic Records served as the music partner, extending the campaign's distribution across streaming and broadcast channels beyond the film's own marketing infrastructure.
The music video contains one media asset as documented by Ads of the World, and the production brought together a notable roster of craft contributors. Animation was handled by ATK PLN, with crowd and confetti sequences completed by Ingenuity Studios. Color grading was executed by CO3. The campaign was published in April 2019, timed to the film's theatrical release window. UglyDolls as a property traces its origins to artists Sun-Min Kim and David Horvath, who created the first Uglydoll in 2001 under Pretty Ugly, LLC, according to Licensing International. The 2019 film represented a major studio expansion of that intellectual property, produced at a budget of approximately 45 to 53 million US dollars, according to reporting by Wikipedia and Deadline. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 77 out of 100.
Entertainment marketing in the United States increasingly relies on original songs to extend a film's presence beyond the theatre. The UglyDolls campaign deploys this logic with particular precision. Clarkson's casting as both voice actor and recording artist collapsed the usual distance between soundtrack and marketing, ensuring that every streaming play of "Broken & Beautiful" functioned simultaneously as a piece of promotion for the film.
The strategic context matters. UglyDolls entered a crowded animated film market in May 2019, competing directly against Pokémon Detective Pikachu, which grossed substantially more at the worldwide box office, according to reporting by Wikipedia and Deadline. In the United States, the animated and family film segment was fiercely contested, and STXfilms did not carry the franchise infrastructure of a Disney or Pixar release. Anchoring the campaign to a major recording artist with proven commercial appeal was a rational response to that asymmetry. Kelly Clarkson's history as a multi-Grammy-winning artist and the original winner of American Idol gave her name recognition that could reach audiences across age brackets — parents familiar with her pop catalogue and younger viewers drawn to the film's colourful premise.
Marshmello's involvement as co-producer on "Broken & Beautiful" adds a further strategic layer. By 2019, Marshmello was one of the most commercially visible electronic music producers in the United States, with a fanbase that skewed younger and was highly active on digital platforms. Pairing his production sensibility with Steve Mac's melodic craft — Mac being a BRIT Award-winning songwriter and producer behind major pop releases — created a song designed to perform across radio, streaming, and social media simultaneously. The global licensed merchandise and services market reached a scale described as substantial in 2019, according to Allied Market Research, and character licensing comprised a significant share of that total, underscoring the commercial logic of reinforcing the UglyDolls brand through music.
Jay Martin directed the "Broken & Beautiful" music video for UglyDolls. Martin, working through production company Hound, brought a visual approach that balanced the film's animated world with a live-action performance framework centred on Kelly Clarkson. The result is a music video that functions as both a promotional trailer surrogate and a standalone piece of filmed entertainment.
Producer Jeremy Sullivan oversaw the production, with the animation pipeline managed by ATK PLN under senior animation producer Samantha Daniel. The technical demands of blending animated UglyDolls characters with live-action footage required a structured CG operation. Jeff Masters handled CG supervision. Lighting and compositing were distributed across Lyn Caudle, Shannon Thomas, and Michael Zollinger, while Daniel Ries led modeling responsibilities. Technical supervision was managed by Jon Speer. Crowd and confetti sequences — elements that carry particular visual weight in a film about celebration, belonging, and colour — were produced by Ingenuity Studios. Final colour grading was completed by CO3.
The production credits, documented in full by Ads of the World, reveal a crew of meaningful size and specialisation for what is classified as a single-asset campaign. The choice to involve a dedicated animation studio in ATK PLN, alongside a separate vendor for crowd simulation, reflects the ambition to produce a music video that could stand as a cinematic object rather than a simple promotional clip. No advertising agency is identified in the available production record, which suggests the campaign was assembled as a music industry and studio production rather than through a conventional advertising supply chain. No direct creative quotes from the production team are publicly available. The campaign archive record, as noted by Ads of the World, was last updated on April 22, 2022.
No verified performance data for the "Broken & Beautiful" UglyDolls campaign is publicly available in terms of advertising-specific metrics such as sales lift, brand-tracking movement, awareness shifts, or media spend figures. What the public record does capture is a set of cultural and commercial signals that speak to the campaign's structural effectiveness.
"Broken & Beautiful" received nominations at both the 2019 Billboard Music Awards and the 2019 Teen Choice Awards, according to Wikipedia, though no win is verified at either ceremony. Nominations at these two awards bodies are meaningful indicators of radio and streaming traction in the United States, as Billboard nominations in particular are driven by chart performance data rather than industry voting alone. The song's presence in both pop and youth-oriented award cycles confirms it reached across the demographic spectrum the campaign was designed to address.
The film itself grossed approximately 32.1 to 32.5 million US dollars worldwide, according to Wikipedia and Deadline, against a production budget of 45 to 53 million US dollars, according to the same sources. In the United States, audience response on platforms such as Reddit reflected mixed sentiment toward the song at the time of its initial release, with commentary documented in the r/popheads community, according to Reddit. No trade press evaluation of the campaign from outlets including Ad Age, Adweek, Campaign, or The Drum was identified. Structurally, the decision to concentrate the campaign's creative and promotional weight in a single high-production music video — delivered by a director of Martin's calibre through a production company with animation capability — maximised the asset's utility across theatrical, digital, and broadcast contexts simultaneously.
"Broken & Beautiful" is the official anthem for the 2019 animated film UglyDolls, performed by Kelly Clarkson and produced by Marshmello and Steve Mac. Clarkson voiced the lead character Moxy in the film, performed the song, and appeared in the music video, making her the central creative and promotional presence across the entire campaign.
Jay Martin of production company Hound directed the music video. Producer Jeremy Sullivan oversaw the production, with animation handled by ATK PLN under senior animation producer Samantha Daniel, and crowd and confetti sequences completed by Ingenuity Studios, according to the production credits documented by Ads of the World.
Marshmello and Steve Mac produced "Broken & Beautiful" for Kelly Clarkson and the UglyDolls film. Marshmello brought a commercially visible electronic music profile to the project, while Steve Mac, a BRIT Award-winning songwriter and producer, contributed melodic craft suited to pop radio and streaming performance in the United States.
"Broken & Beautiful" received nominations at both the 2019 Billboard Music Awards and the 2019 Teen Choice Awards, according to Wikipedia. No win at either ceremony is verified. Billboard nominations are driven by chart performance data, confirming the song achieved meaningful streaming and radio traction in the United States during the campaign period.
UglyDolls grossed approximately 32.1 to 32.5 million US dollars worldwide against a production budget of 45 to 53 million US dollars, according to Wikipedia and Deadline. The film competed in a crowded United States animated market in May 2019, including against Pokémon Detective Pikachu, which recorded substantially higher box office returns.
No advertising agency is identified in the available production record for the "Broken & Beautiful" UglyDolls campaign, as documented by Ads of the World. The campaign appears to have been assembled as a music industry and studio production through STXfilms and Atlantic Records rather than through a conventional advertising agency supply chain.
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