One of the greatest things to learn as a marketer is never just look to your own market for inspiration or trends. Always look beyond your sphere of marketing activity to really create an edge.
Well Barbie has certainly got us thinking beyond the travel and leisure industry having pretty much swamped the marketing pages and communities over the past two months. This is a great example of taking a struggling brand and catapulting it to the forefront of office discussions by dusting off the mediocre marketing methods in favour of some good old fashioned polished PR (with a mega strategy behind it) – build an experience to build the brand.
The Barbie marketing team has really set the Malibu bar high with every possible piece of kit from the marketing toolbox and they have done it with pure panache as only Barbie herself would have done.
Mix fashion, cars, houses, beaches, holidays, and talent and you have a buffet of brilliance that has left us all championing the sheer pinkness of their strategies.
What’s even more exciting is how they have reached out into travel as there is now a real-life Malibu dream house available on Airbnb, can you barbielieve it? The mansion will be available to book from today (17 July) strictly on a first-come first serve basis via Airbnb’s website, fans will be able to request to book Ken’s bedroom in the DreamHouse free of charge.
This truly has been an education for the marketing industry in creating experiences and rejuvenating a brand through clever channel management, AI, brand partnerships, gaming, music, and pure visual pleasure.
There is so much to learn from this that we don’t even care about how the film does, we just want to lap up every Barbie meme and paint our offices and bedrooms pink.
