How One Brand Made it The Summer of Pink with Scott Mitchell, Vistar Media

It’s the summer of Barbie and it’s safe to say our team at Marketing News Canada is loving the undeniable thoughtfulness that was put into the branding of the 2023 movie starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.

Since we just can’t get enough, we decided to interview Scott Mitchell, Managing Director at Vistar Media (Canada), to hear his thoughts on the—if we may say so ourselves—incredible Barbie branding.

Here’s what Scott had to say.

1. What separates strong branding from average branding? How did the Barbie brand exceed our expectations from a marketing perspective?

Scott Mitchell: Context. Context is everything when it comes to separating strong branding from average branding. This means reaching customers at the right place during key moments and ensuring the brand messaging aligns with the customer’s real-time experience.

The Barbie campaign nailed this with its approach. The iconic Barbie colour and font can be easily identified by many, and they’ve leaned into it with out-of-home ads that reflect just that - a pink background and the date of the movie, that’s it. Now, that type of brand recognition doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from a sophisticated omnichannel strategy - and years of evolving targeting and creative - stretching across branded collaborations, social media promotion and pink-carpet events.

2. What can you tell us about place-based marketing best practices? From what you can see, did the Barbie brand do anything differently when it came to targeting its audience?

SM: Place-based marketing goes back to context. It is focused on contextually relevant environments like office buildings, malls, gas stations, gyms, taxis and rideshares, restaurants, bars, universities, you name it. Since many consumers spend most of their day outside the home, the contextually relevant nature of place-based advertising channels, such as digital out-of-home screens, provides a unique opportunity to engage with consumers as they go about their everyday activities in places where creative messaging can be matched to the location.

When it comes to Barbie and that all-pink billboard I mentioned, one of the places you could see it was outside a well-known toy store. That ad might not resonate inside an office building elevator, for instance, but surrounding a toy store makes perfect sense for the audience demographic their marketing team is likely targeting. This is place-based marketing done right. It is mindful of its audience’s motivations and priorities at that moment and engages with them accordingly.

3. What are the key takeaways from the Barbie campaign? What should other brand marketers be noting if their goal is achieving akin success?

SM: There are two notable design wins worth calling out when it comes to the minimalistic out-of-home Barbie campaign - colours and imagery. Colour is a signal our brain perceives quickly and processes automatically. By leveraging the iconic pink colour, Barbie has instantly grabbed its audience’s attention. From there, the amount of copy (or lack thereof) on its billboards has actually enabled consumers to process and understand the ad faster than if it were full of text. These creative best practices in conjunction with place-based marketing and a consistent omnichannel approach are critical for all brands to consider when engaging with Canadian consumers today.

Interview conducted by Sydney Vardja, Editor of Marketing News Canada