This summer, we’re all Barbie girls living in a Barbie world.

Ahead of tomorrow’s release of the Greta Gerwig-directed film Barbie, a marketing campaign about as large as the iconic doll’s ever-expanding wardrobe has painted the whole world hot pink. Barbie and her cohorts have been nearly inescapable: There have been billboards and branded beauty products, fashion collabs and frozen yogurt, trailers and TikTok trends.

Barbie’s Dreamhouse—which, apparently, is insured by Progressive—was brought to life on an HGTV home makeover show, while Airbnb rented out a separate magenta mansion. A Barbie boat docked in Boston Harbor for an evening of neon revelry. Contestants on ABC’s The Bachelorette donned Ken-inspired outfits in a special segment.

“They’ve stretched the IP to its limit,” Moshe Isaacian, a brand strategist who cataloged Barbie’s marketing efforts in a Twitter thread that has since gone viral, said. “It feels like almost every single piece of Barbie and its universe has been brought to life.”

The complete and total Barbiefication of 2023 comes at a key moment for the world’s leading doll brand, which underwent a successful brand turnaround in the late 2010s but has in recent quarters reported slumping sales. And it arrives at perhaps an even more critical moment for Warner Bros., which has slashed jobs and removed some programming from its streaming library as it scrambles to cut costs and chart a course toward profitability.

With a full-glam marketing effort and various viral trends to bolster Barbie’s chances of success, all signs point to the film being, somewhat inexplicably, a runaway hit. The Barbie brand’s unique malleability, shoppability, and Instagrammability have given the iconic doll the power to make potential theatergoers see pink. “This is a marketing campaign that’s become bigger than the movie itself,” Paul Dergarabedian, a senior media analyst with the measurement firm Comscore, told Marketing Brew.

Read the full story here.—KS

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All was quiet on the climate front this year at Cannes. Or was it?

Compared to last year, which saw Greenpeace storming beaches and jumping on stages, this year’s festival may have appeared relatively calm. However, groups like Clean Creatives were on the ground, reminding people—and specifically Richard Edelman—about the harms of working with fossil-fuel companies.

Duncan Meisel is executive director of Clean Creatives, an initiative he started in 2020 to sever ties between agencies and fossil-fuel companies. According to the organization, since its inception, 600 agencies have pledged to stop working with fossil-fuel clients, including Forsman & Bodenfors, Hunter, and Moxie Media.

We spoke with Meisel at Cannes about the group’s strategies—including the first Next Level Climate Summit, which it cohosted at this year’s festival—and whether the movement to get agencies to stop working with fossil-fuel companies is gaining traction. Read what he had to say here.—KH

Omnicom reported continued revenue growth in its Q2 earnings report released earlier this week.

The holding company’s organic revenue grew 3.4% YoY in the second quarter. Total revenue grew to $3.61 billion, missing analyst expectations. Its experiential and advertising/media disciplines experienced the most growth during the quarter, increasing 9.2% and 5.1%, respectively.

Omnicom touted its focus on investing in generative AI. “We’re responding with AI as if our hair were on fire,” chairman and CEO John Wren said during the earnings call. “We want to be leaders in this area.”

Keep reading here.—JS

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Handle it: Different types of interactions on social media with tips on how to respond to each one.

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