‘Barbie’ Was a Publicity Machine — Here’s How Barbie and 4 Other Blockbusters Mastered the Art of Marketing

By in Art World News

‘Barbie’ Was a Publicity Machine — Here’s How Barbie and 4 Other Blockbusters Mastered the Art of Marketing

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Barbie, the iconic doll that has captured the hearts of millions worldwide for over six decades, was created by businesswoman Ruth Handler, the co-founder of Mattel.

Barbie was inspired by Ruth’s observation that her daughter enjoyed playing with paper dolls representing adult women. Ruth envisioned a three-dimensional adult-like doll that would empower girls to imagine and role-play different professions and aspirations.

The first Barbie doll debuted at the American International Toy Fair on March 9, 1959, in New York City, instantly gaining popularity and sparking a cultural phenomenon.

Over the years, Barbie has evolved to embrace diversity, representing various ethnicities, professions and body types while remaining a symbol of inspiration, creativity and limitless possibilities for generations of children worldwide.

Related: What the ‘Barbie’ Movie Can Teach Businesses About Effective Multicultural Marketing

‘Barbie’ debuted on July 21, 2023, to a historic $162 million opening weekend domestically, coming in way ahead of the anticipated $90 million to $110 million and, perhaps even more remarkably, surpassing its $146 million production budget.

But that’s not why you’re here. You’re here because you’ve got your marketing hat on and are wondering, “Is marketing important when launching a product or a service?”

‘Barbie’ reportedly had a $150 million marketing budget. Here’s the breakdown of some of the marketing campaigns:

While the essence of a great film lies in its storytelling, there’s no denying the impact of marketing in propelling a movie to phenomenal success. The marketing plan for ‘Barbie’ definitely paid off because ‘Barbie’ had the biggest opening weekend of 2023 at the US box office.

In the fiercely competitive world of filmmaking, creating a successful movie requires much more than just a compelling script and talented actors.

Over the years, several films have demonstrated the art of investing heavily in marketing to achieve box office triumphs and leave an indelible mark on pop culture. Let’s explore some of these movies that became cinematic juggernauts by strategically investing in their marketing campaigns.

Related: ‘Barbie’ Is Driving a Huge Surge in Vintage Car Buying Says Hagerty CEO

1. Avatar (2009)

James Cameron’s groundbreaking sci-fi epic, “Avatar,” took the world by storm and revolutionized how movies were made and experienced. With an estimated budget of $237 million, the film’s marketing campaign spared no expense. Avatar couldn’t rely on brand (franchise) recognition to sell tickets, so it came up with an innovative promotional strategy:

  • Imax 3-D screening of the film on 130 screens (16 nonsequential minutes) to raise awareness about the new 3-D technology for four months before the film’s debut.
  • A video game trailer.
  • Mattel action figure set.
  • Partnerships with McDonald’s, Coke, LG and Panasonic.

The efforts paid off as “Avatar” became the highest-grossing movie ever, earning over $2.8 billion worldwide.

Related: From an Airbnb Stay at Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse to Frozen Yogurt Flavors and Park Benches—The ‘Barbie’ Movie Team Is Going All In on Marketing

2. The Avengers (2012)

Marvel Studios’ “The Avengers” was a cinematic event that brought together Earth’s mightiest heroes in a colossal ensemble spectacle. Marvel’s marketing team meticulously laid the groundwork for this epic team-up, starting with individual character films like “Iron Man,” “Captain America” and “Thor.”

Marvel orchestrated a 5-year marketing plan by planting seeds for the all-star “The Avengers” movie in its preceding global hits:

  • Iron Man (2008) – gross revenue of $585 Million
  • Thor (2011) – gross revenue of $449 Million
  • Captain America (2011) – gross revenue of $370 Million

If even one of the prior films had flopped, it is likely that “The Avengers” film would not have happened. The result? “The Avengers” became the first film to gross over $1 billion without the help of a re-release.

Related: The ‘Barbie’ Movie May Have Caused A Global Pink Paint Shortage

3. “Jurassic World” (2015)

Revisiting the beloved “Jurassic Park” franchise after a long hiatus was risky. Universal Pictures, however, made sure “Jurassic World” was a roaring success. With a substantial marketing budget, the studio launched a nostalgia-driven campaign that honored the original while presenting fresh, exhilarating content:

  • JurassicWorld.com — designed like a park, including an interactive map, camera installations and digital tour of attractions.
  • Jurassic World Youtube channel — corporate/educational videos about the park’s staff, videos by Simon Masrani, park founder, on the park philosophy, and collaborations between lead actor Chriss Pratt and prominent YouTube channels.
  • Shazaam app partnership — turned posters into dynamic content.

The film’s marketing campaign paid off spectacularly, becoming the first movie to gross over $500 million worldwide in its opening weekend.

4. “Deadpool” (2016)

“Deadpool” defied conventional superhero movie norms by embracing its R-rated nature and quirky humor. Ryan Reynolds, who played the titular character, played a significant role in the film’s marketing success. He actively engaged with fans on social media, shared witty promotional material, and even took part in offbeat marketing stunts, like posing as a faux bear for a Russian travel show. Some of the unconventional marketing campaigns:

  • The Emoji Billboard – AdWeek described the billboard as “So Stupid It’s Genius.”
  • Valentine’s Day prank – jokingly released as a romantic comedy.
  • Marketing on Tinder – users would match with Deadpool on the dating app.
  • 3 Hours of Ads – Spike, MTV, and VH1 advertised nothing but Deadpool for 3 hours straight.

The unconventional approach worked wonders, and “Deadpool” became the highest-grossing R-rated film ever.

The success of these movies is a testament to the power of marketing in the entertainment industry. By wisely investing in strategic and innovative promotional campaigns, studios were able to capture audiences’ imaginations and generate unparalleled box office returns. Beyond their compelling stories and visual splendor, these films are shining examples of how marketing can elevate a movie from merely successful to a cultural phenomenon.

Alaska souvenir store accused of selling artefacts falsely labelled as authentic ‘Native art’

By in Native

Alaska souvenir store accused of selling artefacts falsely labelled as authentic ‘Native art’

The state of Alaska is suing a souvenir store near an entrance to the popular Denali National Park and Preserve for selling artefacts and other wares that are allegedly falsely labelled as authentic “Native art” and “made in Alaska”.

According to the lawsuit, filed last week by the Alaska Department of Law, a store in the city of Fairbanks that is alternatively known as The Himalayan and Mt McKinley Clothing Company has falsely displayed artefacts, tourist trinkets and garments that its owners claim are made in the state and, in some cases, by Native artists.

During a visit by an undercover investigator, the store’s owners allegedly “made the false claims that the store was a non-profit that was owned by the Yakutat Village Council, that they were volunteering at the store, that the alpaca products were made from Yakutat alpacas, that products in the store were made by Alaska Natives in Yakutat and that proceeds were returned to the Village Council”, per the complaint. According to the Alaska Beacon, the Yakutat Village Council does not exist and there are no native alpacas in the state.

According to the complaint, the clothes being sold at the store are mostly made in Nepal, while other objects are imported from countries including India and Thailand. In many instances, the store’s owners allegedly replaced labels listing the goods’ true countries of origin with ones indicating they were made in Alaska.

Selling foreign-made goods as being made in Alaska is a violation of state law. If the store’s owners are found to have falsely presented artefacts as having been made by an Alaska Native or member of a Native American community, they risk violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act, a federal crime.

In response to the lawsuit, a judge in the state’s superior court, Patricia Haines, issued a preliminary injunction and restraining order against the store and its owners, which bars them from selling any more objects advertised as having been made in Alaska or by an Alaska Native without state approval. The state is also seeking a penalty against the store’s owners of $25,000 for each violation of state law, with the total number to be determined at trial.

The lawsuit comes amid a broader crackdown on sales of objects falsely advertised as having been made by Indigenous artists, particularly in areas heavily trafficked by tourists as travel in the US surpasses pre-pandemic levels. In May, an artist who sold works that were fraudulently advertised as Native American art at a gallery in Seattle’s popular Pike Place Market was sentenced to 18 months of federal probation for violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.

The Fractional Art Market Keeps on Expanding

By in Art World News

The Fractional Art Market Keeps on Expanding

The fractional art firm Masterworks has bought at least 35 works by Yayoi Kusama that it has sold in shares to the public, according to ArtTactic. Pictured is “You, Me and the Balloons,” a Kusama exhibition held at Aviva Studios in June in Manchester, England.


Getty Images

The business of selling just a slice of a painting is turning out not to be a flash in the pan. 

A report Wednesday by London-based ArtTactic documents the growing number of so-called fractional art platforms, and finds “interest in fractional ownership investments in art and collectibles shows no sign of abating,” despite a slowdown in global art sales. 

With the exception of Masterworks, a New York-based company that began acquiring art in 2017, many fractional art companies are relatively new and each has its own take on the market. 

Delaware-based Freeport, for instance, is courting crypto enthusiasts by distributing its shares via tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, while investors in London’s new Ikon Exchange can buy shares in artworks owned by institutions and others who want to get liquidity out of their holdings. 

According to the report, individual investors appear to be increasingly interested in buying fractions of artworks. Though they may not get to fully own a painting by Pablo Picasso or Yoshitomo Nara, buying a bit of one provides a share in the work’s appreciation when it’s sold. 

A separate April report on online art buying by ArtTactic for



Hiscox

insurance found 9% of art collectors surveyed had bought fractional shares, but that 61% said they likely would in the next 12 months. Nearly half of those surveyed have collected art for more than 10 years. 

“Many see these new investment models as a democratization of an otherwise hard-to-access market place, particularly from an investment perspective,” the report said. 

ArtTactic’s research on the fractional art market delves most deeply into Masterworks, a pioneer in the sector, which continues to grow and develop its platform and has increasingly bought more costly works. Since the company began acquiring art in 2017, it has spent a total of US$787 million through June, ArtTactic said. 

The report is based on data and information collected from SEC filings and doesn’t include purchases that haven’t been filed yet, a spokesman for the company noted.

In the first half of this year, Masterworks bought 73 new art pieces valued at nearly US$180 million. The average price for each was nearly US$2.5 million, though the company bought Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Untitled (Pollo Frito), 1982, for US$33.05 million in May and an untitled Basquiat work from 1983 for US$14.1 million in April, the report said. Both artworks were acquired in private transactions, which is how the company has bought a majority of its art, according to ArtTactic’s analysis.

On Tuesday, Masterworks launched the sale of 1.8 million Class A shares to the public of Pollo Frito for a total price of US$36.7 million. 

The real question for investors is what kind of return to expect, because buying shares of an artwork is fundamentally an investment in an asset class, similar to buying a share of stock in a company. 

There’s no guarantee any work will appreciate in value, but Masterworks 14 sales through July 10 have realized net returns to investors ranging from 3% for Andy Warhol’s Flowers, 1964-65—which the company bought for US$3 million and sold for US$3.5 million—to 86% for Sam Gilliam’s Tracing, 1971, which it bought for US$700,000 and sold for US$1.65 million. 

A collaboration between Delaware-based investment company Artemundi and Sygnum Bank, a digital asset bank based in Zurich, which sold Pablo Picasso’s Fillette au béret in October 2021, recently sold the 1964 painting and returned 20% to investors, ArtTactic said. 

Other new entrants in the sector include ARTSPLIT, based in Lagos, Nigeria, which is selling shares in African art and music; London-based Showpiece, which sells shares in collectibles in addition to fine art; and Swiss-based Arkefi. 

The Artex Group, based in Liechtenstein, also launched this year to sell shares of major artworks (valued at US$50 million or more) via a multilateral trading facility regulated by the Financial Market Authority of Liechtenstein. The company will be selling secondary market shares via placement agents in Francis Bacon’s Three Studies for a Portrait of George Dyer later this year. The painting is valued at US$55 million. 

City to commission mural artist for Development Center hallway

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City to commission mural artist for Development Center hallway

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The City of Norman is calling out artists to paint an inside hallway of its Development Center.

The contract is worth $15,000 to paint a 9-foot-by-55-foot mural.

The Development Center, which previously housed the Norman Central Library before it was moved north of Andrew’s Park, now houses different municipal entities, according to Erinn Gavaghan, executive director of the Norman Arts Council.

“This is a mural that the NAC and the city have collaborated on,” Gavaghan said.

As part of the renovation, she said the city built a long white hallway which leads to a reception desk, and that locals have been confused because they don’t feel like they are in the right place.

“The city wanted to make sure that the public understood that this is a space for them,” she said. “When you enter the building, you have to go down this 60-foot-long white clinical-looking hallway, and you may ask yourself whether you are even supposed to be there.”

To make the hallway more welcoming, the city decided to commission a mural on one side, and it will commission rotating framed works of art on the other side of the hallway, which will be announced at a later date.

“When people walk through the door, we want them to feel welcomed by the mural, then they’ll understand that they are supposed to be there, and it is the right place,” she said.

She said artists must be from Oklahoma, and preference will be given to Norman and Native American artists, and at $15,000 for the nearly 500 square feet, she said the ticket is competitive with the standard rate of mural artists in the state.

“The nice thing about it is that being an interior space the artists won’t require scaffolding. It has air conditioning inside, so it will be a comfortable project all-around,” she said.

The recently renovated building is equipped with meeting space and new technology. It holds different city boards and commissions, as well as Parks and Recreation, Utilities, and Public Works departments.

“The building will hold entities that have to do with the physical development of Norman,” Gavaghan said.

The city has also earmarked $150,000 to jumpstart a mural program in Norman. Gavaghan said the arts council is working on a rotating mural exhibit at the Gray Street Parking Lot, 219 E. Gray St.

“One of the things that we’re going to do with those funds is do a rotating mural program,” she said. “The installation is temporary, so the murals will only be up for about a year, and then they’ll be painted over and new murals will go up in their place.”

She said the rotating murals will go on the alley side of Gray Street Parking lot, and that the first mural should go up by next spring.

Matt Peacock of Ward 8 said art is an important element that reflects the culture of a city.

“Murals can promote a sense of civic pride, celebrate history and culture, raise community visibility and help activate a successful place. Murals are a low-impact way to bring life to any space, and can oftentimes take on a life of their own,” he said.

He said VisitNorman sells merchandise with the downtown Financial Center mural on it because the mural has become so ingrained with Norman’s identity.

“That it is now a marketable part of this city. This is the power and effect of murals,” he said.

For information, visit https://normanarts.org/.

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Photographer Shows How Fast Grizzly Bears Attack in Heart-Stopping Video

By in Photography

Photographer Shows How Fast Grizzly Bears Attack in Heart-Stopping Video

A photographer has revealed just how quickly a grizzly bear can attack in an heart-stopping video that has resurfaced online.

A photographer has revealed just how quickly a grizzly bear can attack in a heart-stopping video that has resurfaced online.

In the intense footage, wildlife photographer Aaron Teasdale sets up his camera to capture the release of a 22-year-old grizzly bear back into the wild in The Whitefish Range in Montana, U.S.

According to Teasdale’s Instagram post, the huge bear had been causing trouble and getting into chicken coops, so officers from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) decided to trap and release him in a more isolated area.

The photographer expected the grizzly to bolt towards a nearby creek when released. So, he set up his camera on a tripod accordingly.

However, the enormous creature had other ideas and wanted to get “revenge on the damn humans with the audacity to trap him.”

Instead, Teasdale’s camera captured a grizzly bear attack from an astonishing first-hand perspective.

In the clip, the grizzly bear launches from the trap with astonishing force and then furiously bounds toward the photographer’s camera at high speed.

The creature fearsomely charges towards the camera with its mouth wide open and ferociously takes down the camera tripod within a matter of seconds.

“Check out how he explodes from the trap as soon as the door is high enough. Then he almost takes his camera with him,” Teasdale writes in the caption.

The Sheer Speed of a Grizzly Bear

The footage reveals the sheer speed and power of the huge animals — and what it would be like to experience a grizzly bear attack first-hand.

Teasadale’s video was shot in September 2018. However, the footage has surfaced recently and been reported on by publications such as Advnture and The Manual in the last few weeks.

The Manual reports the photographer’s footage demonstrates just how fast and unpredictably grizzly bears can attack. Despite its enormous size and bulky frame, a grizzly is armed with astonishingly powerful forelegs and can easily outrun a human.

According to the National Wildlife Federation, the grizzly bear is the fastest of the eight bear species, reaching speeds of up to 35 mph.

Grizzlies have protruding, muscle-mass-topped shoulder blades that power their forelimbs to run and dig. They also have impressive claws that can grow to be more than four inches long, which helps them find their footing on soft land.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.

Photography Club of Citrus Hills: Young models help photographers hone their skills

By in Photography

Photography Club of Citrus Hills: Young models help photographers hone their skills
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“Fun, great, interesting, more interactive meetings like this,” were the comments made at the July meeting of the Photography Club of Citrus Hills, when three youngsters from Step Ahead Performing Arts School were the models for club members to practice their photography skills.

Jerry Dawson opened the meeting and introduced Larry and Tiffany Mitchell, owners of the school, and their three children, Sagan, Blyth and Sastia. There were three back drops set up: One was loaned by Ken and Sue Voegele and two more were kindly donated to the club by member Mary Trice.

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