All the world is talking about Barbie, the good, the bad, the ugly. Is this movie too left-wing or right-wing or pushing this agenda or that?  All of it can make your head spin and question whether to take your family to see it.  And yes, this was all going through my head, too.  What is the right decision for my 7-year-old daughter who likes Barbies?

Well, I ended up taking my daughter to see the movie. We laughed, I cried, and we joked the whole way through. But what stuck out to me the most was how much I connected with this movie. Do I play with Barbies now? Of course not. Do I relive that area of my childhood with my children? Not so much. But at the end of the day, this movie was made for me. I was the Barbie movie’s key demographic.

As a marketer, your goal is to connect with your key demographic. Connection and personalization build brand loyalty. This is how the Barbie movie has already made more than $1 billion at the box office. The movie’s producers knew their key demographic wasn’t the 7-year-old who plays with Barbies or the grandparent who may have had the first Barbies ever. They knew the key demographic was middle-aged working women and mothers who have children 7-18 years old.

This is evident from the casting of actors those of us in that age group grew up with Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, America Ferrera from the comedy-drama, Ugly Betty; Will Ferrell and Kate McKinnon who both found fame on Saturday Night Live, and then on the big screen. We grew up living on the hopes, dreams, and romance found in The Notebook.  We related to Ugly Betty never being good enough, and who doesn’t still like classic comedic relief from Will and Kate?   The casting of this ensemble of iconic actors was perfect. 

As seen with the success of Barbie, knowing your audience and marketing directly to that group in ways that drive what feels like a personalized connection gives you a competitive edge.  It leads to stronger customer relationships and improved business performance.  Understanding your marketing audiences and personalizing your messages to them lead to higher engagement rates.  

Maybe you don’t know that Barbara wants to be called Barbie. Or who exactly your ideal audience is. Or maybe you don’t know exactly what your customers’ likes and interests are, but the good news is that there are tools that can help.

• A Data Portrait Analysis can apply thousands of unique insights to a customer base, giving brands a richer, more detailed understanding of people, helping refine marketing audience selection, and maximizing go-to-market efficiencies. It can also deliver powerful, unique insights into a brand’s most valuable audiences and allow them to compare these high-value segments to the U.S. population or a segment of the population to then identify the factors in the population they can address to move them into the high-value group.

• Using accurate market segmentation helps companies define and better communicate with their customers and prospects through a better understanding of their needs, desires, and buying behaviors. People are complex and dynamic and have high expectations for excellent customer experiences. Precise segmentation systems like Acxiom’s Personicx use scientific statistical models and techniques that allow brands to refine products and marketing programs to match the needs and wants of customers and prospects. Smart companies use the multidimensional insights segmentation offers to personalize their offerings, refine go-to-market strategies, and better customize the experiences they deliver. 

• Leveraging a foundational data product such as Acxiom’s InfoBase to offer data enhancement that enriches your brand’s first-party data with thousands of descriptive and predictive insights helps you better understand customers and prospects and personalize experiences across digital and offline channels. Through these data enrichment services, you can see the whole picture of people from their demographics to their likes, interests, and likely buying behaviors or brand affinity.

If you are like me and grew up in the 1980s and ’90s, go see Barbie.   You won’t regret it.   If you are a marketer looking to connect with people like the producers of the Barbie movie clearly did with me and countless others, reach out to us at Acxiom at [email protected].