Barilla
Best Portal Optimization Award
8,500+
employees
8
years with Bynder
30–40%
faster cascading transcreation process for campaign assets using CXUC
About
Barilla is one of the world's most recognized food companies, managing a multi-brand portfolio that includes household names like Barilla pasta and Wasa crispbread, as well as a range of local and regional brands. With large internal marketing teams and external agencies operating across multiple markets, managing brand operations and content governance at scale is a significant challenge, which ultimately led to a transformation of Barilla’s Bynder portal as part of its broader enterprise-wide content strategy.
Why Barilla is a winner
Barilla's portal refresh was a strategic response to a growing organizational need. As the company evolved and expanded its brand portfolio, the existing DAM configuration was no longer fit for purpose. Local brands lacked a proper home, advanced Bynder features were underutilized, and brand resources remained fragmented across 30+ SharePoint instances and legacy systems.
Following a strategy session, Barilla aligned around a clear and ambitious vision: one global DAM, one global PIM, one global CMS—integrated together—creating a connected, AI-powered content engine to fuel Barilla’s entire brand portfolio.
"Our goal is to connect all our systems so content can flow seamlessly across them. It's not only about having the best creative; it's about speed, automation, and economic efficiency.”— Silvia Sartori, Group Digital & Business Technology Marketing Director at Barilla
How Barilla uses Bynder
Barilla uses Bynder to solve four distinct content needs via one solution:
- A centralized DAM to serve as the single source of truth for 20+ brands
- A collaboration hub accelerating workflows between internal teams and external agencies
- A brand compliance tool enforcing governance and consistency
- A driver of content reuse and ROI through AI-powered discovery, reducing the need to commission new assets.
The portal refresh brought this strategy to life at scale. The rollout was sequenced deliberately, beginning with the most complex global brands, Barilla and Wasa, where large teams and high asset volumes demanded the most robust configuration, before expanding to simpler local brands.
Customizable homepages provide personalized entry points for different user groups, guiding users to the right content at the right time. CX User Community launch kits have replaced static PDF campaign guides with curated content hubs. Now global campaign owners can easily centralize campaign assets and go-to-market guidelines for local markets to find and activate everything they need autonomously.
The result is a leaner, faster process with fewer errors, wider campaign reach, and significantly less back-and-forth communication. The Wasa "Go Hard" campaign was the clearest proof point: Barilla shortened the end-to-end transcreation process for assets by an estimated 30–40% compared to before. AI Search is also driving faster discovery and greater asset reuse across the 40,000-asset library, with Natural Language Search and Similarity Search reducing the need to commission new content.
A zero-download philosophy underpins the integration roadmap. Rather than manually downloading and re-uploading assets between systems, Bynder feeds Salsify PIM directly and serves web content via Contentful. This "Golden Triangle" integration is currently being finalized and will mean that when an asset is approved in Bynder, it flows automatically across 40+ markets with governance maintained at the source, eliminating the risk of outdated or off-brand content sent downstream.
Looking further ahead, Barilla sees strong potential in Bynder's AI Agents: an Enrichment Agent for automated product image metadata application, a Compliance Agent for auditing influencer and social content against brand guidelines, and a Transformation Agent for generating SEO-optimized alt text across multiple languages.
What the judges say
Barilla’s ability to orchestrate a ‘single source of truth’ for 20+ diverse global brands is outstanding. This optimization move has transformed Bynder from a simple repository into a strategic platform that preserves brand equity. Achieving a 30-40% acceleration in campaign workflows is an industry-leading benchmark.— Sebastian Kubitschko, Practice Lead Content & Workflow at IBM iX DACH
Impact & ROI
- 20+ global and local brands using Bynder as a self-service system of record
- 30–40% faster transcreation of campaign assets via CX User Community
- Customizable homepages deliver tailored content experiences for different user audiences
- Interactive Launch Kits replacing static PDF campaign guides across the portfolio
- Empowering a zero-download content pipeline through integrations, with Bynder feeding Salsify and Contentful without manual workflows
