36
votes
Inside ‘Barbie’s’ pink publicity machine: How Warner Bros. pulled off the marketing campaign of the year
https://variety.com/2023/film/box-office/barbie-marketing-campaign-explained-warner-bros-1235677922/
One of the things I thought was brilliant, which we talked about on this site when Bros bombed on three different occasions, is that the marketing did not focus on how "important" it is to watch this movie or how "historic" it would be. The filmmakers behind it also didn't go on saying "if men don't watch this it proves they hate women" or whatever which is what happened with Bros and originally happened all the way back with Ghostbusters 2016.
They marketed it as a fun comedy. Literally one of the taglines is "If you love Barbie, if you hate Barbie, this movie is for you" it's so simple, so effective in getting around the whole "you need to watch this cause x, y, z." No one actually wants to be told if you don't do your homework you're a bad person, what they want to do is watch a fun movie and this delivered on that front.
I think this is also one of those areas where the talent does a lot for it. I saw it Friday, and am not a target demographic (straight white male in his late 20s) and normally avoid big movies based on toy IPs like the plague. But I have been on the hook to go see it from early on. That’s basically solely because I like Gerwig, Gosling, and Robbie. I find they tend to make interesting movies and was curious to see what they did with it. I’ve seen very little of the marketing and went solely for that reason.
It was fun but I imagine we’re gonna get a lot of mediocre derivatives from executives that don’t understand why it worked. Hiring good talent and giving them the money and space to do something interesting can have really good returns when done well.
Don't worry, this was planned well before the release.. JJ Abrams has already been tapped to direct a Hot Wheels movie, which he's described as "emotional and grounded and gritty," and that's just one of forty-five movies Mattel is planning.
Let’s hope that inspires Hasbro to step up its cinematic quality. Live-action My Little Pony when?
For the love of God, why would you even remotely invoke /u/elbowdeepinahorse?!?
Now that's a username I was not expecting to see mentioned on Tildes.
If Barbie playing with Hot Wheels becomes canon, I'd say that's actually a win
There's already a great She-Ra show where everyone's gay. It could work for He-Man.
What kind of author is “Q.ai - Powering a Personal Wealth Movement”?
My dad worked for a toy company that was purchased by Mattel in the 90s. He was haunted by all these IPs through my childhood, lol. I remember him bitterly complaining about tiny pocket toy prototypes he was sculpting. I just sent him this article, the IPs are back from the dead and after him lol
Forty five?! I guess that makes me hopeful for the 17 Mattel shares I own, but I fear these movies will get boring and repetitive.
Well they already have JJ Abrams working on an "emotional, grounded, and gritty" Hot Wheels. Take that as you will.
You think it's gonna be a sequel to the two different Forza Horizon Hot Wheels DLCs?
That's horrifying. Barbie is one of the best movies of the past few years but there's no way any of these will even reach the bar of "decent." Oh well, at least the push to try another intellectual property clusterfuck got them to let Greta Gerwig do what she wanted.
I think you actually are one of the target demographics for it. Maybe you're not a target demographic for buying barbie dolls, but I do think you are for this movie. They chose Gerwig, Gosling, and Robbie for a reason.
I agree with this. I really just meant I’m not the standard target of a Barbie film. Obviously I’m very much a target for this specific Barbie film.
I don't think I've seen any of the actual commercials for Barbie, but for the last couple weeks or so I've been thinking their publicity dept must be working overtime b/c of all the "Barbieheimer" articles I saw. And I mean I saw them everywhere, in all the movie/entertainment sites as well as in our local weekly (though it was hard to tell if our local underpaid writers were actually getting some of that graft or if they were just buying into the hype w/o remuneration). Setting up and constantly pushing the opening-day "conflict" b/t the two movies
was obviouslyseemed to be well-planned and well-orchestrated.You're probably right - that's good insight into the studio politics I wasn't aware of. I can easily believe I made the mistake of crediting the marketing departments of the major studios w/ too much intelligence.
This article claims 'barbenheimer' was organic social media activity, but i don't believe that for a hot second.
We know the Synderverse stuff was fake.
I saw people talking about a double header of movies when the release dates were announced like a year ago. It's definitely picked up a lot of steam recently, but I would believe initially it was organic.
Who really knows? I'd love to be a fly on the wall for some of those marketing meetings
I can easily imagine a situation where it did start organically but some exec heard about it from their kid/grandkid and the studio rolled with it.
Something that has seriously helped this movie is all the memes about barbieheimer. I know about a dozen people who have all gone to watch them back to back, or at least in the same weekend.
How many more guerrilla marketing posts do we need to endure?