Barbie: She’s Everything!
The name Barbie has been a staple in households worldwide for over six decades. With dolls sold by the thousands and a multimedia franchise spanning from TV shows, books, video games, and various animated films, it’s no wonder Barbie has become an iconic piece of popular culture today.
While one could argue that Barbie has always been an incredibly successful franchise, there is no denying that the brand has suffered some hiccups over the years. Barbie sales began to decline around the early 2010s due to consumer conversations surrounding body image issues and a noticeable lack of diverse representation from the dolls.
But Mattel listened!
Since 2015 Barbie has launched various dolls celebrating inclusivity with Barbies donning different body types and skin tones, hairstyles and hair textures, and even dolls reflecting differently-abled people, including those with hearing aids, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs, leading to a steady increase in sales over time.
The Most Anticipated Summer Film
The official live-action Barbie movie has been long awaited. It was first announced in 2009 by Universal Pictures and has since traveled from studio to studio, serendipitously waiting for the right people to pick up the project. Ten years later, Margot Robbie was announced to star in the feature film co-written and directed by Academy Award nominee Greta Gerwig.
The Barbie movie’s marketing campaign began in April 2022 when a first look at Margot Robbie as the titular character was revealed at CinemaCon and tweeted by the Warner Bros. Pictures official Twitter account using the hashtag Barbie and the movie’s release date. Much anticipation was garnered by both fans and critics alike, with the post being shared over 28,000 times.
By the summer of that year, pictures and videos from the film set appeared online. Images circulating of Robbie and her co-star Ryan Gosling, who plays Ken, rollerblading around Venice Beach accompanied by America Ferrera and Will Ferrell with no context to the scene or the characters created a considerable buzz around the film. Twitter users, in particular, wasted no time sharing the photos and began to speculate what they thought the movie would be about.
The Barbie Pink Takeover
Barbie’s style and signature color also had a renaissance beginning in mid-2022. With the released content revealing that Barbie pink was a prominent part of the film’s wardrobe, major fashion houses sought to partake in the trend and further capitalize on the hot pink agenda with what the Internet labeled Barbiecore fashion.
Luxury brand names like Valentino had entire looks and shows around the color and even went to dress celebrities in their fashions at prestigious award shows like the Grammys and the Oscars, and even high society events like the Met Gala that year.
Different and more accessible brands also understood the Barbie pink trend's power. People who grew up playing with and consuming Barbie content in the 90s and early 2000s are now, for the most part, working-class adults with disposable income who look forward to watching the film and partaking in the accompanying trends. Companies like Target and Zara took advantage of this fact, along with the rise of the Y2K aesthetic from the year before last, and cashed in on the nostalgia-inducing fashions with their lines of pink clothing and matching accessories catering to Millennials and Gen Z.
Digital content has helped maintain the trend through 2023, with the Barbiecore tag still going strong and gaining over 36 Billion views on TikTok alone! Content creators of all shapes, sizes, nationalities, and races are constantly using this tag along with phrases like “It’s Barbie’s world, and we’re just living in it” to share fashion and style inspiration, themed party ideas, and even various Barbie character inspired cosplays; there’s room for everyone in the online Barbie fandom.
Barbie vs. Oppenheimer: A Tale of Two Movies
Barbie hits the big screen on July 21st, 2023, the same day as Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer. The two movies could not be more diametrically opposed in story and style, yet both star-studded films have the internet in a frenzy.
While there is some talk of which film will do better financially at the box office, the court of public opinion has deemed that the best way to enjoy these movies is with a Barbie-Oppenheimer double feature.
Memes depicting how fans would dress for this potential 4-hour and 10-minute-long event have kept the conversation going for over a year now, and people have taken to Twitter to create mashup posters and ask movie theaters for back-to-back shows. This free online publicity has been an excellent way for both films to maintain a consistent stream of public interest and discussion.
We Are All Barbie.
One of Barbie’s most recent digital marketing efforts included releasing 24 movie character posters. Barbies, Kens, and Humans alike were all the internet could talk about on April 4th across most social media platforms. With the slogan “She is everything. He’s just Ken.” plastered on a poster that featured both Robbie and Gosling quickly catching on.
Before the day was over, the posters’ formatting had become viral! Fans began creating their own posters featuring their favorite actors or characters from their favorite shows and movies unrelated to the Barbie franchise.
One of the more popular ones is actor Jeremy Strong’s character Kendall Roy from HBO’s Succession, whose fourth and final season had premiered just a week prior. This fan even made a Kendall Roy “He’s just Ken” t-shirt using the poster’s template, labeling the Barbie movie branding as “flexible.”
Warner Bros. saw the traction the posters and subsequent memes were gaining online and quickly made an official fan poster generator. The Barbie Selfie Generator encourages fans to upload a selfie, essentially creating a movie poster featuring themselves, and proceed to share their icons with the hashtag #BarbieTheMovie on social media.
The Ultimate Marketing Ploy
Despite many on-set pictures circling the web, character posters, and two official movie teaser trailers, people have yet to learn what the Barbie movie is about. This air of mystery surrounding the plot is a deliberate choice from the film’s director to feed the ongoing conversation surrounding this movie. From the large and diverse cast to keeping the plot under wraps and feeding into the nostalgia of the original intellectual property, the anticipation behind the Barbie movie shows no signs of slowing down from now until its release date in July.
