The long awaited barbie movie launched and the globe went in full pink mode, months running up to it and way after too. So many brand officially linked or not cleverly worked it into their marketing plans. It was hard to avoid even if you wanted too. The budget for the movie for marketing has been rumoured to be around $150 million when production of the film itself was $145m. It’s a bold move, but it worked, it’s predicted to have smashed box office records for the amount of people who have seen it and amount of money from tickets. More than that, it put the movie at the top of conversation regardless or being a Barbie fan or not, it was hard to walk down the street or open any social media without some sort of reference. It was powerful, how a colour and imagination was captured by the world. As of about a week ago, Barbie has achieved a success of $1.34 billion at the box office and I’m sure it going on digital rental it will make much more.
The beginning of Barbie strategy using the AI to make people apart of the Barbie movie, it spread across social media in the blink of an eye. The movie, kept with its nostalgic emotional memories of Barbie through the generations and harnessed the power of their strong brand identity of colours, typeface and the use of the icons Barbie Box. The nostalgia of generations of people triggering hours of childhood playtimes, but with a new and fresh storyline to capture a whole new audience too.
The power of a brand colour
The shade of pink that makes us all go Barbie without even a logo in site. Most brands big or small, with time and consistency in marketing, even with smaller brands can be achieved. Then what you have is super super powerful, emotive and also leave such a lasting impression with your customers or clients. It’s not about changing and updating your brand, as it’s about staying relevant, changes to a brand should always at the core have the essence of what the brand is about. Colour can be a powerful thing, the Cadbury purple on a bar of chocolate that the thought just evokes that taste, and the yellow and blue of IKEA and even if it fills you with fear or building flatpack you instantly recognise it and it sparks an emotion good or bad (in some cases).
The barbie doll box being in public places, like cinemas and shopping centres, was interactive and fun and who wouldn’t want to pretend to be a barbie in the box for a few minutes. It also had mass sharing appeal, driving engagement even higher.
Good example of this was the outside advertising, when they released a billboard for the movie opening July 21, with just a pink billboard and the date of release in the Barbie font. No other details but everyone knew what it was about at a quick glance.
Partnerships
Barbie marketing lead a lot with partnerships, with over 100 brands, and both together financially benefited from the sale of products or services and promotion for the movie. By using a range of brands, it activated different sectors, different communities to resonate with the brand and then strengthened the association between them. It also brought Barbie reach an audience of different diversity and inclusivity, meeting their audience where anyway.
Partnerships can be super powerful but often come with financial costs that small brands maybe not be able to make financially work but there are ways to use partnerships for mutual benefits and something that can be explored and be very successful. The key with them is to have a brand or influencer to partner with a genuine enthusiasm for your product/service as this will then have a great ripple affect and feel natural.
Technology
Barbie used AI technology to let you step into a Barbie Poster with your own lovely face. Not only an amazing piece of technology but also something everyone wanted to get involved with and with each share on social media reminded people of Barbie. It got people old and young involved and from every walk of life with it’s super easy interface. Using the tagline of this Barbie is… as well as some nice ones, some people created cheeky taglines, but this only then shared the brand more, and the fun you could have with it and captured people’s inner child.
Google pages turned glittery on the actors’ pages when it mentioned Barbie, it brought the Barbie world into the real world, it was fun and engaging in a unique way.
None official but fun ideas
What was amazing, was the fact brands, even not officially linked found fun and creative ways to be a part of the hype, stay in the conversation and boost their brands through it.
Here are some fab examples of brands, pushing barbie but not in an official way, just a clever use of words and colours to hint just enough to not get into trouble with Mattel.
Here are some of my favourites.
Mayco colour are a brand that do pottery equipment and glazes and did a barbie and Oppenheimer post about colours which i thought was fun and unexpected. Culture hustle, the amazing people there, using Barbie branding to create a barbiest pink. They then followed up with posts about not letting Mattel get hold of the pink due to pink paint shortages. I love how they play with brands and aren't scared to have fun. Like they did with the blackest black paint and Anish Kapoor in a previous campaign. I loved the use of Barbie in this recruitment post for creative industry, where they did there adverts looking like if Barbie designed a job add. Even BBC Earth got involved with finding pink parts of nature during launch week which was super fun of them. Arnold Clark did a fab post about 'Come on Barbie, let's go to Arnold Clark.' and just pink cars, which was so simple but couldn't deny it's playfulness. My last top hit was Heinz, which I'm not 100% was a partnership or not but still super fun when they suggested 'Kenchup' and 'Barbiecue' in their feed.
If you have a budget of $150m for marketing or a few thousand, you can always be creative and fun with it and create an impactful campaign, which creates a smile or evokes an emotion in your consumer or service user.
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