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Jul 18, 2023

Barbie makes $1b at global box office, courtesy ‘masterclass’ marketing campaign

ABC – Barbie has surpassed $1 billion at the global box office just three weeks after its release – and it’s on track to become the biggest movie of the year. The film, produced by Australia’s Margot

ABC – Barbie has surpassed $1 billion at the global box office just three weeks after its release – and it’s on track to become the biggest movie of the year.

The film, produced by Australia’s Margot Robbie who plays the iconic doll having an existential crisis, hit what the internet has dubbed the “Barbillion” milestone this weekend.

Upon its release, the film earned director Greta Gerwig the record for the most successful box office weekend for a female director.

Now, Gerwig has become the first female filmmaker to surpass the billion-dollar benchmark as a solo director.

“As distribution chiefs, we’re not often rendered speechless by a film’s performance, but Barbillion has blown even our most optimistic predictions out of the water,” said Jeff Goldstein and Andrew Cripps, who oversee domestic and international distribution for the studio, in a joint statement.

Now, Barbie just needs to topple The Super Mario Bros Movie to become the most successful flick of 2023.

Barbie was already an iconic piece of intellectual property, but experts say those behind the film did not rest on their laurels, and they credit its “masterclass” marketing campaign for its global success.

The Barbie hype machine

ABC Arts film reviewer Michael Sun called the Barbie marketing campaign “simultaneously the most tireless and tiresome of any film in recent memory”.

There’s a Barbie Dreamhouse Airbnb in Malibu. There are Barbie gaming consoles, Barbie rugs, Barbie suitcases, Barbie burgers (complete with a mysterious pink sauce) and even a Barbie collaboration with an insurance company.

“A lot of fashion retailers have jumped on board as well,” Graeme Hughes, director of Griffith’s Business Lab, said.

Hughes says Barbie’s impact on the retail sector has been “significant”, adding the scale of Barbie’s marketing campaign has been “outside of the box, no pun intended”.

“It’s really a triumphant marketing campaign,” he said.

“I would say that it’s a marketing masterpiece.”

Warner Bros remains tight-lipped about just how deep the Barbie marketing team’s pockets are, but Variety estimates the company has spent roughly $US150 million (about $227 million). And that’s on top of the rumoured $US145 million production budget.

“It’s way, way out of the ordinary,” said Dee Madigan, creative director of Campaign Edge.

‘A life of its own’

Barbie’s marketing campaign started more than a year before its release.

Warner Bros president of global marketing Josh Goldstine said the first “electric” moment of the campaign was at CinemaCon last year, when the company released a single image of Margot Robbie, as Barbie, laughing in a pink Corvette.

“It was one of those moments that took on a life of its own,” Goldstine told Variety.

Two months later, the company released the first image of Ryan Gosling’s Ken.

What quickly followed were leaked images from the set, a situation which was hard to avoid considering the scene involved Robbie and Gosling rollerblading along Venice Beach in full view of the public.

When a second teaser trailer was released in April, so too were dozens of cast posters, with Robbie’s tagline being “Barbie is everything” and Gosling’s reading: “He’s just Ken.”

The company released a filter so fans could get involved, but the memes came thick and fast and became far more viral.

‘Using pink was brave’

In an interview with Architectural Digest, production designer Sarah Greenwood revealed the film used so much pink paint to create Barbieland that “the world ran out of pink”.

“It was absolutely a masterclass and it’s because it was brave,” Madigan said.

“I think we get to the point that when you’re doing it so over the top, it doesn’t become over-promoted, it becomes fun again.

“If you’re going to do this, just go all out. And that’s what they did.”

In a piece titled After Barbie, Mattel Is Raiding Its Entire Toybox, The New Yorker revealed Mattel has another 45 other projects in development.

That’s on top of the 13 it has already announced, from a Polly Pocket movie directed by Lena Dunham and starring Lily Collins, to a Hot Wheels film by JJ Abrams.

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