All Hail Barbie: How to Sell A Movie

Last year, during his keynote address at Brand Licensing Europe 2022, Mattel president and chief operating officer Richard Dickson said the American toy manufacturer wants to triple the Barbie consumer products business by 2025. “With a raft of films and TV on the way, and with franchise models that we believe will unlock value proposition, that goal of tripling the business – which admittedly seems very big at first – suddenly becomes very do-able,” said Dickson. One step in that plan of action is Greta Gerwig’s film Barbie, which is taking the idea of being in the pink of good health quite literally. 

With an estimated budget of $145 million and an additional $100 million (approximately) said to have been spent on promotions, Barbie’s pre-publicity has been both lavish and distinctive. There are simple, tech ideas, like the Barbie Selfie Generator which uses artificial intelligence to edit one’s photos to resemble film's posters. Then there are more elaborate schemes that blur the lines dividing fiction and reality, like the hot pink-coloured house in Malibu that will be given out for free, on July 21 and July 22, to two guests each. The lucky couples will be selected on a first-come-first-serve basis. “Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse is back on Airbnb – but this time, Ken’s hosting,” reads the property’s listing on Airbnb. 

The tie-up with Airbnb is made up of the conceit that Ken has revamped a part of Barbie’s house to suit his tastes. Since Ken’s “thing is beach, not math”, he is not charging guests for their one-night stay. They get to sleep in his bedroom, wear his clothes, use his outdoor dance floor and take home Impala’s Barbie-themed skates and surfboards. 

Barbie’s temporary kingdom extended to the capital city of the United Kingdom. Trafalgar Square, the London Eye, the Oxo Tower and The W Hotel were all lit pink on the night of the film’s premiere in London, on July 12. Laura Citron, the chief executive officer of Visit London, the official city guide, said in an interview with Metro, “With so much of the film shot locally at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden and brought to life by a wealth of local creative talent who worked on the film, we’re proud to celebrate London’s role in what is sure to be one of the biggest films of the year.” 

Other brands the film has collaborated with include OPI, NYX, Aldo, Gap and Forever 21. They’ve teamed up with Xbox to release pink consoles and controllers, and the Xbox-published car-racing video game Forza Horizon 5 allows gamers to ride in Barbie’s 1956 Chevrolet Corvette and Ken’s 2022 GMC Hummer EV pickup. The mobile game Candy Crush has an integration with Barbie and if you search for the doll or the film on Google, your screen will turn pink with sparkly confetti. Brands like Canada Pooch (which makes pet clothes), Ruggable (who make rugs) and Funboy (who make pool floats) have also announced tie-ups with Barbie. 

In India, Mumbai’s St Xavier’s College was dressed in pink for a Barbie Blowout party that the college hosted on July 16. The event was a collaboration between Malhar, the official college fest, and Warner Bros. India, which is distributing the film in India. College goers showing up dressed as Barbies and Kens. There was a “flash mob”, life-size Barbie boxes to pose in, a DJ performance, and a game in which boys competed for premiere tickets by dancing in heels. The party also saw Baskin Robbins, the film’s official dessert partner in India, serving ice cream free of charge. The ice cream company has also launched the Mermaid Sundae to celebrate Gerwig’s film. 

The aim of hundred-plus collaborations is to get “everyone playing with Barbie.” What makes the campaign remarkable is that we know nothing about the plot of the film. Neither the trailer nor the few promotional videos, like the Ken song, reveal anything of what will happen in the film. All we know is that the film’s cast boasts of some of Hollywood’s most talented and that the brand of Greta Gerwig as a feminist director is strong. 

During an interview with Toy World in 2022, Dickson was asked if the film is going to be a catalyst for the Barbie brand. “For sure, the movie is going to create another level of conversation about Barbie. But it’s important to remember that the brand doesn’t depend on this movie. Barbie has gone 63 years without a movie, and she’s done pretty well anyway,” he said. Gerwig has, according to reports, been given a free hand to do whatever she wants to create a mythology for Barbie, who has become part of popular culture across the world and been subtly realigned over the years to fit in with the discourse around idealised femininity. “Whether the creative is content or products or live experiences, as long as they’re within the guardrails of the brand’s DNA then Barbie, true to the message she imparts to today’s girls, can be anything she wants to be,” said Dickson. 

Since the power to empower rests to a large extent in Mattel’s hands, Barbie is perhaps first a two-hour-long commercial to revive the buzz around the six-decade-old doll and to help the toy company attain its financial goals. Only after that is it a film through which Gerwig will turn conventions on their head, constructing Barbie as a contemporary icon and not just a malleable figurine with the unachievable anatomy of perky breasts, tiny waist, long legs and a head that rotates 360 degrees.