Barbie Has Her Viral Moment
Many have questioned whether Warner Bros. & Mattel’s Barbie can break out as a genuine, four-quadrant summer blockbuster. WB locked in a prime July release date between new entries in the Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible franchises and Christoper Nolan’s latest adult blockbuster, Oppenheimer. With competition this fierce, Barbie will require cross-generational appeal that has eluded many toy-based films in the past.
Back in December, the first teaser for the film was released. The 1-minute, 25-second spot is a mini spoof of 2001: A Space Odyssey with a sizzle reel of footage from the movie at the end. It quickly and masterfully answered the question that many wondered about when the movie was first announced in 2016 with Amy Schumer attached to star: who is this for?
Barbie has fans of all ages. The movie, written and directed by Greta Gerwig, could have played it safe by catering to young kids and families. The teaser illustrated that Barbie might have some surprises up its miniature sleeves. Still, with little to go off in terms of story, many hesitated to declare the movie a surefire hit.
That all changed this week with the release of the second teaser trailer and 24 character posters. The new teaser does a good job of addressing the film’s tone and, more importantly, sense of humor. But it was the character posters – and their silly taglines – that stole the show.
Most studio films with a large ensemble cast roll out character posters with little fanfare. They might be used between trailer releases or in the week leading up to a movie to capture some headlines and remind viewers that the movie will be out soon. Character posters rarely generate much fanfare. If they do, it might be for the wrong reasons. Remember Zendaya is Meechee?
Something about the glittery, saccharine aesthetic of the poster, with each character housed inside the iconic Mattel logo, accompanied by a short, declarative tagline, caught the Internet’s attention. The taglines themselves are blunt and humorous.
Barbie is everything.
He’s just Ken.
He’s another Ken.
This Barbie is a mermaid.
This Barbie is President.
Soon, all of social media was being bombarded with Barbie-branded meme posters.
The sign of any good meme is its ability to absorb previous memes while maintaining the ability to stand on its own. The image below references an original song performed at the BAFTA's earlier this year by Ariana DeBose. The lyric, “Angela Bassett did the thing,” went viral and was even referenced later by Bassett while accepting an award at the NAACP ceremony.
So, why did it work?
It’s easy. The poster is merely a template. And an effective one at that. It features a character image and a 1-sentence tagline. All anyone has to do is update those two things to participate in the viral moment. Like any good TikTok sound or meme, the barrier to entry on this one is very low.
It’s branded. Every participant gets to feel like they have Barbie’s co-sign. It automatically elevates your content to feel more special than it actually is.
It's fun. Some users will always take things too far, but the best thing about this is that the Barbie brand gets to choose what content it interacts with. Their potential audience grows with each new variation of the meme, and it's all happening organically without needing further marketing spending. Barbie gets to sit back and reap the benefits.
What does it teach us?
The short answer is that Barbie the movie has a much larger audience than many would have anticipated even a week ago. The ability to take over the internet for several days while users and other brands participate in a meme-able moment doesn’t just happen. It has to be fueled by influence and brand power. Barbie is one of those brands, and thanks to a trailer that showed they are very much in on the joke, they’ve created a massive amount of goodwill with their audience.
Does this mean the movie will be a massive box-office hit? It’s still early to tell but its prospects just shot up substantially. The marketing team deserves a massive amount of kudos for the rollout of this movie. It could have easily been dismissed by the moviegoing masses as a movie for children. A couple of well-cut trailers emphasizing the humor and aesthetic captured by Gerwig, combined with an endlessly replicable meme template in the form of branded character posters, gained the movie a ton of free, earned media.
If the movie surpasses expectations, we’ll see rollouts modeled after this template for years to come.
