Why Are We So Obsessed With?Barbie?

A Film Marketer Turned Investor’s Guide to The Barbie?Takeover

Before becoming an investor at SoGal Ventures , I worked in film development and marketing after pitching a digital marketing division as an intern. Two of the first movies that I worked on were Girls Trip and Straight Outta Compton, and I have taken many of the lessons learned from those campaigns into my career as a Venture Capitalist.

As a consumer who once asked for 100 Barbie dolls as a child, I was obsessed with Barbie before it was even announced. As a former film marketer who noticed an uptick in consumers questioning why they were also suddenly obsessed with Barbie, I had a few thoughts. Below are some reasons why Barbie dominated our lives, and subsequently the box office at a record $400 Million+, and how it translates to building a brand — from my perspective as a film marketer turned Venture Capitalist at SoGal.

1. Tell a new, relevant story for your audience
2. Own your pink
3. Your direct competition is not your only competition
4. Co-create with your community
5. Leverage the strength of different communities
6. Value creativity fairly

Tell a New, Relevant Story For Your?Audience

A core question that I have asked, from when I was evaluating scripts as a film assistant to now evaluating a company at SoGal, is — is this telling a compelling story for its audience? With multiple scrapped versions of Barbie before the current hit, it was evident that Mattel, Warner Brothers, and creatives grappled with how to do that with a doll that has dominated feminist ideals since 1958, arguably in both positive and detrimental ways. Having Greta Gerwig attached added credibility to a brand with a skeptical audience, as she had successfully told traditional stories by leaning into what audiences dislike.

Mattel doubled down on Barbie to make it a “cultural event” as part of its IP-led strategy to boost revenues for its iconic toys. However, iconic, cultural events and brands are not insular. They are an amalgamation of the cultural moments that have built up before it. The Barbie brand had gone through a story arc of fervor and vilification due to its role in feminist history. And the Barbie movie needed to explore that for a 2023 audience that had experienced its own story arc with feminism.

Many girls grew up with Barbieland as a universe in which women could run the world. However, according to the design of early Barbies, this was usually conditional on the women having fair skin and unrealistic body standards. As they grew up, women witnessed an even more nuanced experience of feminism that, in some ways contrasted, and in other ways mirrored, the “idyllic” world of Barbie. The proliferation of social media and movements such as Lean In and #MeToo brought more awareness and action to inequities for women, and notable victories occurred. However, these victories often looked white, cisgender, attractive and rich. Over time, as the feminist movement became exponentially powerful, criticisms of the movement exponentially increased.

As Newton’s Law states, for every action, there is an opposing reaction. For the high velocity action of a fervent feminist movement amplified by social media, there eventually came an almost dark, visceral, opposing reaction–including debates about #MeToo toxicity, the vilification of female accusers, and the eventual repeal of Roe v. Wade.

Enter summer of 2023 with a bright, escapist Barbie trailer including a diverse range of Barbies, lines such as “everything men do in your world, women do in ours,” Ken in an almost satirical version of the sidekick role traditionally reserved for women, and the tagline: “If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you.” If you watched the film, you probably heard “patriarchy” in the film 9 times.

The Barbie movie will not save feminism. But with promos such as “She’s everything. He’s just Ken,” Barbie winked at the fact that it would give us a new, nuanced talking point to a cultural movement that will continue to have its own story arc in our lifetime. Barbie became the biggest domestic opening ever for a non-superhero film — shepherded by Gerwig’s ability to help a skeptical audience accept Barbie as a refreshed feminist icon.

Outside of the Barbie movie, innovation can come from authentically telling a new, relevant story for your audience at a cultural inflection point.

In order to influence culture, you need to understand the evolution of that culture.?Greta understood the untold plot lines in both the Barbie brand and today’s feminist movement, and thoughtfully created a fresh story. And it paid off as she generated the biggest opening in history for a woman director.

Own Your?Pink

One of the most successful marketing strategies for Girls Trip was centering the movie around, and partnering with Essence magazine, the premier magazine for Black women in the US. It set the tone for a campaign that was unapologetically black and female. Promotional clips leaned into many themes familiar to black women, who have often represented and carried all women. The movie’s audience was 79% women, 59% Black, 17% Latinx and 3% Asian, and that audience made the movie the highest grossing comedy of 2017, and the first film by a Black cast and crew to cross $100 Million.

Similarly, Barbie is unapologetically pink and girly. The movie leaned into pink so much that the usage of pink on set apparently created a global shortage. You can find promos including just the color pink and the date.

The Barbie marketing has conditioned us to associate any interaction with pink, even the ones that they didn’t pay for, with Barbie. Its approach is scientifically backed. According to the National Institutes of Health, color has been found to influence memory performance by increasing our attentional level and arousal. By fully leaning into the femininity and pinkness of Barbie, the marketing team made a character out of pink, and made the color itself a marketing funnel.

Pink may be the only color capable of being its own character in history. Pink was originally reserved for men, but began to become gendered during World War II, as it was used in ads to urge women to quit their jobs and focus on their households while the men were overseas. Millennials have Legally Blonde as one of the first movies of our time to challenge the norms of pink and femininity. Could a pink-loving blonde woman really graduate top of her class at Harvard Law School? Girls have followed (guilty) with their pink outfits on Harvard’s campus. Over the past few years, women have continued to regain pink through the Barbiecore movement. Women have worn pink at their IPOs and pink powersuits have come into play, normalizing the embrace of femininity while also excelling in male-dominated industries. The Barbie movie rode this trend and created a movement out of it.

The use of pink also creates an association with the brightness and escapism of summer and moviegoing. It helps position Barbie as a summer movie event, and not two hours where you’ll be taken out of the sun. Barbie pink dominated the streets this summer, creating a scene of its own. People watching and dressing up for the movie became an important part of the movie experience even before you stepped into the theater.

The use of pink was a particularly smart decision upon Barbie’s competition with Oppenheimer and Mission Impossible. Because Barbie focused on the IP that comes with pink, the team didn’t waste money on audiences who would have been less engaged and likely had lower conversion. They engaged and activated an audience who was ready to embrace the femininity and brightness of pink, and become a marketing funnel for Barbie. An audience that was 65% female helped Barbie become the best opening weekend of this year. Not the best for a woman this year, the best this year, period.

Many brands and investors are often scared to double down on a hyper engaged audience, especially if that hyper engaged audience is BIPOC or female (and God-forbid both), because they often associate it with a lower target market and thus sales. But I’ll just let the above stats speak for themselves.

Your Direct Competition is Not Your Only Competition

The biggest lesson that I learned from the digital marketing of Girls Trip was that our biggest competition was not the other movies coming out that weekend. It was another way to spend a day or night out. When putting content out, we weren’t only competing with other social media pages, we were competing with everything on the consumer’s phones: text messages, dating apps, selfies, etc. But these were years long-held habits that people had, and we couldn’t expect to completely divert their habits for a 3 month marketing sprint.

So what do you do when you can’t beat the competition? Join it.

Barbie took this ideal to the next level and integrated itself into every single moment of the audiences’ lives. It is likely that you haven’t gone a day recently without encountering Barbie, and that is no mistake.

Barbie does not view Oppenheimer and Mission Impossible as its only competition. In fact, its stars encouraged audiences to watch those movies. They understood that they were competing with a Bumble date, a meal with friends, etc. so they brought Barbie to all those things through over 100 brand sponsorships and made Barbie an experience, which likely also allowed them to distribute marketing costs with these companies.

• If you’re going on Bumble trying to get a date for a Friday night, Barbie partnered with Bumble to have Barbie and Ken be date coaches.
• If you use free nights to find something to watch on Roku, Barbie partnered with Roku to have stars present on the homescreen with the Barbie Dreamhouse and Barbieland as the screensaver.
• If you like to spend your weekends shopping, Barbie partnered with a shopping mall and Zara to create live activations.
• If you like to spend time with your friends at cafes, Barbie created an activation at a NY Cafe.
• If you’re free time consists of researching houses, Barbie partnered with Architectural Digest and Progressive.

These partnerships increased audiences’ familiarity with Barbie through the exposure effect. The exposure to Barbie across our everyday lives increased our tendency to develop a preference for it because we became familiar with it. Barbie became a part of our lives, and for many of us, it felt natural for us to choose it over its competitors.

The Barbie marketing team understood how its audience interacted, not with just other movies, but with other apps and experiential events, and implemented it into its model. This is one of the most prominent lessons that I learned from my career in marketing that I take into analyzing and guiding companies. Two of the most transferable lessons were:

Understand your customers’ days in and out and design an experience around that. Don’t try to get them to change their habits for you.

When identifying competitors, if you are just looking at your direct competitors, you’re not really creating anything that different.

Lovevery, one of SoGal Ventures first investments, has created a cult-like following due to how it has created a seamless learning experience for children. Lovevery’s competitors weren’t just other toy companies. They were other Montessori education programs, and other parent-baby activities. The co-founder Jessica Rolph didn’t develop toys. She invented a curriculum with experts ranging from neuroscientists to educators to understand and create a differentiated toy experience at each stage of a child’s life. Because the product was carefully built around real families and how they spend time together, it quickly became a customer obsession.

Co-Create With Your Community

Through the Straight Outta Compton campaign, I learned the power of co-creation. What the studio was selling wasn’t just a movie about an iconic rap group. It was a story about the pride that came from making it to the top and repping the place that raised you. And that’s what the movie’s marketing was replicating through the Straight Outta campaign created by Beats by Dre. When executing the campaign, the production company was just as intentional about getting audiences to post as they were influencers. Not only because it increased awareness of the film, but because it made audiences feel like they were part of the film. Audience members were able to represent their cities in a global campaign, similar to how NWA brought Compton to the global stage. Before they even saw Straight Outta Compton, audience members experienced a small part of the movie, and were already bought into the story.

The most obvious use of co-creation in the Barbie marketing is the Barbie Selfie Generator, which clued audiences in on the fact that the movie would be redefining the role of Barbie. Similar to the Straight Outta Campaign, it created a cultural internet moment and enabled audiences and brands to be co-creators. The entire concept of Barbie benefits from the nostalgia effect, but the selfie generator helped reinforce the effect. The generator replicated the Barbie experience for a generation who evolved from creating make-believe worlds with their dolls, to doing so on social media. Using the generator to create an endless set of possibilities for Barbie helped create nostalgia for the experience of playing Barbie, and led audiences to place increased value on the social connectedness of the brand.

Your customers can be your biggest marketing funnel, but you have to bring them along for the journey and co-create with them to make it authentic.

Ceremonia was the first investment that I did due diligence on as a Venture Fellow at SoGal Ventures. One of the reasons that I loved the deal was because the level of customer obsession that the Co-Founder, Babba Rivera had reminded me of a thoughtful storyteller who wanted to make sure that they accurately captured and catered to the needs of the people they were representing. Babba infused the nostalgia associated with familial Latinx haircare rituals into her brand, and created a family through her community. Ceremonia grew in large part to its consumers who served as product testers, co-creators, brand ambassadors and created an authentic Latinx vibe around the brand. And Sephora noticed. It later became the first Latina hair brand to sell in Sephora.

Leverage The Strength of Different Communities

The Barbie brand has undergone its own journey with diversity. Children growing up in the 80s were the first to experience a diverse range of barbies through the Dolls of The World releases. However, these releases, and subsequent releases were criticized for their sparse and awkward attempts at diversity. Over the years, Barbie has attempted to embrace and celebrate diversity more authentically with releases such as the Fashionista Line Up.

This movie not only embraces Barbie’s attempts at diversity, but it leverages it to create value. It doesn’t rely on stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Reynolds to cater to different cultural communities, it brings those communities in an authentic way that doesn't tokenize them. While the star is true to the original Barbie — white, blonde and thin — the movie’s marketing team strategically released the plotline that there would be multiple Barbies and Kens. Issa Rae wasn't just a black Barbie. She was President Barbie. Leveraging the strength of communities — from the ones that Issa Rae has built with Insecure, to the ones that Simu Liu has built with Shang-Chi and America Ferrera has built with Ugly Betty, Barbie reached different cultures and expanded their target demographic.

The Barbie soundtrack alone represents over 5 countries and genres–including UK singer PinkPantheress, Trinidad and Queens' own rapper Nicki Minaj, Colombian singer Karol G, LA based rock band HAIM and South Korean group FIFTY FIFTY. Having pop stars such as Dua Lipa featured both in the soundtrack and in the movie are also effective in engaging their supporters. With the soundtrack, the team has leveraged superfans of artists from varying cultures.

Not only is it uplifting for diverse audiences to see themselves represented in the marketing, for both Mattel and Warner Brothers, it is a strategy that will help them outperform on opening weekend and beyond. Consisting of 53–60% of opening weekend audiences, people of color dominate opening weekend ticket sales. Furthermore, 66% of Black and Hispanic moms said they go out of their way to buy brands that are working to be more inclusive.

Behind a Good Product is Innovation, Behind Innovation is Creativity, So Value it?Fairly.

All of the prior points can mean nothing if the product, or movie, is bad. This version of the Barbie movie is at minimum the third version that was attempted after creatives previously dropped out of the process — citing creative differences. Margot Robbie even alluded to not believing the film would be made.

Robbie, the lead actress and producer, and a successful entrepreneur, structured the deal so Gerwig and Baumbach could have an “open” creative process. With Mattel’s stock rising by over 20% since the first teaser dropped, I’d say that it was a good decision to embrace the creative approach.

I have seen many media companies struggle due to an inability to resolve the tension between the creative and financial process, which we are seeing in real time with the writers and actors strike. While media companies have undoubtedly been inefficient in content spend, there is a fine line between being efficient in content spend and undervaluing valuable assets, especially when those assets are human.

The creatives behind Barbie’s development and marketing have generated millions of dollars for Warner Brothers and Mattel and spurred articles like “the pandemic is officially over,” after both companies have struggled due to post-pandemic behavior and inflationary pressures. Outside of the stars, there are hundreds of creatives– including writers, extras, production assistants, content creators and more who made this movie possible.

Hollywood has survived off of the logical fallacy that it is sustainable to provide outsized compensation for executives and stars that sometimes create little value, and subpar compensation to other creative assets that provide outsized value. This weekend, that came to a head when some of the same creatives that generated over $235.5 Million were on strike for inequitable compensation. As this juxtaposition shows, the fallacy might be up.