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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 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 and then there are more elaborate schemes 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The run-time of Oppenheimer exceeds that of Interstellar by over 10 minutes, clocking in at more than three hours and making it Christopher Nolan’s longest film to date.