Behind the most hyped movie of recent years there is a viral marketing campaign that has everything to become a case being studied by CMOs around the world.
Barbie premiered this Friday, but the film’s promotion campaign has been on the air since April – a joint production between Mattel executives and the film’s producers.
The campaign started with a simple viralization strategy: a meme generator that allows you to create selfies with the movie poster. The meme was a phenomenon, causing thousands of users and influencers to create their version of the poster.
Then, in major world capitals, appeared billboards containing only a pink background with the release date of the film.
Then came an impressive series of partnerships. There are already more than 100 collabs, including an entire Zara collection and a life-size (!!!) Barbie house for rent on Airbnb. (For those interested: the house is in Malibu.) In all cases, Mattel takes 5% to 15% of the revenue.
From there, came the network effects: to ride the wave, other brands around the world took advantage of the momentum created by Mattel and launched their own themed collections – I myself have received at least 30 marketing emails so far, from brands such as Água de Coco (“The color is pink”), Farm (“DEU ROSA”), Valisère (“Today is pink lingerie day.”) and Trocafone (“it’s all Barbiezinha”).
Warner Bros. estimates the film will make $100 million this first weekend alone (compared to $45 million for fellow newcomer Oppenheimerfrom Universal).
But, after all, what makes products go viral?
In the book Contagion: Why Things Stick, Jonah Berger explains that a good viral strategy has six key ingredients:
The product has to function as a social currency, making the user feel welcome. This contributes to shares and network effects like those seen in the Barbie campaign. Preferably, the product has to be associated with a psychological trigger, that is, a context that makes the user remember it. Almost everyone remembers the “coffee break” and KitKat. And how about the pink world created by the collabs? The product that is associated with high-intensity emotions (happy memories, surprise, excitement, anxiety, or fear) is more likely to be shared. Public brand footprints (tote bags, automated messages) make brands easily remembered. (Throw the first stone if you haven’t seen the Barbie poster meme.) The brand must have a clear value (such as scarcity, quality or availability), which helps to gain preference within your market. Hermès, for example, has built a strong reputation around scarcity value. McDonalds has become synonymous with value and uniformity. The product has to generate stories or reports around it. Without realizing it, we talk about brands or products several times a day. The best virality is the one that manages to include a product in this daily organic word-of-mouth marketing.
This type of viral/organic strategy that Barbie used is expected to become increasingly relevant in the world of marketing and growth — given that, with the exhaustion of performance marketing, advertisers have less and less data visibility and CACs (customer acquisition costs) are increasing — which forces advertisers to look for alternatives.
Devising customer acquisition strategies in a smart and creative way is not easy, and it will separate the wheat from the chaff.
And on this subject, Mattel taught.
Renata Stuhlberger writes about technology and entrepreneurship in the Milkshade newsletter and helps entrepreneurs found startups at Fisher Venture Builder.
Renata Stuhlberger