Lessons Marketers Can Actually Learn from Barbenheimer
Spoiler: This might not be very helpful.
Barbenheimer has been an unmitigated success. Barbie, Mattel and Greta Gerwig’s sparkly feminist fable has exploded at the box office, generating over $850 million, well on course for a very sparkly billion-dollar worldwide gross.
Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has been warmly received, the three-hour talky biopic about the birth of the atomic bomb faring very well against its more accessible counterpart, generating over $450 million.
Naturally, everyone wants to know what they can do to replicate the success of the year’s hottest marketing trend. The reality is quite simple but probably not very helpful:
✨ Have a product people actually give a fuck about.
💣 Have a 100 million dollar budget.
We’ve already started to see movie studios desperately attempt to cash in on this unique success with Saw X and Paw Patrol due for release on the same date in September.
The problem with this is that no one has cared about the Saw franchise since 2009, and anyone who is legitimately excited about Rubble, Rocky, Skye and the rest of the Paw Patrol likely isn’t on social media yet. I only know their names because my 2-year-old son loves the show. Honest.
This weird double-feature thing is completely unique and won’t be replicated.
Anyone trying to tell you Warner Bros and Universal were collaborating on this are talking out of their arses. Universal literally couldn’t move Oppenheimer due to Nolan’s insisted three-week release window, and Warner Bros had something to prove to Nolan after their acrimonious split during COVID.
So what’s the real lesson to learn here?
Movie studios and marketers should put their time and energy into ensuring their products are as good as possible, serve their intended purpose, and appeal to their target market.
You know, simple tactics that have worked long before pink nuclear weapon movie mashups were a thing.
