How did the Barbie movie take over the internet?
Los Angeles, California - If you've spent any time on social media in the past few days, chances are you're now aware the Barbie movie is coming out this summer.
This Barbie is a PR mastermind!
After the long-awaited character posters revealed who everyone in the star-studded cast was playing, the posters became the newest meme format to go viral on the internet.TikTok's resident PR expert, Liz Duff, praised the poster drop that "took it to the next level," particularly with the movie's creation of a selfie generator for fans to create their own versions of the poster.
Duff also noted that the posters are sized for use as a profile picture or a header across social media platforms.
"I love the idea of making Barbie fans billboards for the movie online," she said.
This concept of making fans the advertisers worked like a charm for Barbie, as the character posters have taken social media by storm thanks to organically-generated content from both everyday users and popular brands.
Why is the Barbie movie marketing so successful on social media?
Barbie's marketing has seamlessly folded into the landscape of social media with an eye-catching template and meme-worthy taglines.
Even without the now-famous posters, the tagline, "She's everything. He's just Ken," featured on the main poster, has sparked its own separate meme.
"She's everything" and "He's just Ken" have been tweeted above photos of couples ranging from Jo and Laurie in Little Women to Charles and Diana.
The simplicity and versatility of the marketing template have allowed the format to thrive online as social media users put their own spins on the posters.
With the boost of the template generator, the Barbie movie is getting free advertising from the ceaselessly creative minds of fangirls everywhere.
How are brands utilizing the Barbie marketing campaign?
As average social media users had a field day with the Barbie and Ken memes, many official brands saw the clear opportunity and took full advantage.
From NFL teams to music groups, many official accounts hopped in on the jokes with their own versions of the trend to promote their brands.
It remains unclear as to whether all of the brands had to obtain permission to use the format, as it's certainly boosting the Barbie movie along with the brand itself.
Many of the brands that used the format received supportive comments from the official Barbie account, suggesting a potential partnership, but some likely just used the movie's selfie generator to create the posts.
Other companies, like Starbucks and Sour Patch Kids, quite obviously paid homage to the trend while side-stepping potential copyright (and directly advertising the movie) by using it without the Barbie label.
Though the buzz surrounding the new memes will certainly fall victim to social media's short attention span by the week's end, this is only the beginning for Barbie, as the highly-anticipated film doesn't hit theaters until July 21.
"This is just the start of what we're going to see from the Barbie campaign," Duff told TAG24."There's nothing more fulfilling than seeing high expectations not only met, but shattered."
Cover photo: Collage: IMAGO / ZUMA Press