Movies: The Barbenheimer Effect On Future Marketing

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer had strong opening weekends at the box office. The duo finally broke from the shadows of the superhero-led ticket sales to make a name for themselves on the summer movies list. Now more and more people are pointing out that their reason for success might be due to “franchise fatigue” seeing sequel after sequel and spin-off get made. While that may be true, there’s something bigger at play here and it comes down to promotion.

The Barbie movie and Oppenheimer couldn’t be further from each other in terms of tone and plot. One is a beloved children’s doll that has been around for decades. The other is about the creation of the atomic bomb by J. Robert Oppenheimer. The marketing for Barbie has put pink everywhere. From dolls to fashion, there was pink everywhere in person and on social media.

On the other hand, Oppenheimer is a movie about a very deadly bomb so devastating the effects were still felt for years to come. None of that screams bubbly personalities set in a sea of pink. Yet, for some reason or another the studios paired these two off in a campaign to promote each movie. There weren’t even released by the same studio. Barbie was released under Warner Bros and Oppenheimer was distributed by Univeral. These movies couldn’t be more polar opposites.

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That alone should be a wake-up call to movie studios. Two films distributed by separate studios, when paired together with proper marketing had huge success at the box office this weekend. Are we pasted the days of movie trailers being the main push for upcoming releases these days? Most of these trailers either play before movies you’re already seeing or play during commercial breaks of the shows you’re watching nightly.

But that should send up a giant red flag. People don’t watch commercials anymore. Streaming has taken over the viewing privileges for most people and those people typically pay for ad-free streaming. So how are movies being put in front of people these days? Sure you can get the trailers on Youtube, but not everyone goes out of their way to look for trailers.

Barbie and Oppenheimer should send a clear signal to movie studios that they need to do more to promote movies where people can actually engage and become invested. The days of sitting on their ass and hoping a hype train comes along are over. Get out and put a promotion together with a double feature and push these movies or they’ll continue to flop.