This Barbie is impressed: Personalised selfies make movie marketing campaign a hit

When behind-the-scenes photos of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling wearing technicolour lycra while rollerblading on Venice Beach hit the internet mid-last year, anticipation and excitement followed.

And now, thanks to the success of an early viral marketing campaign, the release of the new Barbie film is one of the most anticipated events of 2023. 

The Barbie movie has been a long-time coming. Greenlit in 2009, it has gone through multiple iterations including different writers, directors, cast members (at one point, Amy Schumer was cast as Barbie) and studios.  

The release date is finally set for July 20 this year, with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in the lead roles supported by a star-studded cast. Academy Award nominee Greta Gerwig directed and co-wrote the live-action film based on Mattel’s Barbie dolls.

The campaign to promote the film kicked into full swing last week with the launch of the official trailer, a poster campaign and the pièce de résistance: the immediately trending Barbie Selfie Generator.

Hands down, the most interesting aspect of this campaign has been the selfie generator and it is easy to see why it has been a huge success. Accessed via a landing page, with a quick pose and a click fans can create personalised Barbie tiles in less than a minute. 

Fans can choose a Barbie or Ken selfie, different coloured backgrounds and customise text to create their self-expressive sentence. They can download their personalised meme-like tile and share it on socials with the hashtag #BarbieTheMovie.

Selfie success

The success of the Barbie selfie generator can be attributed to a few key factors.

Besides being user-friendly, it’s appealing to fans of all ages. We’d be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t know who Barbie was across the generations. The poster campaign set the tone and showed fans how the selfie tool could be used. 

Secondly, the tool is interactive and taps into personalisation, which is essential for creating highly shareable user-generated content for social media. We’re seeing everything from neurodivergent Barbie, activist Barbie, smiling-to-hide-the-pain-employee Ken — the options and appeal are endless.

Having stood the test of time since its creation in 1959, Barbie has always been about imagination. One doll, infinite play possibilities. True to form, this campaign lets fans create an identity and almost instantly insert themselves into Barbie Land.  

Third, the movie cast has been interacting with the generated memes, further amplifying the reach and enticement of this campaign. FutureWomen created a carousel of posts using inspirational women, including Lizzo, Ash Barty and Viola Davis among others. Viola, a philanthropist, founder and multi-award-winning actress reshared the tile to her 10.7 million followers and tagged Future Women.

The selfie tool, just like the Barbie doll, is about asserting our individualism and creativity. For a moment, fans can share what they want people to know, and be anything they want to be.

Playing the long game

Interestingly, the campaign is aimed squarely at millennial parents and not their children (or the generations before). From what we have seen in the trailer, the film is too. Rather than going the pester power route, Warner Bros. and Mattel are tapping into the nostalgia of Barbie.

With a culturally diverse cast and a focus on individuality and self-expression (spoiler alert — each Barbie has a unique profession), the movie showcases how Barbie has evolved.

Rather than using the movie to launch a series of dolls (which may well be coming), it is a safe bet the Barbie movie (in effect, one long advertisement for Barbie) is a long-term brand play for Mattel, intended to shape the narrative.

It is early days. There are still over three months until the movie launches, so hopefully more notable marketing efforts are on the way. With a $100 million film budget and 14 years in the making, it would be a shame if the hype peaked too early.

So far, this Barbie is impressed. And not ashamed to admit there have been many Barbie selfies generated here.

Mia Fileman is a marketing strategist and the founder of Campaign Del Mar, an Australian marketing education startup.