The "Barbie movie" went viral. You might have helped.

The first live-action Barbie movie is coming to the silver screen in July 2023. Its second teaser trailer didn't go unnoticed: the hashtag #BarbieTheMovie generated 7.5 million engagements¹ on April 4th, 2023 – the day of its release; the teaser trailer video shot to #28 on YouTube's ranking of trending videos in less than 24 hours². This benefited the Barbie brand as a whole: content mentioning 'Barbie' generated 18 million engagements on social media – far more than the 4 million achieved by the first trailer released on Dec 16, 2022.

Social media engagement with content mentioning 'Barbie' from U.S. brands and publishers – the brand's birthplace – surpassed 6 million; in the UK, such engagement reached over 900 thousand total actions. Audiences in Mexico and Brazil also demonstrated high levels of enthusiasm. (See chart below.)

A strong cast and clever marketing campaign led to the success of the teaser trailer. In addition to the movie’s main actors, Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie, the second teaser trailer revealed the roles of charismatic names such as Dua Lipa, Emma Mackey and Simu Liu for the first time. Consumers then went on to engage with their favorite actors, and Barbie was the main conversation point: 95% to 99% of the social media actions mentioned ‘Barbie’.

In addition to an enticing teaser trailer and a star-studded cast, Barbie's marketing campaign featured a Barbie Selfie Generator tool. With it, users can design personalized AI-powered Barbie movie posters in quick, simple steps and pretend to be part of the cast. The resulting poster is then shared on social media, for added virality. This worked so well that even celebrities not appearing in the film – such as Zooey Deschanel – got in on the act, as did legions of fans. While many used the selfie generator for selfies, others created alternate casts or funny memes – as you can see below with the HBO's Succession actors being integrated into Barbie cast, for fun. All of this generated over 1 million total actions³ just among brands and influencers on social platforms, pushing up interest in the movie before its release date.

The latest Barbie teaser shows the power of a well-executed marketing campaign: by playfully embracing Barbie’s position in the collective imagination and building entertainment value around it, the campaign has built true excitement about the movie – and the brand.

To find out more about how audiences engage with brands or box office data, contact your Comscore representative or visit comscore.com/learnmore.

Definitions:

*Number of actions (i.e., reactions, shares, comments, retweets, favorites, loves) is calculated across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.

Sources:

1. Comscore social, Content Pulse, containing #BarbieTheMovie, the 4th of April 2023
2. Data is sourced from YouTube trending ranking on the 5th of April 2023.Comscore social
3. Comscore social, Content containing ““Barbie” and “poster””, “’Barbie’ and ’selfie’”, or “’Barbie’ and ’meme’”, or “’Barbie’ and ’generator’”, across: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, from the 4th to the 9th of April 2023