Barbenheimer is Blowing Up

I don’t think many of us had “Barbenheimer” on our 2023 bingo card, yet here we are. The two (drastically different) movies have dominated entertainment news cycles over the last few weeks leading up to their shared opening day. And now it’s official: Barbie has busted records as the biggest premiere for a female film director, notching $162 million in its first weekend of release. Oppenheimer drew in a more modest $82.4 million, but still beat estimates.

Both Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. have put major muscle behind advertising the movies. According to iSpot data as of July 24, the movie trailers combined account for 30% of July’s estimated TV ad media value for the theatrical movies industry as a whole, and 28% of the total household TV ad impressions for movie trailers. The Oppenheimer trailer is the No. 5 ad for impressions in July across ALL brands and genres, not just the theatrical industry. 

Digging in a bit deeper, Universal Pictures has put an estimated $24.7 million in media value promoting Oppenheimer on national TV since the trailer first aired, resulting in 1.9 billion household TV ad impressions. 

By comparison, Warner Bros. put a total of $8.7 million in national TV ad media value advertising Barbie, generating 1.2 billion household TV ad impressions — but that’s just for the trailer, and doesn’t take into account the myriad cross-promotions going on. 

Chevrolet, Progressive and Candy Crush are three brands that have run TV ads with some sort of Barbie movie tie-in. Chevrolet’s ad for the ’24 Blazer EV even features quick cameos by cast members including Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera. 

When you add in the above cross-promotion impressions and estimated TV ad media value, Barbie lands at 3.3 million TV ad impressions with $20.4 million in estimated media value.

Barbie’s premiere has also sparked a resurgence in streams of related iconic songs. According to Songtradr, Nicki Minaj’s “Barbie World” (with Ice Spice & Aqua) has seen Spotify streams soar over the last month, from 12.2 million to 65.2 million. 

The original “Barbie Girl” Aqua song has also benefited from the popularity of the movie and marketing around it. Despite originally coming out in 1996, the song has been streamed well over 10 million times on Spotify since the beginning of July already. It’s also been featured in nearly 60K TikTok videos over the last week alone.

Barbie trailers are also driving shopping behaviors, as data from Tubular Labs points out.

Pulling from Tubular’s consumer insights, we can see how Warner Bros. Pictures social video audiences increased their shopping affinity for Barbie products on Amazon following the release of the Barbie movie trailer. Affinity increased from 1.8x more likely than the norm in March 2023, to 4.8x more likely in April, and it’s remained at a similarly increased affinity in the months since.