Why Barbie succeeded (it’s not marketing)

Seeing many takes congratulating the marketing teams for their amazing work promoting the new Barbie movie. But most of these are missing the most important reason the movie is a monster hit ($1 billion earned in 17 days).

It’s good!

No doubt the marketing has been tremendous, but marketing gets people to see something once. It doesn’t have them going back to watch and watch again (which is even harder in our post-COVID world).

You know what does? A great movie that everyone is talking about, and posting on their channels how great it is. That gets people on the fence about seeing something, to get up and go watch it.

I can’t help but notice the majority of people giving marketing all the credit are people who look like me…

You know who deserves most of the credit? The amazing Greta Gerwig and the cast and crew of Barbie.

They made marketing this movie incredibly easy. I hope Hollywood sees what happened here and invests more in quality storytelling and less on the 85th marvel movie…

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