Barbie and The Future of Advertising

Barbie the Movie is a great example of cultural fever due to a very strong and expensive marketing plan. That we all know.
What we haven’t been talking about enough, is the fact that the film itself is a two-hour-long advert for Mattel and the Barbie Collection. It ticks all the boxes, it is smart, uplifting, daring, funny, with a strong point of view, justifies all problems and criticisms against the brand, and drives you to love Barbie again. 
Everything brands try to do over years spending millions of pounds, they do with one very good and very long Ad, that people pay to watch.

I do Creative Direction in parallel to a very long career in theatre making. When I came to advertising, I came to do what I do, storytelling that impacts people, but in a format that has fewer budget constraints.
In my interview for my last job, one of my observations was that it always surprised me that the advertising industry spends millions in interrupting people, when art does the same thing but people pay to see it. So why isn’t advertising using that? 
The ECD interviewing me laughed with amusement at the observation and said ‘imagine that, people paying to see advertising…’ and hired me. 

That is exactly what the Barbie movie does. Unfortunately, I am not the guy behind it;  but this is the perfect example of what I meant in that interview.
We can make ads that bring value to people, change generations of thinking, repairs the questionable work we may have done in the past, puts us back in the center of attention, and still whilst doing all that, we can make ads that even pay itself. The key here is to do work rooted in attraction instead of interruption. To make work that is daring, profound, fun, moved by artists, and made like art. I would even risk to say that this is the future of advertising. This is the reason why Creator collaborations on Socials are so hot. Society moved on.
The interesting thing about this is that this is the origin of it all. Advertising when was first shaped as a concept at the begging of the 20th century was called Applied Arts. This is exactly what Barbie proves that advertising could be. Art that delivers a commercial message.

Barbie the Movie cost 145$m to produce and 150$m to market. If we see it as a movie the marketing cost was larger than the cost of the product. However, it is not a movie. It is a rebranding ad for Mattel, that cost 295$m and made 1$bn
No one has those budgets, we say… but on the first 3 days in cinemas the ‘giant Ad’ masked as a ‘cultural product’, recovered all investment and will keep making money as a product on itself, making all the ROI for Mattel very profitable. And all it takes is creating an Ad that has real artistic value, an Ad that people would pay to see. Good Creative Direction when infused with pure and daring artistic vision is a bomb. All we need is the bravery to make the change, just like Barbie.

Fernando Mariano is a Theatre Artist and an Award Winning Freelance Creative specialist in Socials; and he is available to work. Check out his book and get in touch