Here we go. With less than two months before its July 21st release date, the BARBIE campaign is ramping up.
Margot Robbie has surfaced on the publicity trail, while Warner Bros. dropped a wonderfully wacky trailer that begins to reveal the plot behind the highly anticipated film.
As we have noted before, awareness for BARBIE has been high, while interest has been low. That’s never a desirable situation. So while Warner Bros. doesn’t have a problem getting people to know about the film, the greater challenge is building interest.
Will the new trailer help? We will know that in the coming weeks, but for now, as the campaign kicks in, let’s take stock of where the film stands. In particular, we’re going to dive deeper into the demographics.
At the moment, The Quorum is tracking 50 upcoming releases. The tables below show where BARBIE ranks among those 50 films in awareness in interest by demo.
Let’s start with women under 35 years old. Among the 50 films, BARBIE ranks 2nd in awareness behind THE LITTLE MERMAID. The good news is that it also ranks very high in interest in this demo. It’s in 4th place behind MERMAID, WONKA, and THE BOOGEYMAN. Younger women appear on board for BARBIE.
Things get a bit more complicated when we look at women over 35 years-old. Here we see that BARBIE still ranks 2nd in awareness but is all the way down at 38th place in interest. This is especially surprising given that Barbie has been around for nearly 65 years, meaning a good number of people in this demo played with the doll as a child.
This is a demo that the film needs to capture. So we will be watching closely to see if among older women starts to rise. If not, the film may find itself facing box office headwinds.
It’s fair to say that BARBIE is leaning heavily into attracting a female audience. Any men that show up are gravy. To that end, awareness among younger men is at 45%, which ranks 8th among all films on The Quorum for this demo. On the interest side, BARBIE ranks 23rd. Interest among young men is higher than among women over 35. That’s less a signal about strength in this demo than a sign about the severe lack of interest among older women.
Older men know about the film but aren’t showing much interest. That’s not surprising. BARBIE ranks 10th in awareness and 46th in interest among this demo.
So, this is where the film stands right now. Going forward, we will closely watch the interest numbers for women over 35. This is the demo that could make or break this film.