I am a Barbie woman in a GM world.
A set of dozens of Barbies and two Kens had been among the most-loved toys on my shelf. A physician Barbie, rock star Barbie and even Cleopatra Barbie inspired me to dream large. And for those who had been fortunate, your Barbies would cruise round in a toy Chevrolet Corvette.
That pink Corvette, together with the GMC Hummer EV pickup and electrical Chevy Blazer, made it to the massive display screen within the Barbie film ’90s women like me have been clamoring for.
Moviegoers helped Barbie earn $155 million domestically in its opening weekend, July 21-23, making it the most important movie debut of the yr to this point. Globally, it earned $337 million.
Automobiles performed important characters. Common Motors’ autos acquired greater than 10 minutes of display screen time, in accordance with Concave Model Monitoring, which displays product placement.
The film was an prolonged industrial for Mattel, GM and different manufacturers. But it surely was additionally a press release about empowerment — powered by autos from the one main automaker with a feminine CEO.
The visibility helps GM play the lengthy sport of planting its merchandise within the minds of a captive viewers of principally younger girls, a demographic with main development potential for electrical car makers, mentioned Invoice Daddi, president of DBC Model Communications.
The important thing, he mentioned, is including worth to the film and enhancing the plot slightly than disrupting the viewing expertise.
On this case, vehicles had been an important a part of the story, not a distraction. All of the Barbies drove via excellent Barbieland in Corvettes shaded in numerous hues of pink, and when Ken found the patriarchy after he crossed into the actual world, he selected the Hummer as his trip. A Blazer EV rescuing Barbie simply beat Mattel executives chasing her in gasoline-powered Chevy Tahoes and Suburbans.
The automaker obtained almost $8 million in world product placement worth from the film’s opening weekend, Concave mentioned. Which means it will value $8 million in conventional advert {dollars} to attain the identical degree of complete publicity.
The primary weekend alone made Barbie the seventh best-performing movie that includes GM merchandise within the final decade, Concave mentioned, a rating that may possible climb as extra tickets are bought. Transformers: Age of Extinction, launched in 2014, was GM’s finest integration, that includes six GM manufacturers over 13 minutes of display screen time. Age of Extinction grossed $1.1 billion globally.
Probably the most outstanding GM placements in Barbie had been electrical, a nod to the automaker’s aim to impress its lineup by 2035.
GM and Barbie might seem to be an uncommon pairing at first, however a few of their values are aligned. The automaker’s imaginative and prescient of zero crashes, zero emissions and 0 congestion is rooted in making the world a greater place. In fact, that initiative is a enterprise technique that the corporate believes can be profitable. However in recent times, GM has taken a particular stance on real-world points corresponding to social justice and variety, fairness and inclusion. And for almost a decade, it has been led by Mary Barra, who has impressed many ladies within the auto business. Barra has guided the corporate via business tides and is remodeling it via the shift to electrification.
In Barbieland, the Barbies wholeheartedly consider they’ve made the actual world a greater place by exhibiting via all kinds of Barbies — lawyer, physician, scientist, surfer, engineer, instructor — how a lot girls can do. “We mounted every little thing so all girls in the actual world are comfortable and highly effective,” mentioned Barbie, performed by Margot Robbie.
In Barra’s world, GM conveys a message much like Barbie’s mantra: Right here, girls could be profitable at something — at the same time as CEO of the nation’s largest automotive firm.
Being a “Barbie woman in a Barbie world” was a dream once I was younger. Right now, I am comfortable to be in Barra’s.