Explained: How the 'Operation Barbie Summer' campaign led to one of the biggest film marketing successes 

Greta Gerwig's Barbie had immense responsibilities to shoulder by the time the release date came close. During the initial days of its release itself, the movie fared well at the box office. The immense excitement around the Margot Robbie starrer came to fruition as the film opened with exceptionally good critics' scores as well as a hefty box-office collection. This is something that puts the film on par with some of the biggest hits from Warner Brothers.

Barbie may as well go on to become one of the most successful films of all time, having already collected US$377 million around the world, making it the first film directed by a woman to touch such numbers. And it has just started premiering 4 days ago.

A huge part of this hype and box-office number happens to be Warner Brothers' brilliant marketing campaign, which is now being hailed as one of the finest we have seen in modern cinema. This campaign was reportedly termed "Operation Barbie Summer," and involved almost all the WB execs, who finally revealed some details about the campaign in a recent interview with The Wrap.

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Decoding Operation Barbie Summer

The Operation Barbie Summer, as dubbed inside the production company, ran in various phases and ultimately culminated in huge hype around the world. The first phase kicked off with the 2001: A Space Odyssey-inspired teaser, which played before Avatar: The Way of the Water. It was a very smart move considering the film reached $2.3 billion worldwide, attracting a large audience.

Warner Bros. domestic distribution chief Jeff Goldstein told TheWrap:

"It really was a company-wide initiative to get the word out about how special this movie is....The marketing campaign for this movie is one for the ages, and the result is a movie that has united the world in such a divisive time. It’s a pink unicorn."

The main idea was to push Greta's vision to fruition, something that De Luca believed would fit in perfectly with the summer palette. He said:

"This is a movie that has so much to say about this famous doll and its legacy as well as wider thoughts on the world, but it never stops being playful and funny every step of the way,...Our goal was to show everyone that it was more than just a movie featuring Barbie."

This led to the next stage of the operation, where WB rolled out promotional material for Barbie across all its platforms, creating a thematic motif. This went perfectly with the upcoming film as shows like Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge emerged on HGTV.

Then came the wave of co-branding, which covered everything from Pinkberry frozen yogurt to a Malibu mansion transformed into a real-life dream house based on the doll to Xbox controllers based on the famous doll. By now, the film was one of the most recognized names in the world.

Then came the star power. Over the next months leading to the release, the stars of the film were constantly engaged in tours, promotions, and interviews, with Ryan Gosling pushing around his "energy," and Margot Robbie often appearing in pink, doll-like dresses, leading to more and more coverage.

This effectively made the film stand out from almost all films this year, also making it the first WB film to pull off a campaign this well. Moreover, the budding competition with Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer also gave the film an online medium that was previously unforeseen.

This hype, combined with the competition, made both films do much better than what was initially expected of them. This also marked WB's first big success after the new management came in.

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Barbie is currently playing in theatres.