It’s rare for fans to know a character as intimately as Barbie—the shape of her foot, the floor plan of her home and the trajectory of her many careers. In the era of fandom, Hollywood is obsessed with bringing IP to life. Superheroes of static comic book pages, tabletop RPG adventures and even princesses and mermaids seen previously only in animation have all been adapted into live-action features. But in transferring Barbie’s world to the big screen, “Barbie” simply adds another dimension to the brand’s storied legacy of living in consumers’ worlds.
Thus the challenge of transforming the plastic icon’s life into something fantastic to enthrall modern consumers—primarily adults in the case of the upcoming Warner Bros. film—couldn’t be more important. However, the robust marketing for “Barbie” has seemingly made us all Barbie girls in a Barbie world as each activation has consistently gone viral—even the marketing strategy itself.