Summer 2023 was the summer of Barbie.
Why Jaws and Barbie were such blockbusters
She’s Barbie. He’s just Jaws.
Edward Vega joined the Vox video team as a video producer in 2021. His coverage focused on all things cinema, from the intricacies of film history to the nuts and bolts of filmmaking.
Everywhere you looked there was marketing — posters, ads, trailers. There were Barbie cafés, Barbie Progressive commercials, everyone was wearing pink! It was a delightful wave of cinematic energy.
And it was also completely overwhelming. At times it felt inescapable.
Barbie’s marketing felt different. And in some ways it was — but it owes a lot to the blockbusters that came before.
Jaws is considered to be the first summer blockbuster for a lot of reasons — but most importantly (and most symmetrically with Barbie) because of its marketing. It was the first time that a studio flooded the market with advertising. In the summer of 1975, Jaws was inescapable.
Since then, studios have tried to replicate that strategy pretty much every year.
But Barbie was different — because, unlike most blockbusters, Barbie was unabashedly feminine, fun, and pink. If you’d like to learn about how Barbie stole the summer, check out the latest Vox video.
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