Feature films now double as brand-collaboration marketing vehicles at unprecedented scale

Evidence

In mid-2023, online communities noticed that Barbie and Oppenheimer were set to release on the same day, spawning “Barbenheimer” memes that juxtaposed and synthesized the two films’ wildly different aesthetics. This user-generated marketing frenzy became an online phenomenon, elevating both movies to box-office juggernauts. In the case of Barbie, it wasn’t enough for the film to be a two-hour commercial for selling large-busted plastic dolls to children; the producers also collaborated with 165 brands for the global marketing campaign. In 2024, Wicked set the new bar for collaborations at 400. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 652

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the death-of-the-sellout mechanism — marketing-as-culture erases the boundary between promotion and art the book is tracking.