07/27/2023
The Barbenheimer Effect: How Two Very Different Movies Brought People Back to the Movies
The Barbenheimer weekend was a huge success for the movie industry. Two very different movies, Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, both opened to huge box office numbers. This is an incredible case study on how to get people back into movie theaters, especially post-pandemic.
In the last five years, the two biggest openings at the domestic box office were for Avengers: Endgame and Spider-Man: No Way Home. These are both superhero movies, which tend to do very well at the box office. However, Barbie and Oppenheimer are very different movies. Barbie is a female-led and female-directed dramedy about a feminist icon, while Oppenheimer is a three-hour-long historical drama biopic.
So how did these two very different movies both open to such huge numbers? It's all thanks to a marketing strategy called "clustering." Clustering is when two or more competing products are placed next to each other. This can actually increase sales for both products.
For example, let's say there is a Coke vending machine on your campus or business center. It sells 100 cans of Coke a day. Then, Pepsi comes and puts one of its vending machines right next to the Coke machine. Now, how many cans do you think each machine will sell? Most likely, each machine will sell 200 cans a day.
This is because when there is only one vending machine, the question is, "Do I want soda, or do I not want soda?" But when there are two vending machines, the question becomes, "Do I want Coke or Pepsi?" Having competitors side by side can actually increase sales for both products.
The Barbenheimer weekend is a great example of how clustering can be used to increase sales. By placing two very different movies next to each other, the studios were able to attract a wider audience and increase ticket sales for both movies, with about 200,000 people purchasing tickets to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer as a double feature. This is a strategy that other studios should take note of, as it could help to bring people back to the movies in the post-pandemic era.
If you haven't seen Barbie or Oppenheimer, we highly recommend checking them out. Both movies are excellent, and they're a great example of how clustering can be used to increase sales. So get out there and see a movie!
