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“‘We’re a very unusual company with the assets that we have, and … this idea of ‘Barbie’ summer, and then every week, what is everyone around the table going to do?’”
The 2022 combination of Discovery and WarnerMedia was controversial at the time, but executives at what’s now called Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.
WBD,
suggested Thursday that the move is paying off, Just look at the success of “Barbie,” they said.
The film is closing in on a $1 billion global box-office haul, but that momentum can be owed to a lot more than just filmmaking. Warner Bros. Discovery put its internal marketing might behind the film to leverage different facets of its media empire, as management explained on Thursday’s earnings call.
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“Over the last six months, every area of the company has played a part in promoting this great film,” Chief Executive David Zaslav said. He called out a four-part Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge series on HGTV, a Barbie-themed Summer Baking Championship on the Food Network and a teaser of the film showed during the NBA Eastern Conference finals through Turner Sports.
See also: AMC enjoys ‘best week ever’ for box-office revenue, fueled by ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’
“It has truly been a one-company effort,” he continued. “This is one of the big differentiators and super strengths of Warner Bros. Discovery, where a property or title can benefit from ‘eventizing’ it across our global platforms. We’re able to put the full weight and power of all of our diverse media assets domestically and globally behind it to drive awareness and excitement, and the result is truly unmatched.”
He described a strategy of “supersizing” certain content pushes by tying in various parts of the WBD empire. The company tried this with “House of the Dragon” last year, as well as with “Hogwarts Legacy.”
“This is such a diverse set of amazing assets, [and] how do we use them to help each other and how do we use them also that we don’t have to go out and spend money when we already have huge marketing platforms that we could use on our own?” Zaslav said. “And using some of having [Charles] Barkley and Shaq talk about something that they already love is often more powerful than running a commercial.”
The two basketball stars were involved in NBA Finals coverage.
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