The Marketing of Mean Girls

I attended the Mean Girls Musical movie opening day at Cinemark with a few friends, one of whom had no idea the movie was a musical until we bought the tickets. The majority of the audience consisted of teenage girls, their parents, and Millennials. I agree this was the intentional audience for this musical movie. So why did Paramount choose to market “Mean Girls” without using MUSICAL?

Let’s explore a few of the marketing strategies!

Before any of the marketing for this movie began, I’m assuming the target market for this was Generation Z. There are definitely other markets for this particular movie, like Millenials who grew up with the original Mean Girls movie and Broadway enthusiasts. Though, based on the marketing tactics, it seems like the majority of energy focused on promoting this movie to Generation Z, and people who don’t like musicals.

October 3rd, 2023

A perfect way to capitalize on the franchise is using this iconic date. Paramount did just that and released the entire movie on TikTok in 23 separate clips. I remember when this happened, but didn’t know it was a marketing strategy to prep audience members for the movie musical. I think this was such a great strategy since Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha consume their media content through TikTok, and I think they were able to capture this audience. The TikTok release helped create buzz for the franchise and invited non-fans to start watching.

“This isn’t your mother’s Mean Girls.”

When the first trailer of the movie-musical dropped in November of 2023, it received some backlash for the line above. Many older millennials were offended at “This isn’t your Mother’s Mean Girls.” Reading this line, it may seem like no big deal. However, with extensive pop-culture research, some understand the TikTok drama between the Gen-Z and Millenials. Basically, Gen-Z thinks Millenials are cringey and cheugy, and there's an ageist divide on the platform. This line somewhat feels like Paramount is taking the side of Generation Z, and it makes me think about how Gen-Z must of been their target market since this tactic chose to alienate other markets. After the backlash, Paramount decided to pivot and focus on a new line, “A new twist from Tina Fey.”

Walmart Black Friday Deals Commercial

The release of this Walmart commercial was left field for many. This was a high-concept ad that worked as a mini-prequel to the Mean Girls universe by providing an answer to, Where are they now?

“The ad reveals where the characters have ended up since graduating North Shore High two decades ago: Cady (Lohan) is now the school guidance counselor, Karen (Seyfried) is a local news reporter and Gretchen (Chabert) has evolved into her final form — a “cool mom” (Swift).

Don’t Use the Word Musical!

Based on data from focus groups, Paramount intentionally didn’t market Mean Girls as a musical so they wouldn’t alienate potential audience groups. I’m still trying to understand this. As someone who enjoys movie musicals, I was disappointed when the trailer was released without mentioning the musical elements that make the movie special and unique. Paramount acted on the problem that a certain group of people may not like musicals, but I feel like this caused them to ignore the groups this movie was intended for. It seems like they felt secure that the people who were going to show up for this movie would, but they wanted to focus their energy and strategy specifically on those who traditionally wouldn’t come out to watch this type of movie.

I think the campaign could have been stronger by marketing to their target markets. Here are two ideas:

1. Push clips from the Mean Girls Musical Broadway version on TikTok. This would excite the Gen-Z and Gen-A theatre kids about the movie, thus causing traffic of them acting out the musical and posting it on TikTok. I started noticing this after the movie was released, but it would have worked better if it started before the release of the movie musical.
2. Have two trailers and make it an inside joke. If it’s something that people love, it’s being part of an inside joke. The main trailer released didn’t showcase any of the music and hid the fact it was a musical. It would have been so funny if the theatre lovers/original movie lovers could have been in on this as a joke. The appreciators could have created videos saying, “Oh it’s not a musical,” and then have the music from the movie playing in the background. This would have allowed community/audience participation. Imagine two trailers - one labeled For the Musical Lovers, and the other Send to someone who doesn’t like musicals but want them to see this movie with you.

The ‘Mean Girls’ musical brought in $33M over its MLK Jr. holiday weekend debut, signaling success at the box office. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and had a lot of fun watching a light-hearted film that left me giggling as I was leaving the theatre with my friends.

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