Barbenheimer: Nostalgia, Retail, Recall, and Relevance

Phillip: [00:00:00] "A barren, rocky landscape at dawn. Two vast legs of plastic stand in the desert. Near them, a group of young girls playing with baby dolls approaches and stares in awe. They abandon their pretend babies, smashing them to pieces, and embrace the monolith: stylish, slender, a woman, an aspiration, the new idol, Barbie." Hello and welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast about the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Phillip, and today we have back with us a friend of the show, VP of Content at Retail TouchPoints, Alicia Esposito. Welcome back.

Alicia: [00:01:28] Hello. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Phillip: [00:01:31] Yeah, so am I. This is our celebration, of all things, Barbie. This episode on release day, if you're watching the YouTube, you can see Sunday Fun Day shirt. Alicia, you're sporting your Barbie t-shirt. I have the only pink t shirt that I had in my closet, but it is extremely pink.

Alicia: [00:01:50] It is very pink. That's 80s era Barbie.

Phillip: [00:01:53] This is 80's era Barbie.

Alicia: [00:01:54] Step dance instructor Barbie.

Phillip: [00:01:56] Yeah, this is the Spark Rollerblade Barbie, sort of pink. You know what I'm talking about? Neon colors. We'll get into that. I'm sure that you are, if you've been listening to podcasts, especially on what I'm guessing today is going to be the global release of the Barbie movie, you're probably sick of hearing... Like we have had Barbie crammed down our throats for about a month already, but we haven't talked about it on Future Commerce. There's a lot to talk about. But before we get into all of that, we did just kind of wrap up RICE, Alicia. I thought maybe we could give a two minute overview of that show and maybe you can just catch us up on what you're going to be working on here coming into the summer and fall.

Alicia: [00:02:43] Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, like you said, Phillip, we just wrapped up the Retail Innovation Conference and Expo. I think any time you do events, it's a big learning experience, especially in retail, because the dynamics of the industry are always changing so much. Issues that were top of mind six months ago are sometimes not as relevant or are deprioritized, especially in the current climate. So it was really interesting just to see where people were going, where their priorities were. And I think the one thing that just kept coming up is the role that culture plays in all of our decisions. And I know obviously this is your bread and butter here at Future Commerce, but I think we're seeing it more and more pronounced. And we had quite a few sessions, I think, in some capacity that either indirectly kind of alluded to that fact or it was the main focus of the sessions themselves. So I think that's one thing that's really exciting for me as someone who studies retail every day, reports on retail, but is also a very big culture nerd. I love pop culture. I think it's a huge representation of who we are as individuals, and as a society, and I'm always just a big fan of just doing my own little media analysis of what's happening in the world. So I think it's just very interesting to see how the worlds are blurring together now.

Phillip: [00:04:06] And it's so true, Alicia. What you just said is that  [00:04:12]there's cultural acceptance of certain types of media and popular media that shapes the way that we perceive the world. [00:04:21] And that's I think we went through maybe ten, 15 years of sort of comic book fandom, science fiction fandom that guided a lot of the cultural conversation. Representation also in those franchises, using those as platforms to have larger cultural conversations, too. And there is nothing that's more relevant in that conversation than the shift and the investment that Mattel and the Barbie brand have made over the last 15 years to also modernize that brand. And this is the thing I think is often lost. Something that I heard come through in RICE sessions on more than one occasion is what makes a brand [00:05:11]. A brand is not a logo or fonts or colors. A brand is a marker of trust of a corporation that was able to endure despite all odds, and that means that you have to remain culturally relevant. And brands pass away when the culture doesn't accept them. [00:05:31] And you can only talk about Barbie in 2023 if the brand has adapted to the times. That's kind of what we're seeing across the board. And even with eCommerce to some degree, which I know retail tech is sort of your beat, the way that the ecosystem of eCommerce or retail has changed dramatically is we as operators kind of need to get with the times too and have different types of conversations. So well, any other thoughts about that before we shift gears?

Alicia: [00:06:07] Yeah. No, I think the only thing I would add, I think your point about modernization is really spot on because there's something. Be said about brand recall and having that strong association. I'm thinking about like, say, the Barbie profile silhouette.  [00:06:25]If people see the outline of the little flippy ponytail, they're like, "Oh, yeah, Barbie." That's association, but relevance and true brand loyalty tie to a brand's ability to keep the core of what people initially love about a brand or a person, but also be able to adapt to some of the new realities of the consumer, and also accept some of the pitfalls or problematic nature of the past of the brand. [00:07:02] And being able to just accept it, acknowledge it, and say, "Okay, well, how do we move on from here knowing what we know now, given the current context?" And I think that's the one thing that people lose sight of, right? It's not like, "This should cease to exist." It's like, "Okay, that happened. That's what it was. But how do we move on from here?" And I think that can apply to all brands probably.

Phillip: [00:07:23] So that is, I think, the metatextual conversation. All brands could learn something from this moment, not in the marketing push behind Barbie as a brand, but the fact that there was anything to push whatsoever, given that the way that I think most people have perceived the Barbie brand has been one that lives in antiquity or has a perception of being outmoded or outdated. But I have two young daughters and for the last 12 years in my house, I don't know if you realize this, but every three weeks there's a new Barbie and her sisters go on some puppy road trip adventure video that drops on Netflix.

Alicia: [00:08:04] The IP is insane.

Phillip: [00:08:06] It is so deep.

Alicia: [00:08:07] It's insane.

Phillip: [00:08:07] And it's perpetual. That's the thing I think people have missed. If you're like an elder millennial and you don't have young children, this is an enduring brand and has a very deep, cinematic...

Alicia: [00:08:24] Deep roots.

Phillip: [00:08:24] Already. Especially in animation. So if the last time you saw Barbie was in Toy Story 2 or Toy Story 3 and that sort of self-aware, cheeky nature, I think that the live-action film, the Greta Gerwig piece that's coming out, is going to be... And you just saw a... Was it a documentary about sort of the history of Barbie or Mattel's company's process of this? What was that all about?

Alicia: [00:08:51] Yeah, yeah. So it's called Tiny Shoulders. It is not a new documentary. So that came out in 2018 and it just like gave me this nice aha moment. So watching the trailer for the Barbie movie, hearing more about what it was about, and honestly, the fact that Greta Gerwig was directing it, I was like, "Oh, okay, all right, I'm in it. Let me see what it's about." But it just created this aha moment for me because this documentary, Tiny Shoulders, kind of speaks to, I think, the complex relationship that a lot of us have with Barbie. And I say this as someone who grew up in the 90s, the resurgence, I think, could be considered for the Barbie brand because on one side was talking about that complex relationship, the fact that there were some problematic facets around how Barbie created these unrealistic standards for beauty and what women should be. But at the same time, Barbie was president. You know, Barbie went to space. Barbie did all of this. And then simultaneously, the parallel plot, was the Barbie team rethinking or building out the next phase of the Barbie brand. And that included what role diversity and inclusion play in all of this. And I know when people hear diversity and inclusion it's like, "Oh, okay, what does that mean?" So I saw some stats. Now Barbie products or Barbie dolls have 35 different skin tones, 97 different hairstyles, and that includes different textures and nine different body types. So the documentary kind of walks through that process and includes the perspectives of people who work for Mattel and work for Barbie and their own complex feelings about the brand. It's not just like, "Oh, I love Barbie. She's perfect and wonderful." It's like one of the team members was like, "I'm a feminist. I have all these feminist friends." I'm like, "How are you working for this brand?" And she's like, "Because I want to change it. I want to improve it. I want to make it better." So I thought it was a really nice summation, I think, of people who just really love to understand the history of these products and how far they've come, the role they play in our culture, and also the work that really needs to be done to create positive change, not just around the product itself, but how it goes to market, how consumers perceive it and ultimately set new standards for product creation in the future. And I think the movie kind of gives a subtle nod to that realization and that complexity that we've been feeling for a long time and in a way kind of makes Barbie feel that. Like, "Oh, what is real life?"

Phillip: [00:11:33] Right.

Alicia: [00:11:37] It's very meta.

Phillip: [00:11:37] It is extremely meta and that's where... So there's this, something we've written about on a few occasions in our Future Commerce Insiders column is this emergent study in the psychology of this emergent metatextual, meta state of media where modern audiences, especially younger audiences, want the media that they consume and the brands that they consume to be speaking to them about the strange nature that... There has to be some self-awareness in the way that they speak to their audience. I could give you a million examples. One that's really fresh in my mind is I went to take my kids to see Elemental recently, which is aPixar film. It's in theaters right now. If you're listening to this, which is middle of July in 2023, and it's a fine movie. It's not top-tier Pixar. But what I couldn't help but notice is there are moments where the movie pauses to make a critique of itself to say, "Well, isn't this such a strange thing we're all doing right now, that we're elements living in this world?" And at one point, the fire people and the water people have to get around a fence and the fire guy just walks through the fence and the water guy just walks through the fence and he's like, "Isn't it weird that we even have a fence? Who's that fence for?" {laughter}

Alicia: [00:13:23] Existential crisis within cartoons.

Phillip: [00:13:27] Yeah. And this speaks to this idea of meta-modernist storytelling where we're not just telling a story, we're also giving subtext about the self-awareness that the story exists at a certain time for a certain set of people. And we're also speaking to them about the thing we're doing. "Oh, we're sitting in a dark theater right now." And I think that's what the intention of the Barbie marketing machine is to also speak to you cannot do a Barbie movie without basically firebombing every single type of... Without basically also making a critique of the pervasiveness of the brand by going overboard with brand. So maybe we could talk a little bit about the way that that's played out. Are you sick of Barbie yet, Alicia?

Alicia: [00:14:27] No, I love it. I think it's so fun. I'm also one of those big nostalgia nerds. I'll go to like, the Camp site. For people who don't know, Camp is a toy retailer. Or I'll go to their store and just look at all the old toys that they have from like when I was a kid. I just love it. I also just love the thought and the creativity behind a lot of these partnerships and the intention. I'm like, "Oh, there's storytelling within this story." And I just really like to break all of that down and just understand what it's all about.

Phillip: [00:14:59] So I have to believe at this point that there's something to the tune of 100 plus collabs that have happened across consumer brands, entertainment, travel, I mean, themed hotel rooms, Airbnbs... There's like a literal Barbie dream house. What's your favorite 1 or 2 that kind of stick out to you, and what is it about it that appeals to you?

Alicia: [00:15:30] Okay, so I'm gonna try and break these down into categories because, you know, I just like to compartmentalize things. That's how I process. {laughter} I'm a control freak. So in general, I'm just a big fan of any sort of hospitality collab. I think retail in general has a really big opportunity to not just learn from hospitality, but also kind of bring those synergies together to create a better customer experience. I've written about it a lot. So Airbnb, I think has always risen to the occasion around these big brand moments and cultural phenomena. We were talking before we started about the Bluey House that people could rent for a little bit. They rented out Carrie Bradshaw's apartment and tweaked that before that came out. And I think they're [00:16:25] a really great example of a brand that doesn't necessarily have ties to the commercial product world, but really turns it into a commercial product moment. [00:16:35] So I think right off the bat I love them. Forever 21 I think is doing some incredible work around brand licensing in general. So as a brand strategy, especially because we're in this 90s and Y2K nostalgia moment, they just have like brought the right brands. And I'm not just talking about Barbie, right? I'm talking about bands. I'm talking about like toy products, like anything recognizable, they've managed to bring it in, but they've really blown this line out of the water. And I really found it interesting. I was looking through this one Twitter thread of all the different collabs. And what I found really interesting is the number of higher price, almost pseudo-luxury brands that are hopping on this bandwagon. There is glassware, there is Ruggable has a collab with them and I think it really speaks to, it's like that little tongue in cheek nod to like the people probably in our age range that also grew up with Barbie and has a bit more spend on tap for discretionary spending and who doesn't love a good collab? And knowing that it's for this time and for this moment, I think I do like the Ruggable line a lot.

Phillip: [00:17:58] So I thought the Ruggable collab was one of my favorite ones as well in that it looks like a piece that you may have wanted to have in your home anyway, outside of the Barbie tie-in.

Alicia: [00:18:11] Subtle.

Phillip: [00:18:11] It's extremely subtle, and I think that there's, for what it's worth, to kind of tie it back to the way that we break out of cycles where there are large cultural moments that shift our tastes. And I could not have predicted hot pink coming back into fashion last year. But the way that those big moments happen, there's sort of these big resets where you can't really iterate your way, small changes over time. You really don't innovate your way to large, big changes in taste. And that is the thing that has happened here, is that because the collaborations have been so pervasive, the color palettes have shifted dramatically. And we'll begin a new iteration cycle again after this. And the nostalgia fuel is very strong. But Barbie has so many eras, and so I can't think of any better vehicle for this moment. So a theme of our Visions report this year, which runs through all of the four trends is that nostalgia is fueling a lot of the consumer demand and desire at the moment.

Alicia: [00:19:23] Yes.

Phillip: [00:19:23] And so as brands, you're sort of naturally playing into that. It's not just in the products that you buy or their aesthetics. It's also in that I think everybody sort of maybe reached a point where you can have to your point, Alicia, if you have the means, you can have whatever you didn't have as a child, or have the aesthetic of that thing that you wanted and sort of treat that inner child that you have, which I think we all need to take care of ourselves a little bit to that degree. So yeah, it's not just the dream house. It's sort of Malibu Barbie, too. So what an interesting thing to play out right now. What are some ones that you think maybe I don't know, I don't want to be critical but miss the mark a little bit, maybe feel like a little bit about jumping on the bandwagon a little too much. Maybe I'll say there's a big push from the Etsy sellers in the world that are kind of making the Barbenheimer sort of thing happen.

Alicia: [00:20:33] Nice. I did get retargeted to a Barbenheimer t-shirt today. I almost bought it just to have it.

Phillip: [00:20:38] For those who aren't familiar, Oppenheimer, which is a Christopher Nolan movie, is coming out same day and date. Film Twitter is in a panic because the Barbie team is very specifically trying to compete in a way that has never happened before. In fact, I heard they moved their screening dates to compete day and date with the screening dates for critics against Oppenheimer. Very punchy.

Alicia: [00:21:10] Wow. The beef runs deep with Christopher Nolan. Who knew?

Phillip: [00:21:11] Very, very bold decision. Let's see how it plays out for him. I think making Barbeenheimer and sort of pitting these two properties against each other or making a critique about how polar opposite they are and turning it into a double feature is also extremely modern. But the merchification of it all feels like it's trying a little too hard. I don't know. What do you think of that?

Alicia: [00:21:33] Yeah, see, that's interesting. I almost thought that whole thing was more of just a meme that people were running with. And what I found most interesting about it was that it kind of spoke to the reality, I think, of our tastes. I think a lot of the people who will be seeing the Barbie movie will likely also see Oppenheimer. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself and my personal behaviors.

Phillip: [00:22:04] I'm going to see both.

Alicia: [00:22:04] It speaks to how we can say, "Yeah, I'm going to go see the Barbie movie," but I can also appreciate the fine filmmaking of Christopher Nolan and the acting abilities of Cillian Murphy. There's less, what's the word I'm looking for? There's less snobbery, I feel like, and I think that kind of helps break down the lines a little bit and shows how multi-dimensional we are as consumers. It's not so cut and dry anymore. And I just thought it was cute. I thought it was cheeky, but I'm probably not going to buy the t-shirt.

Phillip: [00:22:41] Not worth buying the t-shirt, although if you did turn up to the theater to see the double feature, having the t-shirt is probably not a bad idea. This weekend I saw a movie about one of the most monumental achievements in human history, combining multiple disciplines across many areas of the economy, sectors, and industries, all concerted for one monolithic human achievement, and I left the theater absolutely devastated to my core about the fear-inducing awe of what mankind is capable of. But enough about the movie Oppenheimer, Barbie was awesome. {laughter} But that's the kind of thing that I think that you could probably have the same sort of discourse about both, which makes it all the more interesting for everyone to participate in. Everybody kind of wants to put their own stamp on it because it feels so personal. Can you think of another brand that is like that? And for me, I feel invested in Barbie for some reason because I grew up playing Barbies with my kid sister. Even I have some emotional investment in nostalgia around the brand, which I think says a lot.

Alicia: [00:25:01] I think that's it. It's an investment. Even in those instances where we had that phase where I was like, "Ugh. Barbie. Barbie sucks." Like, "Barbie represents the awful expectations that they have for women." I mean, I've gone through that, you know, personally. But I think because Barbie has been so present through all of these decades and through all of these changes, I think we all have a little bit of emotional investment in it. And not for nothing. I don't know if this is too much of a throwback, but I feel like the movie Life-Size walked so the Barbie movie could run, so I don't. Do you remember Life-Size with Tyra Banks?

Phillip: [00:25:45] I do remember Life-Size. I remember. Yeah.

Alicia: [00:25:48] It was the first little glimpse of a fashion doll dealing with relevance, dealing with life. Young Lindsay Lohan. What could be better?

Phillip: [00:25:57] {laughter}

Alicia: [00:25:57] But it kind of had that moment of, "Oh, we all have these moments of realization and moments of growth," and it seems like it's on that similar path. But I think you nailed it, Phillip, I think it's a brand that we like it or not we do have some sort of stake in the game. And if this is a win, it's like, "Yeah, good for them." But to your point around what other brand has this type of recognition. I think Lego has done a really good job.

Phillip: [00:26:23] Oh yeah, for sure.

Alicia: [00:26:25] And I was listening to a really interesting podcast, so my husband's like a big movie buff and I heard them talking about the Barbie movie. And apparently, Mattel is like doubling down on and courting these filmmakers and basically saying like, "Here's the toy chest," so to speak, "What resonates? What can we do with this?" I think J.J. Abrams was brought into the mix. So who knows what happens there?

Phillip: [00:26:50] We're going to get it all. We're going to get the Bob the Builder verse. We're going to have, to that point, it's like nothing is off the table.

Alicia: [00:27:02] Right. No.

Phillip: [00:27:03] The My Little Tool Chest, you know, Fisher-Price, it's all... Yeah.

Alicia: [00:27:08] The creative IP discussion, I think, is probably a whole other hour podcast. But they talked about like, okay, this is great.  [00:27:17]Having this brand recall and this nostalgia does create a new vehicle for filmmakers like Greta Gerwig to kind of tap into the mainstream market and tell a really powerful story. But then it kind of goes down this rabbit hole of but if all of the funds are going towards these things and these big corporations that have all the IP already and selling all of the products, what does that leave for new stories? [00:27:43] So that's probably, again, a whole adjacent conversation. But I think it's a really interesting time around storytelling. And how do you tap into the essence of nostalgia, tell a fun story that draws people to the theaters, but also kind of bring something new into the mix? But again, jury's still out because I haven't seen the movie. But I hope it kind of gets a little bit deeper into that. It seems like it will.

Phillip: [00:28:09] Well, I think it will too. And so at the Vision Summit, at RICE, we had a guest speaker who opened the show. His name is Ruby Justice Thelot, and he describes himself as a cyber ethnographer, artist and an activist, and a wonderful writer. He published a piece recently in a column called The End Times, in a property called Byline, and sort of positioning this idea of the opening scene of the Barbie trailer being a send-up of the 2001 A Space Odyssey. And you see the way he wrote it. Nobody can reproduce this. So I'll just read it to you. "A barren, rocky landscape at dawn, two vast legs of plastic stand in the desert. Near them, a group of young girls playing with baby dolls approaches and stares in awe. They abandon their pretend babies, smashing them to pieces, and embrace the monolith: stylish, slender, a woman, an aspiration, the new idol, Barbie." And it's true, though, that to understand the director's intent of that scene is to draw on sort of transmedia literacy. It is that [00:29:44] Barbie represented a shift of the idea of children's playthings in culture, but it also represented a new monolith, a new way to see and perceive the world through this artifice of fashion, desirability, and idealistic standards. [00:30:06] And Ruby's whole thing is sort of this idea of the tyranny of images and how imagery shapes our perceptions and shapes culture, sure, but shapes us, specifically what we buy and where we buy it. And I find that to be a fascinating choice here, to your point, that they have recreated a monolith, a la this 2001 Space Odyssey send-up. They're recreating a monolith in the marketing machine. It is its own Manhattan project to come back to sort of the Oppenheimer approach. Yeah.

Alicia: [00:30:51] Well and what I find interesting too, to that point around perception and the elevation of the brand, I mean, what is happening within the fashion world around even just the pink carpet looks and Margot Robbie, the recreation of these core Barbie fashions, it really transforms, I think, the brand perception of like, okay, this is just a consumer product for kids to again, the people who loved Barbie growing up... Probably a lot of the designers recreating these looks loved Barbie growing up and they're turning it into something new and in some cases a little bit of like a copy-and-paste type recreation. But other times it's a modernized approach to a fashion moment that represents, again, it has such strong ties to Barbie. So it's like that nice full circle moment of we're seeing this moment we had like in our little toy trunks growing up and it's literally Life-Size and it's here. And I don't know, it's just a nice little moment, I think. And it shows how it's kind of gotten elevated a little bit.

Phillip: [00:32:03] Elevated for sure. And I think it is profoundly modern. You said Life-Size again, the film that you referenced is not high on Google Search, but what is is an omnichannel contact center with video conferencing solutions called Life Size. So if that doesn't tell you.

Alicia: [00:32:22] Wow.

Phillip: [00:32:23] That exists.

Alicia: [00:32:23] We ended up there and I didn't expect it.

Phillip: [00:32:26] Who knew? That just either speaks to us being out of the names of software or it's all connected, Alicia. It's all connected.

Alicia: [00:32:39] It's the great Circle of life. And also Life-Size 2 is about a troubled female toy executive who has issues with what the doll represents in modern society.

Phillip: [00:32:49] Christina Garnett, who actually is great on Twitter, great follow, but she works at HubSpot, very media literate, and she sort of mused about this concern that brands will learn the wrong message from the marketing machine of Barbie and that the message we will learn is what people want is to create a moment or to create an event out of all childhood toy properties.

Alicia: [00:33:20] Yep. That was like the movie point.

Phillip: [00:33:22] Yeah, right. And that is I think that the fear here is we're we're going to learn the wrong lesson and we're not going to be able to help ourselves in the way that we are trying to "world build." What is the dark future here is that we're going to have to deal with I already see the Star Wars cookbook at...

Alicia: [00:33:46] We'll just go down rabbit holes that don't make sense.

Phillip: [00:33:47] We already have IP to death.

Alicia: [00:33:50] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:33:52] What's your thinking around there? What wouldn't you want to see?

Alicia: [00:33:56] Yeah. I mean, I think in general, I would never want to see the IP get so entrenched and have that just be the only inroad for new content creation and new media creation. I think there's a space for that. But when it completely takes away from the new ideas, the new storytelling, the point I mentioned earlier about them trying to court filmmakers, it's like, okay, well, they have the deep pockets. So what does that mean for the unheard voices and the new voices that are trying to tell more profound stories and more impactful stories? Because if Greta Gerwig and similar filmmakers can make that money and get on a path to progression towards these big blockbusters, where does that allocation go? I mean, I guess in terms of filmmaking and talent, I guess the same thing goes for product development. What does that mean for the designers and the product developers that want to be a part of a new business or a new brand? Maybe they'll end up trying to work for a Mattel because that's where they know the IP money is and there's security there and longevity there. I mean, I think there are implications either way, but I don't know. What do you think?

Phillip: [00:35:20] I think when I think of certain brands, Stance, the sock company, is a good example. Funko is another. These are blank canvases which exist just for licensing.

Alicia: [00:35:40] Yeah. And fandom.

Phillip: [00:35:42] Yeah, right. And the thing that makes those brands valuable is the understanding of how to forge partnerships and do licensing. We might need to divide all of history into the time before the Barbie movie and the time after the Barbie movie. {laughter}

Alicia: [00:35:59] {laughter} A media and marketing analysis post-Barbie. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:36:01] Because I do think that this might be a nuclear-level event where every company decides that it needs to pursue licensing as a core part of its business model. And I think that's the wrong lesson to learn here. There are certain brands or certain companies and products that exist, and there are only a few of them in the world that you can think of in reference where licensing is the business. There are a few companies that exist where licensing can be a small part of the business. And then there's everything else in the world that has now been co-opted to be part of one media moment. I'm a little bit concerned that we will manufacture more of those. Some news that came out today, for instance, is Bob Iger and Disney are going to sort of ratchet back their investment in Star Wars and Marvel. Well, we have plenty of things now coming down the pike to take their place in popular culture, especially when you look at Super Mario and the success of that film, and the potential Legend of Zelda. The other Nintendo franchises. It just kind of feels like we're living in a lot of deja vu and yeah, but what I will say is it's been profoundly not boring and I am so happy to not be bored because I've been profoundly bored with the way that brands and the unimaginative nature of brands and the unimaginative nature of the channel, not just what you buy, but where you buy it.

Alicia: [00:37:54] Yeah, it's fun seeing where the brand shows up. I was actually looking into how they have a partnership with Bumble and I'm like, "Oh how does that work?" I was like, "Let me look into that. I want to see what that's all about." So, I mean, it's an unexpected vehicle for sure. But to your point, it makes me wonder too whether that kind of is an indicator of let's just like do it because everybody else is doing it. A lot of that happens with social media trends, right? Everybody else is doing this meme, so we got to do that too, and turn it into something. Social media managers going off the deep end and posting really weird stuff became a thing for a while because of Duolingo. Now everybody's doing it. I'm like, "All right, well now it's not like funny or weird anymore. It's kind of annoying."

Phillip: [00:38:46] Exactly. It's the wrong lesson to learn. Yeah, that's a better example of the kind of thing that I would be a little bit concerned about. Maybe we could delve into some theories about the nature of the Barbie film. What are you expecting? I mean, neither of us has seen it I'm taking it, right?

Alicia: [00:39:54] Yeah. No, I haven't. I don't have any connections there. I wish I did.

Phillip: [00:39:57] {laughter} Neither do I. Do you think that we're going to see explicit brand tie-ins in the film itself? Because of the nature of the marketing?

Alicia: [00:40:11] I feel like [00:40:12] we have to only because a lot of the Barbie dolls of the past did have product tie-ins. There was McDonald's Barbie. Do you remember that? There were always some subtle or direct brand partnerships there. [00:40:32] So I think it has to be some fun little tongue in cheek, again, meta moment of like, "Oh, Barbie always had these brand partnerships and now the marketing," and I don't know. I'm curious to see. I think I'm going to do a count just to see what shows up, what will be subtle versus what will be very direct. Oh, like Crocs is another one. Crocs is very good at collabs. So if there were like a few Barbies or a few different characters that have Crocs on, that's going to be very direct because who can miss Crocs? Like, really, I love them. I've been converted, but you can't miss them.

Phillip: [00:41:10] I think we're going to see a lot of cameos from not just the celebrity perspective, but I think the brand, the sort of commercialization of the film. I think the marketing is a foreshadowing of the nature of the film maybe, and I cannot wait for all of the analysis that will follow the film itself. Another film, another movie I'm extremely excited about this summer is Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1.

Alicia: [00:41:48] Yes.

Phillip: [00:41:49] I'm catching up, so I'm rewatching all of the Mission Impossible films. Couldn't help but last night we were watching Mission Impossible 2, which is by far the worst film in the franchise. But that film is packed with explicit product placement. It is. It's so distracting.

Alicia: [00:42:12] It's like a Wayne's World moment.

Phillip: [00:42:13] It is.

Alicia: [00:42:14] "Oh, my head."

Phillip: [00:42:15] Which is also very meta-modernism in its critique of brand. I think that that's a really interesting thing. In fact, I noticed it right at the beginning of the film. There are the Oakley glasses that blow up. There's like a Bulgari necklace. There's a character that mentions, "Don't step on my Gucci shoes." My $800 Gucci shoes. Which, you know, in 1998 was... Now, I think $800 would be a steal for some Gucci leather loafers. So I go like, "There must be somebody who's written about this. Don't make me have to write the think piece about Mission Impossible 2 in 2023." And there is, there are a number of critical pieces, but the number one SEO-ranked rundown of commercialism is apparently a family safety magazine online called PluggedIn, and PluggedIn does a sort of like is this safe for kids sort of analysis of films.

Alicia: [00:43:11] Got it. Got it.

Phillip: [00:43:12] And I found it fascinating. It's not just a breakdown of violence or sexuality or themes that might be characters in peril or themes that might be confusing or too verging on adult for children. They explicitly break out in most of their critical analysis, commercialism.

Alicia: [00:43:33] Oh, interesting.

Phillip: [00:43:34] I've never known that before. And it's going to be a resource for me now. How much commercialism is in this film? It ranks extraordinarily high. And so that's where I think that there's going to be a big. Our producer, Erika, is breaking in to say, "Yeah, Twilight is also fascinated with Volvo as a brand."

Alicia: [00:43:54] Very unlikely sponsor.

Phillip: [00:43:56] Marvel is fascinated with Audi and Acura. I think that's where it is normalized now. It's not as in-your-face as it used to be. I hope it's over the top for Barbie because I really want something to talk about after this movie comes out.

Alicia: [00:44:14] I feel like I think it makes sense, though, because Barbie is naturally very kitschy. And I think it would just be more of hopefully it's more of like a lever for the humor and the little wink moment versus the Mission Impossible, which I'm sure there was some sort of advertising life cycle that happened beforehand. The Gucci ads or the Oakley ads starring. Yeah. So, I mean, and then it just dies off once the film is out or out of theaters. It's like it's done.

Phillip: [00:44:47] It could be. There are a lot of fan theories about what the nature of the movie will be and what the movie is trying to say. None of that's really apparent in the marketing. It does look like in the... Spoiler alert for people that avoid trailers. But there is a point when we see Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken. So they go to the real world. Ryan Gosling, by the way, let's just call him Baby Goose from now on, but it looks like they go to the real world, which I think is again, in films of this era, made for us based on IP that's from our childhood. The Lego Movie is another good example of that. Toy Story does this a lot. It's like, what are the implications and being able to make a critique about the way that these things inhabit our real world and the things like how the dissonance of those characters existing in this real world and but then being sentient and how horrific that would actually be to be a child's plaything. I love going deep down that rabbit hole. Do you have like a group of friends, Alicia, that you can do this with, or is it just us on the podcast? Okay.

Alicia: [00:46:08] Oh, yeah. No, we go deep. It's usually in text chains and then we co-watch it and then we go back to it and we see each other in person.

Phillip: [00:46:17] Yeah. You have to revisit it.

Alicia: [00:46:19] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:46:20] Well, I'm looking forward to it. I'm sure that we'll need to do a bit of a regroup on it when it does happen.

Alicia: [00:46:26] We could do a live tweet or a live Threads.

Phillip: [00:46:32] We should just buy out a theater. That's the real... That's the HENRY moment is like just buying out the whole theater for your own sort of like Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque event.

Alicia: [00:46:41] Yes. Or rent out Barbie's Dream House and watch Barbie while you're living like Barbie.

Phillip: [00:46:46] In your high-heeled Barbie Crocs probably.

Alicia: [00:46:47] {laughter} And your hot pink shirt.

Phillip: [00:46:49] I love it. Thank you so much, Alicia Esposito, from Retail TouchPoints. Thank you for coming on Future Commerce.

Alicia: [00:46:55] Thank you.

Phillip: [00:46:55] Where can people find you online? Where should they be paying attention to the things you write?

Alicia: [00:47:00] RetailTouchPoints.com or LinkedIn, Alicia Esposito Retail TouchPoints. And I'm threading. Is that what they call it?

Phillip: [00:47:08] Yeah.

Alicia: [00:47:09] Yeah. Alicia_FioEspo.

Phillip: [00:47:13] This is the first time maybe on this show that will have mentioned Threads somehow.

Speaker4: [00:47:18] That's a fun one to dig into too.

Phillip: [00:47:20] I think so. What is your Threads number? Do you know offhand? That's like a thing.

Alicia: [00:47:24] What are you doing to me now? I don't know.

Phillip: [00:47:27] I'm sorry. That was like everyone got very angry for them sort of making that into a status symbol is like, what number of Threads are you?

Alicia: [00:47:38] Oh, boy.

Phillip: [00:47:39] Okay, well, it's very cringe.

Alicia: [00:47:40] That's too profound for me.

Phillip: [00:47:43] {laughter} Alicia Esposito. Thank you. This has been great.

Alicia: [00:47:45] Thank you.

Phillip: [00:47:47] I love nerding out about... I'm glad Brian was in here because he would have. He would have been like, "Y'all are off the deep end. Let me tell you the philosophical implications for this nightmare hellscape that we all live in."

Alicia: [00:47:58] Well, we'll have to get his report card after.

Phillip: [00:48:02] All right. Thank you.

Alicia: [00:48:03] Thank you.

Phillip: [00:48:03] Thank you so much for listening to Future Commerce. You can find more episodes of this podcast and our new podcast, the second season of the Visions podcast is coming soon. You can get it at FutureCommerce.com and that is our audio-visual trends report. You can find more out about Visions, find out the four trends that are shaping the way that consumers buy and the culture that they create in commerce. You can find that at Visions.FutureCommerce.com. And we are in your inbox three times a week with insights that you need to shape your perspective on how consumers engage with your brands. If you're building a brand or you operate a brand, if you are in strategy or foresight, you need this kind of analysis. You can find it at FutureCommerce.com/Subscribe and you'll be getting the best of our insights three days a week. Monday, Wednesday, Friday straight from Future Commerce. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Future Commerce.