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When SpongeBob SquarePants premiered on Nickelodeon in 1999, there was no indication it would become the global phenomenon it is today. At the time, the underwater adventures of a perennially cheerful sea sponge fit squarely into Nickelodeon’s canon of madcap cartoons from the 90s and early aughtsthink: Rocko’s Modern Life, The Ren & Stimpy Show, The Angry Beavers, CatDog, Invader Zim, and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.None of those shows likely rings a bell unless you grew up in a specific generation. And yet, 25 years after its debut, SpongeBob SquarePants has reached the level of brand recognition akin to cultural touchstones such as Mickey Mouse, Looney Tunes, and Hello Kitty.Not only is the show and its characters highly recognizablethey’re cooler than they’ve ever been. Hip to be Square SpongeBob SquarePants sits at a unique intersection of digital and physical pop culture. According to the song lyric database Genius, characters from SpongeBob SquarePants have been referenced in hip-hop lyrics hundreds of times. Those same characters have dominated internet culture with a steady stream of memes and GIFs. All the while, SpongeBob has been a mainstay in fashion and art. Look to the 2013 capsule collection with Pharrell Williams’s brand Ice Cream; a 2014 collection from Moschino; and sneaker collabs with Vans (2018), Nike (2019), and Puma (2023). Visual artist and designer Louis De Guzman and reggaeton superstar J Balvin teamed up in 2021 to create SpongeBob SquarePants-themed art, apparel, and home goods. [Photo: Stella McCartney] And just this year, Supreme released racing jackets and shirts; design and fashion brand Cactus Plant Flea Market and retailer Uniqlo put out their own SpongeBob SquarePants collection; as did Stella McCartney for her kidswear line. All of this has turned a yellow sponge and all his nautical nonsense into a pop culture muse and a $16 billion global brand powerhouse. A Big Yellow T-Shirt Becomes a Hot Topic for Adults Pam Kaufman, CEO of international markets, global consumer products, and experiences at Paramount, joined Nickelodeon in 1997 as vice president of marketing and promotions. She had a front row seat when SpongeBob SquarePants hit the airwaves in 1999 to a somewhat tepid response. Pam Kaufman [Photo: Paramount] “It did okay,” Kaufman recalls. “That was during a time when it was okay to keep a show on without getting blockbuster ratings. It gave shows time to build and breathe.” Fast-forward to Seasons 3 and 4, when things started to shift. Vincent Waller, executive producer of SpongeBob SquarePants, initially joined the show in 2000 as a writer. He got into the habit of doodling characters from shows he was working on and leaving them in public places, on restaurant checks, and the like. While in Shanghai around Season 3 of SpongeBob SquarePants, he handed a kid a SpongeBob drawing, thinking he wouldn’t know who the character was. “He looks at it and he starts screaming and runs off into a building,” Waller says. “I found out later he was yelling ‘Sponge Baby! Sponge Baby! in Chinese. And then 15 kids came pouring out of the building, and I just stood there drawing these [sketches for] little kids. Stateside, Kaufman was getting calls from fans wanting merch. At the time, she led a small consumer products business that launched off the success of the networks show Rugrats. Soon, audiences were asking for goods from a certain spongea demand that Kaufman says was by no means a guarantee. “Not everything that’s a hit is merchandisable and works in consumer products. One of the biggest shows in Nickelodeon history is The Fairly Odd Parents, and that never translated to consumer productsever,” Kaufman says. “Hey Arnold!massive hit. Never translated.Back then, Kaufman didn’t see a show like SpongeBob SquarePants translating into toys because it didn’t fit the classic play pattern at the time, which leaned more toward interactivity and gaming (RoboSapien, Beyblade, Nintendo DS, Pokémon, etc.) or fashion dolls (Bratz, My Scene Barbies). ca. 2008. [Photo: chloe delong/Flickr/CC BY 2.0] The first piece of SpongeBob SquarePants merch was a bright yellow T-shirt with SpongeBob’s face on it. More notable is the fact that the shirt was sold in Hot Topic, a store known more for its goth and alternative wares. Kaufman says they were intentional in launching at Hot Topic and not a more kid-friendly retailer because they noticed co-viewing of the show among parents and children was exceedingly high. That crossover appeal was intentional. Marc Ceccarelli, executive producer of SpongeBob SquarePants, joined the show in 2010 as a writer and storyboard artist and says the main goal in the writer’s room was to mae each other laugh. “We’re basically making cartoons for a bunch of adults who still like watching cartoons,” Ceccarelli says. Pharrell Williams attends the Nickelodeon and Pharrell Williams Debut SpongeBob X ICECREAM Capsule Collection on September 10, 2013, in New York City. [Photo: Eugene Gologursky/Getty Images for Nickelodeon] Soaking Up Fashion and Art The world of Bikini Bottom, SpongeBob’s underwater hometown, was largely inspired by show creator Stephen Hillenburgs background as a marine biologist. His take on ocean life was highly stylized, from the retro Hawaiian aesthetic of Bikini Bottom to the show’s colorful cast of characters. “Each of the characters is really well defined and unique in a way,” Ceccarelli says. You look at a lot of shows, and they have this signature art style where all the characters kind of feel like variations of the same character. Whereas in SpongeBob, each character is designed for their personality. I think that makes the characters feel even more real and fleshed out than many other shows.” SpongeBob x Uniqlo [Photo: Cactus Plant Flea Market] This emphasis on unbridled creativity is part of the reason the show has so many fans in fashion and culture. After Williams reached out to Nickelodeon for what wound up becoming the 2013 capsule collection for his Ice Cream brand, it kicked off a still-occurring string of collabs in fashion and beyond. Last year, Xbox launched a custom-designed console. Even the United States Postal Service has gotten in on the craze with a series of SpongeBob SquarePants stamps. “We learned from SpongeBob that we don’t have to be so precious about a character,” Kaufman says. “It can translate into different art styles.” Moschino A/W 2014 at Milan Fashion Week, 2014. [Photo: Jacopo Raule/Getty Images] As flexible as SpongeBob’s intellectual property may be, Kaufman says they do reject a number of offers. Some of those do’s and don’ts, including no seafood restaurant tie-ins, came from show creator Hillenburg, who died in 2018 of complications from Lou Gehrig’s disease. [Image: USPS] “He just wanted the character to maintain its authenticity,” Kaufman says. As run-down as that word has become, it’s critical to Kaufman and her team to ensure the show maintains the essence of what Hillenburg created. SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg with the voice of SpongeBob, Tom Kenny, in Los Angeles, 2002. [Photo: Kevin Winter/ImageDirect] Positive vibes only At the core of SpongeBob SquarePants is SpongeBobs unwavering positivity. The secondary characters and their unique relationships to SpongeBob lend the show a relatability despite its offbeat humor. The foundation Hillbenburg set has remained the focus, even as SpongeBob has expanded into theme parks, restaurants, Broadway, and beyond. “SpongeBobs good nature is the hook,” says Ramsey Naito, president of Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation. “The world and community that SpongeBob has created, Bikini Bottom, is a mirror of our own, and perhaps a more fun and playful mirror of our own. That allows us to look introspectively and see the joy of living.” [Image: Nickelodeon] Maybe that’s part of the reason why SpongeBob’s brand continues to resonate with generation after generation. For kids, there’s no shortage of ridiculous antics to keep them entertained. But for older audiences, there’s something to be said for such a perpetually cheerful and silly character existing in a real world that consistently feels anything but cheerful and silly. You hear this over and over and over again in research: I just love him. He makes me so happy, Kaufman says. Our goal has always been to put SpongeBob out there in the world in an experiential way that will make people feel fun and happy. That was the strategyto keep building experiences where people can be part of them.”
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E-Commerce
Americans have long loved Made in Americaor at least have professed to. But the data tells a trickier story. In 2022, 60% of U.S. consumers said they would be more likely to purchase a product they knew was American made. Today, according to a recently released study from the Conference Board, that number is closer to 50%. Thats a drop of around 18%. One reason may be that whatever Made in America signals about quality or about economic patriotism, it also very likely signals a higher price. And after years of inflation worries, that might be a more salient issue to many. As price concerns intensify, many U.S. consumers appear to associate made in labels with elevated prices due to generally higher domestic production costs as well as tariffs on foreign-made goods, the reports author, Denise Dahlhoff, director of marketing and communications research at the Conference Board, said in a statement. Increasingly, consumers prioritize value and affordability over emotional affinity for certain countries, including their own. Despite the decrease, the U.S. remains the most popular product country of origin among surveyed American consumers. (Canada is second, according to the Conference Board.) And thats not unusual: Despite decades of trade liberalization creating increasingly globalized markets, shoppers around the world remain most positive about domestic-made goods, a phenomenon known as consumer ethnocentrism, or home bias. Moreover, the Conference Board study found the influence of made in labels on U.S. consumer purchasing decisions has decreased for all countries included in its survey, with professed preference for U.S.-made products falling the least in percentage terms. Do as I say, not as I do There has always been at least a partial disconnect between what consumers say and how they actually behave. The say-do gap when it comes to buying American has been around since at least the 1970s. After all, it was a preference for cheaper goods made elsewhere that contributed to the trade imbalance that the Trump tariff regime seeks to address. So far, there doesnt seem to be evidence of the intended actual spike in demand for American-made goods. A separate survey, in fact, found only 17% of consumers are willing to pay more than 10% extra for U.S. goods than foreign-made alternatives, and about a third say theyre not willing to pay any extra costs for U.S.-made products. The current iteration of the buy American idea, taking a form bolstered by extreme policy measures, is unfolding against a deeply divided American political backdrop. The Conference Board survey found 66% of Republican-leaning U.S. consumers say they would be more likely to buy a product they knew was American, compared to 42% of Democratic-leaning shoppers. Naturally, marketers can still come up with nonpartisan Made in the USA pitches, but its hard not to conclude that politics has become a factor. (Notably, while American enthusiasm for American-made goods may have slipped, both Canada and Mexico have launched initiatives to spur domestic consumption.) Still, the Conference Board report notes, Companies seem to see marketing value in a Made in USA claim and a surge in U.S.-made claims is expected. Given the evidence to the contrary, why is that? Plenty of American consumers still have a home bias, report author Dahlhoff told Fast Company, and would prefer buying domestically manufactured goods. However, she added, most U.S. consumers are not willing to pay significantly more for a U.S.-made product than for a comparable alternative. Its similar to buying sustainable products: People like the idea of sustainability and made in the U.S., but dont want to pay a premium. Thats been the case for decades. But a surprising side effect of the tariff era may be that consumer sentiment is more accurately reflecting consumer behavior: Its made the choice between prices and country of origin more prominent, and many shoppers are concluding that cost is what they care about.
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E-Commerce
If you ever wished you owned James Bond’s Aston Martin so you could activate its frontal machine guns whenever someone cut you off on the road, XPeng has the next best thing. The Chinese car manufacturer has developed an augmented reality game that lets you fire all kinds of emojis at the offenderfrom angry faces to flip-flops to Nintendo-style bombswhich are projected over the entire windshield in 3D space, giving the illusion of actually hitting the cars. While tossing a digital shoe may not be as satisfying as throwing an actual flip-flop, it may actually be beneficial for your mental state. Road rage has become a dangerous epidemic in the U.S., with approximately 92% of Americans reporting having witnessed road rage at least once in the past year. The statistics are sobering: Road rage incidents led to 481 shootings and 777 deaths from 2014 to 2023. Gun violence related to road rage incidents has increased annually since 2018that year, at least 58 road rage shooting deaths occurred in the United States; by 2023, the number had doubled to 118. On average in 2022, a person was shot and either injured or killed in a road rage incident every 16 hours. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Luxurious (@luxuriousbymm) The crazy shootings dont happen in Chinawhere gun access is restrictedbut the rage remains. This is why XPeng CEO He Xiaopeng introduced Road Rage Reliever during last weeks presentation of his new 2025 XPeng P7, a futuristic sedan with a design that gives me serious 1980s Citroën DS vibes. He says the game represents “technology-driven emotion. We used to prioritize technology first, but starting this year we will prioritize experience first, Xiaopeng said on stage, adding that the game is a way to be civilized and experience ‘civilized frustration’ rather than engaging in dangerous behaviors. How it works Road Rage Reliever transforms your windshield into a virtual battleground. But to understand how it works and why it may be so effective at letting you blow off steam on the road, you need to understand the real technological leap here, one that fully changes the driving experience. The car features an 87-inch-wide augmented reality heads-up display (AR-HUD) that covers the drivers entire field of vision and then some. According to its developersXPeng and Chinese electronics manufacturer Huaweithis is “the world’s first HUD solution to integrate AI smart driving.” Its also the first and only HUD of its kind, period. The AR-HUD works thanks to Huaweis self-developed LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) imaging modules, tiny projectors no bigger than your thumb, which generate streams of light that produce pixels with 12,000 nits of brightness. This is crucial for you to see under the outdoor lighting of a road. For comparison, the latest iPhone 16 Pro Max has a peak outdoor brightness of 2,000 nits. The P7s AR-HUD also covers 85% of the NTSC color gamut developed by the National Television Standards Committee. Thats much lower than the screen of a computer, but more than enough to give you full-color graphics. According to Huawei and XPeng, the system has advanced optics, and algorithms precisely calibrate each beam before it hits the windshield. They also calculate the distortion needed for your eyes to believe that things are not displayed on the windshield, but instead that the 3D objects are floating in real physical space 33 feet (10 meters) ahead of the car. Its an optical illusion so convincing that the brain interprets digital content as real, the companies claim. [Image: XPeng] The 3D imageswhich are primarily used to display car, road, and GPS informationare generated by XPengs three self-developed Turing AI chips, with a combined 2,250 TOPS (trillion operations per second) of computing power to process data from radar sensors and cameras placed all around the car. These chips understand the positions and trajectories of the vehicles and objects around you, predicting car movements 0.3 seconds ahead to give you a precious perception buffer in case of potential collision. If the car can predict in advance, its computers or driver can take action with enough lead time to avoid or minimize an accident. As the car moves, the system also uses XPengs 3D technology to map every surface and movement, reducing virtual-real mismatch by more than 80%, with distortion held to less than 1%. This means that when the car is indicating which exit to take by overlaying a big path over the road, the path will appear as it is painted on the road. The system, the company says, paints navigation light carpets onto the road surface, creates colorful lane guidance overlays that match actual road markings, and displays floating traffic light countdowns in attention-grabbing colors over reality itself. This is all crucial to make Road Rage Reliever work. Playing it is very simple: The steering wheel has a customizable button that serves as your firing mechanism. The system identifies your target vehicle through its camera array, and every time you press the trigger it fires full-color, animated emojis that appear to detonatein a cartoonish way akin to a family-friendly Nintendo Wii gameagainst the real car ahead while remaining invisible to others. The display adjusts in real time with a latency of just 100 milliseconds, following your target as it changes lanes, speeds up, or slows down. Advanced image stabilization prevents motion sickness and eye strain, while slope compensation algorithms ensure your emoji bombs dont go flying off into space when you crest a hill. Clever! [Image: XPeng] Safe steam valve? The big question is safety. Studies show that heads-up display systems can significantly improve drivers’ attention to risky areas during night driving situations. The key difference lies in where drivers look: While traditional displays that sit in the center of the dashboard force drivers to glance away from the road, HUD placement keeps eyes in the driver’s forward field of view. Some research revealed that drivers were more likely to glance at HUDs during normal driving (11% eyes-off-road time versus 5.8% for traditional displays), which the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says can make them “potentially distracting. . . . Because the HUD is in the drivers field of view, drivers ma fixate on it and fail to perceive events in the environment. However, that study referred to traditional car HUDslike those in high-end cars by BMW and Mercedeswhich are basically small dashboards in your field of view. The XPeng windshield overlays real augmented reality elements onto the road, making them part of the landscape. A carefully designed augmented reality environment will not cause interference; instead it could potentially increase attention and improve response time. It could also reduce the difficulty of processing information in dangerous scenarios, thus reducing cognitive load. While overlaying useful driving information right on the road might have positive impacts on driving, pulling a trigger to fire a torrent of emojis at the car in front of you is potentially quite distracting. You could argue that firing silly augmented reality emojis could be as safe as hitting the hornthe action is the same in XPeng’s carand definitely safer than aggressively chasing someone down a street or a highway. XPeng hasn’t published any information about safety testing for the AR-HUD or Road Rage Reliever. To me, the AR-HUD looks like a promising improvement in the driving experience. And Road Rage Reliever is a clever and cute attempt to gamify anger management at 70 mph. Whether firing emoji bombs at inconsiderate drivers will actually reduce real-world road rage remains to be seen, but XPeng has certainly come up with the most creative approach yet to one of driving’s most dangerous emotions.
Category:
E-Commerce
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