I have two boys under five, so Toy Story 5 hitting theaters this weekend is the only topic in the Minzenmayer house.

And the more the toys circle my brain, the more their marketing is all I can see.

The Taylor Swift clues. The 13 clouds. The billboard battle between Buzz and Lilypad. The ESPN spot turning commentators into action figures. The AT&T campaign trying to make "connection" mean more than a phone bill.

Pixar is doing something sneaky sneaky. Here are five moves I can't stop thinking about, and how each one helps you make better work.

The first frame for Toy Story 5 is simple: toy meets tech. The toys are up against Lilypad, a frog-shaped tablet voiced by Greta Lee. Stupid simple plot: a room full of old toys staring at the next thing that might replace them.

The principle: conflict beats description.

You can describe a project forever and still leave people cold. Name the fight and they know where to stand. Toys versus tech. Handmade versus automated. Generic Christian content versus something with teeth.

Why it works: People attach to pressure. A toy meeting a tablet is a problem, and you feel what's at stake before you've seen a single scene. Especially because the fight already lives in our houses. Anyone who's watched a kid pick a screen over a toy feels it. Pixar didn't invent that anxiety.

They named it Lilypad.

Steal it: Before you launch anything, write the tension in one sentence. Not the description. The t-EnSi0N. If you can't find the reason people should care, you don't have a story yet.

The Taylor Swift rollout was a breadcrumb machine.

A billboard in Toy Story style. Thirteen clouds. Fans connecting the letters to both Toy Story and Taylor until the payoff landed:

Swift wrote an original song for the film, "I Knew It, I Knew You."

It worked because the audience got to solve something before anyone asked them to stream anything.

The principle: discovery creates ownership.

People share clues differently than announcements. An announcement says, "Here's what we made." A clue says, "You might see it before everyone else." That small shift moves the reader from outside the campaign to inside it.

Watching becomes playing.

Steal it: Give people something to notice before you ask them to care. A repeated phrase. A visual motif. An object that shows up in every post. Then make the payoff real. The cheap version is fake mystery: "something big is coming," where the reveal turns out to be a coupon code or a webinar you've already run six times.

People forgive mystery when the reveal was worth the wait.

Most movies print the main character on a billboard and call it a day. Toys play in the air above your parked car for Toy Story.

The principle: the medium should behave like the message.

If the movie is about toys and tech clashing, the ads should feel like toys and tech clashing. If your newsletter is about craft, the welcome email should have craft. If your event is about peace, the registration flow shouldn't feel like renewing a driver's license.

Why it works: The doorway teaches people what the room will feel like. Before anyone watches the film, Pixar hands them a tiny version of its energy. Playful conflict. Big characters. A world they already know.

Let people taste the thing before they commit to it.

Steal it: Audit the first surface people touch this week. The landing page. The welcome email. The church lobby sign. The subject line. Does it feel like the thing itself, or like a form standing in front of the thing?

Invitation is part of the experience.

ESPN didn't slap a logo on a sports promo. Their "Toy Story 5.5" spot turns ESPN personalities into animated action figures and sends them on a Toy Story-style run toward the Super Bowl.

AT&T did it from another angle, leaning into connection, family moments, and devices for kids. Some of that is brand-speak, sure. A telecom company saying "connection" is about as surprising as a youth minister owning too many quarter-zips. But the fit holds, because Toy Story 5 is already asking a family-tech question: what happens when the devices in a kid's life start competing with the toys in a kid's room?

The principle: a good partnership translates both worlds.

Bad partnerships borrow attention. Good partnerships make the story clearer. ESPN translated its people into toys. AT&T translated the movie's tech tension into a family campaign. The audience doesn't have to connect the dots.

The ad already did.

Steal it: Don't partner because the audiences overlap. Partner because the story gets clearer. If you're a church, don't book a business owner to speak because business owners draw a crowd. Book them because their story is the theme in the flesh. If you're a creator, collaborate with someone who reveals a piece of the idea you couldn't reveal alone.

LeapFrog could have tried to correct the comment.

A nervous brand explains why the joke is unfair. LeapFrog did the opposite. They took the frame and argued the villain's side.

You think Lilypad is the bad guy? That’s fine. Villains have lived in the toy box forever. Darth Vader. Bowser. The Joker. Every tiny plastic menace your kid inexplicably wants to own.

Why it works: The brand isn't hiding from the fear underneath the movie. Parents are already worried about screens replacing play, and Toy Story 5 is poking that exact nerve. A frog-shaped tablet walking into Bonnie's room is not neutral. It carries every modern argument about attention, screen time, learning apps, and whether the iPad has quietly become the third parent. LeapFrog's reply admits all of it without getting defensive. It says, in effect: yes, we know she looks like trouble. That's why the story works.

LeapFrog isn't just selling a tablet inside a summer blockbuster. They borrowed the movie's central anxiety and turned it into play. Risky, and kind of brilliant.

Steal it: Find the thing people might tease, doubt, or misunderstand about your work. Then ask whether the joke has truth in it. If it does, don't swat it away. A newsletter that feels "too niche" might need to say, "Yes. That's why it works."

Make the objection useful.

Every one of these moves does the same thing: it refuses to just announce the thing.

The characters show up before the movie. The conflict shows up before the trailer. The clue trail lets fans play before the song drops. The partners stage little side-fights instead of renting billboards. Even the villain gets to talk.

There's a lesson here for anyone making work they care about.

If the story matters, the invitation should too.

—Payton ✌️

P.S. What do you think of our newest CSL format?