Sesame Street cereal and brands’ fun with the Utah monolith: Wednesday Wake-Up Call

Welcome to Ad Age’s Wake-Up Call, our daily roundup of advertising, marketing, media and digital news. If you're reading this online or in a forwarded email, here's the link to sign up for our Wake-Up Call newsletters. Brought to you by General Mills Cereal sales have risen sharply during the pandemic, despite the efforts of brands like Kraft Mac & Cheese to suggest themselves as alternative breakfast foods. Now General Mills is capitalizing on that with the creation of a Sesame Street cereal brand, reports Ad Age’s Jessica Wohl (who also asks, quite reasonably, “What took them so long?”) There are two varieties: “C is for Cinnamon” cereal includes letter-shaped pieces and has a box featuring Cookie Monster and Elmo, while the “1 2 3 Berry” number-shaped cereal showcases Elmo and Abby Cadabby on the box. (If you’re a '70s child you might be wondering where the Count is, but the newer characters, explains Wohl, are more likely to resonate with the target audience of young kids.) General Mills is promoting the debut of the line as being a low-cost option for families, and, in keeping with the Sesame Street brand’s educational values, the back of the box opens up like a book, with English and Spanish short stories that feature Elmo visiting a farm and going to school.A monolithic meme When a strange metal monolith was discovered in the Utah desert last week, it seemed 2020 couldn’t get any weirder. The sighting, which has become even more bizarre with its subsequent... Continue reading at 'Advertising Age'

[ Advertising Age | 2020-12-02 11:34:50 UTC ]
News tagged with: #hard task #staying safe #cmo strategy #newsletters galore #subscribers make #corporate subscriptions #find options #—including access #short stories

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Diamond Calls 2013 “Our Best Year Ever”

Pointing to strong titles, a growing backlist, and retailer optimism, Diamond Book Distributors, the trade book unit of Diamond Comics Distributors, reported that its 2013 sales rose by “double digits” over 2012 in the U.S., Canada, and international markets. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-01-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facebook to Brands: Post More Images

Brands have spent the past couple of years complaining the content they publish is rarely actually seen by users that like their pages. That's party because Facebook wants those brands to pay for ads, but also because it doesn't want them alienating users with annoying updates asking people to... Continue reading at Digiday

[ Digiday | 2014-01-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
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House of Fun by Simon Hoggart – review

A fitting salute to the Guardian's late parliamentary sketch writerI thought it unnecessary, and perhaps ethically dubious, to cover this book when its first edition came out in 2012; but now, following Simon Hoggart's death earlier this month, and the addition of a selection from a year's worth... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2014-01-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Campaigners brand DCMS library stats 'bonkers'

A new Department of Culture, Media and Sport library report estimating that only 90 static... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2014-01-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Wall Street Beat: VC money pours back into Internet companies

Venture capitalists poured more money into Internet companies last year than they have since the dot-com bust, according to a survey published Friday.Internet companies in the U.S. took in US$7.1 billion from VCs in 1,059 deals in 2013, the highest level of Internet investment in terms of... Continue reading at PC World

[ PC World | 2014-01-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Allen Lane signs Wall Street title

Penguin imprint Allen Lane will publish a new book from American author and business journalist... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2014-01-15 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publish and be branded: the new threat to literature's laboratory

Increasingly fixated on the stars of today, such as Hilary Mantel and JK Rowling, publishers are neglecting the experimenters who could save their industry tomorrow: the mid-list writersThe tickets sold out months ago. Long before the admiring reviews of the stage adaptation of Hilary Mantel's... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2014-01-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Publishers, libraries poke fun at the cold

The publisher Consortium Books posts its own video of hot water being tossed in the air in frigid weather, while a library recommends keeping a book at hand when it's cold outside. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor

[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2014-01-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Author Starts Indiegogo Campaign to Buy Main Street

Although she has yet to make an offer, a local author and blogger launched an Indiegogo campaign Monday to raise $15,000 by February 5 to purchase Main Street Books in St. Charles, Mo. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-01-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Best Brand Content of 2013

The “brands are publishers now” line has become so ubiquitous in digital media that it risks becoming a cliché. While it is often true that companies are increasingly creating their own content, not all that’s published is created equal. Here’s to the brands that took the time and money to... Continue reading at Digiday

[ Digiday | 2013-12-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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French a laureate for good fun reading

If Jackie French gets her way the nation's children's books will be a lot stickier and messier.     Continue reading at The Sydney Morning Herald

[ The Sydney Morning Herald | 2013-12-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Greenwich crime series for Old Street

Old Street Publishing has bought two titles from former journalist Murray Davies. Ben Yarde-... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2013-12-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Main Street Books in St. Charles To Close

Vicki Erwin, 62, the owner of Main Street Books in St. Charles, Mo., announced Monday afternoon that the bookstore will close its doors on January 31, due to her wish to spend more time with family and to travel. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2013-12-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When will publishers wake up to the challenge of Amazon?

The books industry still underestimates the disruptive power of Jeff Bezos's awesome ambitionSo Amazon are the bad guys, again. At least according to Harper's Magazine they are. For the former Amazon employee James Marcus, Brad Stone "drops the ball" in his biography of Jeff Bezos, The... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2013-12-13 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Rules that carriers must retain data called incompatible with EU law

The European Union’s top legal advisor ruled on Thursday that laws requiring communications providers to retain all data, even to combat crime, are incompatible with fundamental rights. Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said in a published opinion that... Continue reading at PC World

[ PC World | 2013-12-12 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Annuals sales reveal brand power

The top three bestselling annuals in 2013 are growing year on year both in terms of value and... Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2013-12-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A transparent market means rethinking the ways brands advertise

In the transparent marketplace it's what you do, not what you say, that makes the difference, and that's good for sustainabilityIn New York's Central Park recently, an old man was selling "Banksy paintings" for $60 apiece. His booth was right next to others selling everything from second-hand... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2013-12-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Newsweek to print weekly edition again one year after calling it quits

Editor in chief Jim Impoco announced the magazine will begin producing a weekly 'premium' print edition as early as JanuaryAmanda Holpuch Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2013-12-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Where Branded Content Dollars Are Going

Marketers continue to be in love with their own content. Spending on branded content is set to reach $1.8 million this year, or 37 percent of marketers’ ad budgets, up from $1.7 million in 2012, per a Custom Content Council survey. The lion’s share of that is going into print. Spending on... Continue reading at AdWeek

[ AdWeek | 2013-12-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Russell Brand v the Sun: war of words hots up

Red-top brands comedian a hypocrite, Jack Dee criticises Crewe and Jimmy Carr tells Ross Noble not to knock Mock the WeekThis week's comedy newsThe gloves are off in Brand versus the Sun. On Saturday, the never-knowingly-underexposed comedian wrote a piece for this paper accusing the Sun on... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2013-12-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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