In an era of trolls and milkshake ducks, there are perhaps only a handful of social media accounts you can expect to remain pure. Elmo is one of them.

For that, you have Christina Vittas, social media manager at Sesame Workshop, to thank. Vittas oversees Elmo’s social accounts, while a coworker handles 12 other Muppets accounts, as well as accounts for Sesame Street and Sesame Workshop.

According to Aaron Bisman, Sesame Workshop’s VP of audience development, the team posts more than 4,000 times per year across its accounts; last year, he said, the accounts reached more than a billion people organically across channels. The goal is to serve uplifting content to an adult audience, whether that’s parents or educators or fans of the show.

“​​After 55 years, everyone in America knows of Sesame Street but doesn’t necessarily think of or engage with us regularly,” Bisman told Marketing Brew. “Bringing these character voices to social and augmenting what we do with Sesame Street and Sesame Workshop as brand channels helps really up that brand relevance on a regular and ongoing basis.”

It doesn’t hurt that some adult social media users are clamoring for wholesome and empathetic content from nostalgic characters from their childhoods, like Steve from Blue’s Clues, who has recently found renewed attention on TikTok. Elmo is no exception: a perhaps unintentional wellness check-in earlier this year where Elmo asked followers how they were doing got 220 million views and 164,000 likes on X.

“[The Sesame Street characters] bring so much joy and conversation to the world,” Vittas told us.

We spoke with her and Bisman about Sesame Street’s social strategy and the value of spreading positivity online.

Continue reading here.—KH

You could be forgiven for not having seen ads for Disclaimer, a psychological thriller series starring Cate Blanchett that will be released on Apple TV+ in mid-October.

But if you paid attention to news coming out of the Venice Film Festival in July, chances are you heard about the seven-episode miniseries.

Getting programming like Disclaimer to premiere at places like the prestigious Venice Film Festival is one way that Apple TV+ can stand out as it looks to make inroads with viewers and cut back on the cost of creating star-studded programming—even if it doesn’t spend as much as its rivals on traditional marketing.

Since 2023, estimated national linear TV ad media value for Apple TV+ has remained considerably lower than its peers in the streaming world, according to data from measurement firm iSpot. For example, from Q1 ’23 through Sept. 15 of this year, Apple spent about $110 million on linear TV ads, while Netflix spent nearly 50% more (about $161 million). Paramount+, whose parent company, Paramount, owns several TV networks and can take advantage of promo spots across its channels, had the highest estimated media value in the time frame, at $372 million.

Entertainment companies have long known that landing a spot at a major festival is “a big stamp of approval,” and in the case of Disclaimer in Venice, helps to support Apple TV+’s message that it is a place viewers can find prestige programming, Charles Schreger, an adjunct marketing professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, told Marketing Brew. “It’s a big statement.”

Keep reading here.—JS

Each week, we spotlight Marketing Brew readers in our Coworking series. If you’d like to be featured, introduce yourself here.

Jasmine Presson is chief strategy officer at Mediaplus North America. She has also worked at MediaCom, UM Worldwide, and Albert: Artificial Intelligence Marketing.

Favorite project you’ve worked on? Revlon’s “Love Test” film was a very special project. During our research that led to the film, I had the privilege of joining friend groups of women in their kitchens and living rooms across the country to talk about love, beauty, and self-expression. To understand the power in a product as seemingly frivolous as mascara or lipstick. We worked with an incredible director, Tatia Pilieva, to bring their stories to life in a short film. It was human and moving, and it also drove results. As part of a larger integrated campaign that included activations like a kiss cam in Times Square, we drove sales growth for Revlon and earned industry recognition like Adweek’s Media Plan of the Year.

What’s your favorite ad campaign? Snickers’s “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” is brilliant. Laugh-out-loud funny. Memorable. Clever use of celebrities. But my favorite part is how effective it was at communicating the product benefit and giving people product use cases through storytelling. They were able to position a candy bar as a snack without having to come out and directly say, “Our candy bar has peanuts, so it’s filling enough to be a snack,” while still staying true to the spirit of the “Snickers Satisfies” tagline they’d been using. Simple, entertaining storytelling that everyone can relate to and that doesn’t make the viewer work hard to understand the message.

One thing we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile: I’ve visited 48 of 50 states in the US, including living in 14 of them. I love the geographic and cultural diversity of our country, as well as the commonalities that unite us. I’ve been thinking about that a lot this election cycle. I’ll let you guess which two states I still need to visit!

Keep reading here.

Mergers and acquisitions, company partnerships, and more.

• Levi’s is working with Beyoncé on a new campaign based on some of its iconic ads from the past.
• Asics chose Brian Cox to lead a campaign in which he taps into his character from Succession.
• Adidas’s latest campaign features athletes including Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Timberwolves shooting guard Anthony Edwards, and Aliyah Boston of the Indiana Fever.
• Mondelez tapped Accenture and Publicis to help develop an AI platform.
• Paramount and Nielsen failed to renew their measurement agreement ahead of tonight’s vice presidential debate.