Doodle Inspirations – December 4
As the holidays creep closer and closer, here are a few things that caught our attention this week:
A Sassy Saint Nick caught our eye in the most recent spots released by Virgin Hotels. Promoting staycation savings in Dallas, Chicago and Nashville and a “you’ve been good enough” tagline, we appreciated the cheeky humor in a year that has been tough. With the tone and alcohol in hand, a few of us were thinking these ads were right in line with Vegas (what happens in…).
Podcasts have been a hot topic this year in the business. While Wondery has been entertaining discussions of being purchased by four companies including Sony and Apple to date, Amazon is the latest to enter the fray. If Amazon were to purchase the start-up now valued at roughly $300 million, it would also gain ownership of over 100 current podcasts including true crime favorites like Dirty John, Dr Death and Tiger King. This is an interesting business move for Amazon as it could add a new major streaming audio player to consider when evaluating consumer behavior.
General Mills has been a staple of the cereal industry for decades. Sesame Street has been a staple of early childhood education for decades. Yet it has taken until 2020 for a partnership to be stamped for the development of a Sesame Street cereal line. Hitting store shelves in January 2021, GM is promoting the debut as a low-cost option for families. Interestingly enough, the “C is for Cinnamon” cereal looks suspiciously like Alpha-Bits which has been produced by Post – GM’s competitor – since 1957, so there could be some interesting legal discussions in the near future. As cereal sales have risen strongly during the pandemic, many of us are saying “about time” for a partnership/licensing deal like this with the childhood icon to come to fruition.
Facebook is looking to improve their e-commerce game with the purchase of CRM software provider Kustomer. Valued at $1 billion, the acquisition would enable Facebook to have chatbots and sales directly on within the Shops section of the social platform – something that has previously only existed on sister offerings Messenger and Whatsapp. Kustomer announced a partnership with Facebook-owned Instagram in October providing it an initial toehold with the social giant. Attempting to address data concern, Facebook has said initially Kustomer would continue to own the data coming from consumer interactions, but eventually the CRM would move and be hosted on “secure Facebook infrastructure.” This could be a strong business solution for those using Facebook for e-commerce, but we wish there was a stronger focus on /customer service beyond the Shops section of the platform.