The Sunday Send

We’ve had some big names on the Summit stage over the years — Bill Clinton, Brené Brown, Satya Nadella. But this year, the moment that lifted the entire room didn’t come from a traditional world leader or a business icon.

It came from a three-and-a-half-year-old monster named Elmo. Yes, the Elmo.

As Scott Cameron, head of content and IP strategy at Sesame Street, shared how the show scales across cultures and countries (more on that below), Elmo suddenly appeared onscreen and invited the entire auditorium to “Be a tree.”

Imagine 800 people rising to their feet, arms stretched like branches, taking deep breaths in unison. That’s the kind of magic only Elmo can pull off.

Along with Sesame Street’s scaling strategy, you’ll also read why the co-founder of the live shopping platform Whatnot thinks every brand will invest in an experimental e-commerce strategy over the next decade.

What's Inside:

• Scale Stories: Sesame Street’s secret to scale
• Urgent Insights: “Every brand is going to invest in this”

SCALE STORY

In the U.S., we have Sesame Street. In Mexico, Plaza Sésamo. Germany? Sesamstrasse.

As Sesame Workshop’s Scott Cameron shared at Masters of Scale Summit in October, there are now more than 35 local versions of the show around the world.

Since Sesame Street first aired in 1969, the show — which, Scott explained, presents “a street where families of different colors and cultures and feathers and furs could live side by side” — immediately attracted other countries wanting to create their own local versions.

What unlocked that global scale — beyond a Netflix distribution deal that brings Sesame content to 190 countries — was something unusually forward-thinking for its time: they asked kids.

“We did research with kids,” Scott said at Summit, presented in alliance with Capital One Business. “We took rough cuts to preschoolers, and we asked them what they thought.”

And the same approach guides every new international version today.

“We're going to keep doing a version of what we've done since 1969. We're going to sit down with children and their families and their educators, and we're going to ask questions and listen.”

Scott offered an example from a recent project: a series of stories designed to help children manage big feelings across cultures.

In the U.S., the team had a go-to strategy: the glitter jar. You fill a bottle with water and glitter, shake it like a snow globe, and watch the glitter settle — a simple mindfulness tool that helps kids pause and recenter.

“But when we shared that idea with our educators in Bangladesh and the Middle East, they said that's not going to work. Glitter isn't available in every community, and water is way too valuable to use for a glitter jar.” So the team went back to the drawing board in search of a strategy that could work anywhere.

The result? “Be a tree.”

The grounding exercise requires no materials at all. Kids simply stand tall, plant their feet, stretch their arms like branches, and breathe (Watch Elmo present the exercise live at Masters of Scale Summit).

They tested it in South Africa, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil, and it resonated universally.

“It worked everywhere,” Scott said. “What a relief.”

Watch Scott (& Elmo’s) full talk from the Summit stage on YouTube.

URGENT INSIGHTS

“Every brand is going to invest in this”

In the next 5-10 years, every brand will need an experiential e-commerce strategy — not just a storefront — says Grant LaFontaine in the latest Rapid Response episode, brought to you by Stripe, empowering businesses to make progress.

Grant is the co-founder and CEO of Whatnot, the fast-growing live-shopping platform now valued at $11.5 billion. And he believes the future of online retail looks a lot more like entertainment than traditional e-commerce. “A lot of shopping is experiential,” he says in the latest Rapid Response episode, recalling how he and his friends used to hang out at malls.

But Grant isn’t building another e-commerce site. He’s creating a new format — one where community, entertainment, and real-time interaction drive purchasing. And like major media shifts before it, he expects a new generation of native creators to emerge.

“If you look at most new media platforms, you generally see a new set of creators who become really big,” he explains. “Whether it's YouTubers or TikTokers or Twitch [streamers] — it's almost never a large pre-existing media company, because each new format works a little differently, and the people who understand it best accelerate.”

To explore where live shopping is heading, watch Grant’s full conversation on YouTube, or listen on your favorite podcast platform.