Good morning. Did your newsletter look a little different when it hit your inbox today? That’s not your caffeine kicking in.

ICYMI: after a decade as the PR practice inside Confidant, we’ve officially launched Catamaran - a stand-alone, earned-first strategic communications agency built for how influence actually works today. Same team, same clients, same values. More focus, clarity and momentum for modern storytelling. (If you want the receipts, check out the coverage in PR Week and PRovoke Media.) Confidant will continue henceforth as a focused creative agency (we’re still siblings).

And there’s more! Starting next week, The Zeitgeist expands with exclusive bi-monthly features from contributing columnist Ann-Marie Alcántara, a longtime favorite journalist whose work has appeared in this newsletter many times. She has spent the last decade covering internet culture, trends, tech, advertising and e-commerce in prior staff roles at The Wall Street Journal, Adweek and PopSugar. We are so pumped to have her here. Ann-Marie’s first column lands in your inbox on Wednesday.

Here’s to an exciting year ahead.

Campaigns

Earned-friendly campaigns & clever moments

Also, Heinz’s KegChup, Sweethearts’ budget-friendly messages, Absolut x Tabasco’s spicy pepper-flavored vodka, Gorilla Glue’s Chief Tough Officer hire, JCPenney’s “Ex-Change” and Duolingo’s Bad Bunny 101 course.

Culture

Snackable bites of consumer culture

Corporate

Commerce

Shopper society snapshot

Connections

Feed intelligence & AI tips

Media Moves & Intel:

  • Vjeran Pavic, formerly supervising producer and senior director of video at The Verge, is now editor at The New York Times’ tech news show, “Hard Fork.”

  • Eli Rosenberg, formerly investigative tech reporter at NBC News, is now reporter at The Information covering AI and tech wealth.

  • Hannah Pedone, formerly intern at the Financial Times, is now technology reporter at MarketWatch.

  • Miles Klee, formerly culture writer at Rolling Stone, is now senior writer at WIRED on the culture desk.

  • Anna Grace Lee, formerly freelance, is now lifestyle writer at Vogue covering food, interiors, travel, royals, weddings, culture and more.

  • Jenn Gonick, formerly editorial fellow at Business Insider, is now assistant editor at Prevention.

  • Sara Moniuszko, formerly lifestyle and wellness reporter at CBS News, is returning to USA Today as health and wellness reporter covering a range of health, wellness and lifestyle topics.

  • Allison Lax, formerly commerce writer at InStyle, is now lifestyle reporter at the New York Post.

  • Rafael Peña, formerly freelance, is now commerce writer at Travel + Leisure, covering product reviews, roundups and gift guides.

  • Layoffs were announced this week at Future PLC (parent of Techradar and Tom’s Guide).

Also... play CRACKED, a safe cracking word game.

Thanks for reading.

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—The Editors

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