Isaac Newton spoke of standing on the shoulders of giants. Morgan Selzer has stood on the shoulders of Big Bird.
As Chief Content Officer at Headspace, Morgan led a partnership that allowed Headspace to break into the highly-competitive world of family content.
But they didn’t go in alone. An unexpected partnership with Sesame Street allowed them to see—and be seen by—a wildly larger audience than they could have reached on their own. It also allowed Headspace to meet parents, kids, and caregivers where they were already consuming content, directly on Sesame Street’s channels.
Reaching a new audience is a tough sell. Often, outsiders don’t have the reach or brand recognition to break through today’s noisy airwaves—leaving enterprise competitors to dominate attention.
At the same time, traditional paid marketing is becoming a less sure bet. “Paid and performance marketing are less efficient than they used to be, because there’s just so much out there,” says Morgan.
So the question becomes: How can you show up in buzzy, unexpected ways that spark real conversation?
In partnerships with Sesame Street, Morgan managed to create just that: buzz. (As in, Zzzzzzz’s. You’ll see what we mean below.)
Competing for attention
If you’re a smaller operation going up against household names, it’s an uphill battle to make your voice heard.
Like trying to out-shout an opera singer. Or a Mountain Dew-fueled toddler with a megaphone.
Not only do the incumbents have deeper pockets, but they’ve also built the established distribution networks to reach their audience.
How could a meditation app compete for attention against Disney, Nickelodeon, and an infinite number of YouTube videos? (“Budget” was definitely not going to be the answer here.)
Family entertainment was a massive, difficult-to-penetrate market—so Headspace called in the hard-hitters. Like Cookie Monster.
Think bigger than your brief
When Morgan joined Headspace, it was not the category-leading app we know it to be today. The app was still in a fierce battle with other meditation apps and media brands to become the winner in the space—and as part of that, was seeking to reach new audiences through new marketing methods, in order to be the first to bring meditation to the masses.
It was time to get creative with how they reached consumers. A strategic mandate to “make the brand famous” led to a push to break into children and family mindfulness content. One such project was supposed to be a one-time, audio-only project with Sesame Street.
But she quickly realized this thing had the potential to go much further.
She recalls: "I went to Sesame Street and told them, 'Hey, I think we have a real opportunity to make this a lot more robust than what the original plans were. Why don't we make these into a series of animated digital shorts?'"
The genius move? Sesame Street was Headspace’s way to blast into a new market with momentum. Sesame Street brought instant credibility and distribution, while Headspace delivered the meditation techniques.
Together, they were able to work in service of the shared goals: help parents and children connect with each other and develop healthy emotional regulation skills together.
Put it this way: 1 "small audio project" became the foundation for Headspace's entire family vertical. That's the power of thinking beyond the brief.
On the surface, content partnerships sound simple, but there's more complexity than meets the eye. Morgan shares her framework for approaching a partnership that delivers outsized results.
How to get the most out of a content partnership
Partners: Same values, complementary assets
The first step of making the most of a partnership is…well, choosing the right partners.
Start by identifying companies that have the same core values as you, but an extended reach.
“Sesame Workshop is an incredible nonprofit organization that really aligned with Headspace’s values,” says Morgan. “They are an incredible, trusted resource for parents.”
When you partner with companies that have already built that audience trust, you eliminate the need to build credibility from scratch.
Looking at Sesame Street, Morgan saw three major green flags:
- Mission alignment (education + wellness)
- Audience trust (Sesame Street was a go-to resource for parents)
- Character recognition (for universal kid appeal)
To help you find partners for your business, here’s an evaluation exercise that’ll give you a prioritized list of possible businesses you can begin to design co-marketing briefs around:
⚒️ Partnership evaluation tool
How can you find the right partners for you? Download our process doc for identifying and evaluating potential partnerships, including an LLM prompt to copy-paste for partner ideation and our scorecard for force ranking potential opportunities.
Scope: Natural expansion in service of your audience
Once you’ve found the right partner, it’s time to right-size.
Don’t let your original scope stop you from fulfilling a larger vision. Identify the formats and assets that will best serve your shared audience (not just what’s easiest to produce), and pitch what you find meaningful.
“Originally, the idea was to just do audio work with Sesame,” Morgan explains. “But as a parent myself, I knew that to resonate with kids, something visual would be even better.”
She transformed her simple audio project into six animated shorts, each with a unique storyline—like Cookie Monster waiting for his cookies to bake—and Headspace’s signature social-emotional learning techniques embedded right in.
In partnerships, it pays to pitch the bigger vision. Partners often don’t know what’s possible, and you can bring something unique to the table—your expertise plus their reach can create content neither of you could make alone.
Audience: Building for your shared audience
With your scope established, it’s time to get down to actually producing the content.
Content partnerships are most impactful when they prioritize delivering real value to audiences, rather than self-promotion.
For Headspace and Sesame, that meant creating memorable videos that matched beloved characters to daily problems.
When Elmo has trouble falling asleep, Headspace’s “Andy” character (voiced by real-life co-founder, Andy Puddicombe) walks him through an exercise. When Cookie Monster is impatiently waiting for cookies to bake, Andy leads him through a sensory meditation exercise. And when Grover has trouble focusing, Andy teaches him a rhyme to take it one thing at a time.
Distribution: Meet viewers where they already are
Distribution is an area where partnerships can have incredible impact, especially in channels where their reach and credibility exceeds your own. /ima
“Sesame Street asked me, ‘Do you want it on your channel or ours?’” says Morgan. “And I said, ‘Obviously I want it on yours! The Sesame Street YouTube page is where kids and families are already going.’”
Sesame Street’s relationships helped expand reach even further, bringing the campaign to YouTube Kids’ homepage and the PTA’s email lists.
Choose platforms based on where your target audience naturally spends their time, not just where you have the most followers (although the two aren’t mutually exclusive). Press releases and social posts can drive additional awareness, but let the content “live” where audiences expect to find it.
What’s next: Follow the data
Once your campaign is up and running, use the results to inform your next move.
When the Elmo bedtime meditation became the #2 most-watched video on Sesame Street’s channel that year, it inspired future content for Headspace.
“We noticed that the Elmo wind down video outperformed the others, which gave us this idea to do more content around the concept of bedtime,” says Morgan.
Realizing parents were in need of bedtime help, Headspace created the Goodnight, World! Series: a children’s podcast to help kids wind down and fall asleep.
The results were 6M+ downloads and a 400% completion rate (meaning people were not only listening, but re-listening).
Bottom line: Your best content tells you what to make next.
From small audio project to media phenomenon
Partnering with Sesame Street allowed Headspace to break through an incredibly saturated market—and bring valuable content to improve the lives of their shared audience.
Over time, Morgan’s simple audio project spun out into:
- A 6-part animated video series
- A 6-book deal with Penguin Random House
- The Goodnight, World! podcast
The results by the numbers:
- 45M video views (~45X more than Headspace’s typical performance)
- 20M+ views on the Elmo bedtime video
- 175M media impressions
- 6M+ Goodnight, World! downloads
And an Emmy nomination for children’s content.
Working with Sesame Street helped Headspace get Super Bowl level results with rookie-level budgets. It also helped establish them as a legitimate player in the family-friendly content space, propelling them into new partnerships with the likes of Penguin Random House and Spotify.
Your new partnership doesn’t have to be small just because your budget is. Don’t settle for modest partnership results when you can be creating franchise opportunities, multi-format campaigns, award-winning contents, and your next breakthrough idea.
