Candy manufacturer Mars announced that the iconic M&M’s characters are getting personality makeovers – and the results demonstrate the lengths that agency marketing teams will go to spend every dime of the client’s budget. The efforts are described as “a modern makeover for a more dynamic, progressive world,” which is code for making them more millennial-friendly. Among the changes:

• The green M&M has ditched her go-go boots in favor of “cool, laid-back sneakers to reflect her effortless confidence.” Also, the green and brown M&Ms may be lesbians now.
• The brown M&M’s heels have been “lowered to a professional heel height.”
• The orange M&M will now lean into his anxiety and the red M&M will no longer bully his peers.

If you are looking for some consistency among all these changes, fear not – the yellow M&M is still an idiot.

Kyle Harris at Denverite: “Few businesses have grown with Denver like Tattered Cover. The independent book chain has dominated the city’s literary scene for more than half a century. Over the past 20 years, it has kept its doors open — barely — as online retail has battered brick-and-mortar shops. Three new owners, who took over Tattered Cover in December 2020 under the name Bended Page LLC, have been betting on their ability to not just save the iconic independent book chain from bankruptcy, but to turn it into a lucrative, 21st century business.” …

“Yet some staff members — new and old alike — are raising concerns about the new direction and how they’re being managed. They say the store is growing too fast and becoming too corporate, old-timers are being pushed out, staff are overworked, wages are too low and they criticize new CEO Kwame Spearman’s management style.”