Good Morning. This is Katie Deighton filling in for Nat Ives. Today, pizzeria brands scramble to adapt; Trader Joe's unexpectedly finds itself coveted outside of the U.S.; and a new novel explores the not-so-secret underbelly of advertising awards.

America's love of pizza is going cold.

Once the second-most common U.S. restaurant type, pizzerias are now outnumbered by coffee shops and Mexican food eateries, according to industry data, Heather Haddon writes.

Sales growth at pizza restaurants has lagged behind the broader fast-food market for years, and the outlook ahead isn’t much brighter...

• Anthony’s Coal Fired Pizza & Wings, Bertucci’s Brick Oven Pizza & Pasta, and the parent of the Pieology Pizzeria chain have all recently filed for bankruptcy.
• Pizza Hut, Papa John’s and the parent of Papa Murphy’s are considering potential sales, or other strategic moves.
• Midsize chains including Blaze Pizza and Mod Pizza have closed locations over the past two years as they work to turn around their brands.

Brands are deploying different strategies to save the Italian-American classic. California Pizza Kitchen aims to highlight its diverse sit-down menu, which includes cedar plank salmon and braised short rib served with pappardelle pasta, for example, while Papa John's is working with restaurant owners to recalibrate their ovens and improve the final product.

Grocery store Trader Joe’s has landed on marketing gold: its $2.99 tote bag has become an in-demand international fashion sensation.

The tote has joined the ranks of geographically specific status bags like those from London’s Daunt Books or Paris’s Shakespeare and Company, Maura Brannigan reports. Outside of the U.S. the bags are listed on resale platforms like Depop, eBay and Korea’s Karrot market for up to $10,000—with some eBay listings reaching $50,000.

Really? Why?

Scarcity plays a part: Trader Joe’s doesn't operate outside of the U.S. or deliver online and its footprint is only 618 stores big. Some trend watchers connect the chain to notions of refined culture and liberalism not usually associated with food brands.

For podcast producer Holly Davies, Trader Joe’s hand-painted signage and packaging “that looks like it was designed by a circus mouse” create an impression of independence. This carefully cultivated branding gives it enough distance from overtly corporate American brands, she said.

A rep for Trader Joe’s (which employs a famously chaste PR and marketing strategy) said the company “neither condones nor supports the reselling of [its] products.”

Antics that occur annually at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity can sometimes feel stranger than fiction. Now they’ve been immortalized in novel form by Paul Catmur, the retired co-founder of New Zealand ad agency Barnes, Catmur & Friends.

I spoke to Paul via email about writing “The Gutter Bar,” a satire of the ad agency set during the booze-soaked conference. The interview has been condescended and edited. Organizers of Cannes Lions did not return requests for comment.

CMO Today: Was there a particular moment from Cannes Lions that inspired the book?

Paul Catmur: It was an accumulation of incidents across multiple award shows. The first red flag was someone casually suggesting, while on a jury, that we swap votes. Another jury member was on track to win a Grand Prix until I pointed out that, as there were no abstentions, he must have voted for his own work. He seemed genuinely baffled that this might be considered a problem.

Possibly the most unsettling moment was a global creative director threatening the job of a newly-appointed creative director if he didn’t start winning awards. Jury shenanigans are bad enough; openly jeopardizing livelihoods is just bullying. 

CMO Today: Did writing the book change how you see Madison Avenue?

Catmur: It clarified it. Advertising gave me an extraordinary career. Winning awards was always a sideshow, but getting a late-night call in Cannes asking for someone to come and collect a Gold the next evening was undeniably a thrill. But I also saw how warped the incentives became. The problem wasn’t individual bad actors so much as a system that incentivized winning by any means necessary. 

CMO Today: What do you hope people in the industry take away from reading the book?

Catmur: I hope it makes people slightly uncomfortable about how skewed the industry has become. I’ve had great fun in Cannes, and it undoubtedly has a role to play, but it was a huge relief when we started our own agency not to have to worry about creative awards at all. Instead, we focused on being effective at selling stuff. That sentence sounds absurdly obvious, but in many places it wasn’t the priority.

The hottest ticket in China is a tour of an electric-vehicle factory floor. [WSJ]

After the rollercoaster of 2025, Elon Musk is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire. [WSJ]

Consumer brands' green packaging ambitions are running into antitrust obstacles. [Bloomberg]

Omnicom folded the 40-year-old shopper marketing agency TPN into its Flywheel brand. [Adweek]

Inside Amazon's advertiser pitch at the Consumer Electronics Show... [Variety]

...where Reddit unveiled an AI-powered media-buying tool. [Adweek] 

How Jellycat, a British plush toy company, conquered China. [BBC]

Italian pasta lives on in the U.S. after the Commerce Department slashed proposed tariffs. [WSJ]