The Super Bowl this was not.

And it wasn't exactly Coney Island on July 4, either. But you would never have known it based on the wild cheers coming out of a bar in New York's Garment District last night. Instead of touchdowns prompting the applause, it was the first Agency Hot Dog Eating contest hosted by Taykey -- a real-time-marketing startup -- and Major League Eating.

Taykey hatched the idea for the contest to so that agencies could hobnob with one another in a social atmosphere. Major League Eating and hot-dog marketer Nathan's Famous were more than happy to provide the food. 

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Just as it looked like all the steam went out of the J.C. Penney tea-pot scandal, in comes the new catalog to the Ad Age newsroom. And in it lies another potential case of housewares masquerading as real people. (Or, perhaps, we're just crazy.)

For those of you vacationing in Borneo last week without wireless access, here's a recap. A brew-ha-ha erupted online after someone spotted a billboard in Southern California advertising a tea kettle for sale at the retailer. With its salute-like spout and odd-shaped handle, its purported resemblance to Adoph Hitler got social networks roiling. 

The retailer, with surprising lightheartedness given its recent finanical and management woes, took to Twitter with a seemingly perfect response: "If we have designed the teapot to look like something, we would have depicted a kitten tea kettle :)" So much for the theory that an entire line of dictator teapots was in the works.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Blondes may or may not have more fun, but at least in the case of Beyonce, blonde makes for a more popular ad.

Last week H&M rolled out two ads [below] featuring the pop star. In one, her hair is blond and she's wearing a swimsuit, in the other it's brunette and she's wearing a revealing dress. Both ads feature the same song and similar dance routines.

The ad featuring Beyonce as a blonde scored significantly better with consumers, and 16% of consumers mentioned the singer by name, according to research from AceMetrix. In contrast, in the ad featuring Beyonce as a brunette, attention scores were lower and only 7% of consumers referenced the singer by name. Of course, it could be that the Beyonce in a bikini outperforms Beyonce in a wet, clinging dress.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

"Fake Apple Store," "Tater Tot" and "Barnacle." All are contenders in the naming of Victors & Spoils' new conference room, the latest crowdsourced project launched by the Havas-owned agency.

It sounds over the top to put out a brief to come up with a moniker for where you go rehearse powerpoints or furtively call your spouse, but the truth is, crowdsourcing on this occasion is probably a fairly efficient way of doing something that normally seems to eat up a lot of staff time at agencies, marketers and, especially, at tech companies.

To underscore how weighty a decision it can be, here's a Quora thread on the topic, and here's a very lengthy Reddit thread on the topic. Any number of Yelp, Ask and other pages exist with lots of earnest askers for help, and responders too.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Dove took over the web this week with a moving video that uses a forensic sketch artist to show women that they're more beautiful than they think. Now comes the inevitable parody -- in which guys test their own self-image.

Here's the parody:

And if you haven't seen it yet, here's the original, the latest from Dove on the "Real Beauty" theme:

Continue reading at AdAge.com

If you're an ad person, and you're on Twitter, you've probably caught at least a few #AgencyLife tweets in your stream.

The hashtag, which was fueled by the blog Adland, caught on like wildfire Thursday in the span of just a few hours, with hundreds of tweets by ad people eager to poke some fun at themselves and blow off some steam. Makes sense; ad folks usually tend to have a good sense of humor. But many people were expressing that the missives didn't feel like mere jokes and rang a bit too close to home.

Below is a selection of them. That last tweet has to make you wonder about the state of morale in the business today.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

How does Don Draper measure up to the competition? And how does the work of today compare with that of the '60s? Check out some of the classics from advertising's golden age and see how far creativity has come -- or not.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

It felt fairly obvious to us that P&G's Bacon Mouthwash was just a fairly lame April Fool's Joke.

But marketers beware: Not all consumers have a funny bone. After Scope on its Facebook page yesterday announced that it was just kidding about Scope Bacon, hundreds weighed in, posting comments to express their displeasure over being tricked into thinking this was a genuine product. Some said they were already searching store aisles for it, others awaiting to cut coupons to get Bacon Mouthwash on sale, and several are wishing the worst upon P&G for starting an April Fool's joke before April 1.

April Zittlow:

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Procter & Gamble Co. has "launched" bacon-flavored Scope with a video from Publicis Kaplan Thaler, New York.

The question is, is it real? Well, it's got a hashtag, #ScopeBacon, and P&G has begun tweeting about it from its official @ScopeMouthwash account. It's also enlisted help from @Charmin, which has been taking a break from updates on the community managers' toileting activities to tout the new bacon-flavored variant today.

Trouble is (besides the fact that it sounds downright disgusting) the product has yet to show up on store shelves or in the search engines of online retailers, not even ThinkGeek.com, a leading purveyor of all things bacon-related. A spokesman for Scope declined to comment prior to 8 p.m. on April 1, if that provides any hints.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

"Mad Men" star Jon Hamm may be sick and tired of the obsession over his crotch -- as he told Rolling Stone magazine in their current cover story "They're called 'privates' for a reason. I'm wearing pants, for fuck's sake. Lay off" -- but brands want a piece of his action bad.

For months there was debate over whether photos snapped of Mr. Hamm that depicted a rather large bulge in his pants had been digitally enhanced. But a Daily News report last week ended that speculation, saying the actor was asked by AMC executives to quit going commando in the snug, tailored 60s suits he wears and start reigning it in.

"This season takes place in the 1960s, where the pants are very tight and leave little to the imagination," a source told newspaper. "Jon's impressive anatomy is so distracting that they politely insisted on underwear." The Daily News added: Our insider says that during seasons one and two, AMC's marketing team even had to do some Photoshop magic on promotional booklets that went out to press in order to make his privates more, well, private."

Continue reading at AdAge.com