Winner

As if Peloton needed any more wind at its back, it now has Beyoncé on its side. The fitness brand, whose quarterly sales surged 232%, this week announced a multi-year deal in which Queen B will help create themed workout experiences that includes new classes featuring music, movement and wellness.

Loser

Walmart sought to create some buzz Thursday by offering on its website limited inventory of Sony’s next-generation PlayStation 5 game consoles on launch day. One problem: The site could not handle all the traffic and crashed not once, but twice.

Popular

Ad Age readers have flipped the page on the election and are ready for Christmas ads—at least according to our tally of this week’s most-read stories, which includes this post on Amazon’s holiday ad from Lucky Generals starting a ballerina (which actually went live back on Nov. 2) and a look at Burberry’s new ad that puts a modern spin on “Singin' in the Rain” in which dancers dodge huge chunks of falling ice.

Bird protection

For those wannabe chefs tackling a turkey dinner this Thanksgiving for the first time, Progressive Insurance has your back. The insurer has partnered with Whole Foods Market on a Thanksgiving Turkey Protection Plan, which offers insurance for dinner disasters with a $35 Whole Foods gift card. Progressive is airing a spot in support of the policy. Other brands are also anticipating Thanksgiving fails. In Manhattan, people who buy Campbell Soup Co. products ahead of the holiday to prepare side dishes can sign up for dinner insurance. If the dish doesn’t come out right, they submit a photo on Thanksgiving and Campbell will deliver a gourmet replacement, made in one of the company’s ghost kitchens, in time for dinner.

ThanksNuggets

Perdue cooked up a fix for this year’s small Thanksgiving dinner that eliminates the need to buy a whole turkey: Its turkey ThanksNuggets come with two varieties: breast meat nuggets shaped like turkeys and the dark meat and cranberry nuggets shaped like drumsticks. Perdue is selling 100 bags of ThanksNuggets on its site for $19.20 each, amounts that honor the brand’s 100th anniversary. “Forget the hours of prep, the brining, the roasting, the mountain of dishes, the fancy place settings: this year is all about having a ‘LazyGiving,’” Tracy Hostetler, VP of marketing, premium prepared foods at Perdue, said in a statement.  And to spice up the nuggets, there’s a touchless Cholula dispenser, which the hot sauce brand is promoting with Simplehuman. 

But wait, there’s more …

Budweiser is selling its first-ever Bud Can Turkey stand that is designed to hold an open Bud Tall Boy can that can seep beer flavor into the turkey. And here’s something to combat the sleep-inducing tryptophan in turkey: Baste it with Mtn Dew. The soda brand is out with a cookbook (yes, you heard that right), whose recipes include “Mtn Dew Livewire Brined Turkey,” named for the orange-flavored version of the soda that is packed with 77 grams of sugar per serving. Other stomach-turning recipes include Mtn Dew-infused pickles and Mtn Dew Cherry and Cranberry Pomegranate Fruitcake. Let’s hope Tums has a Thanksgiving promotion coming soon ...

Quote of the week

“The thing that motivates right-wing Twitter is they troll, harass and ‘own the libs. And it’s pretty hard to troll the libs if they’re not there.”—Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, on the uptick in conservative social media networks like Parler and MeWe.

Gincycle

Move over Peloton, Hendrick’s gin has a new exercise bike out. The “Hendrick’s High Wheel” is decidedly old-fashioned. Instead of an electric video screen it comes with a manual “inviting you to exercise your imagination as well as your body, featuring photographs of a whimsical journey through the Scottish countryside, finishing at their Gin Palace in Girvan,” according to a press release. “In our view, modern exercise devices are demanding and intrusive, seeking to know your heart rate, V02Max and then sharing your fitness level with others,” states Vance Henderson, the Scottish gin maker’s ambassador to the U.S. “We take a more laissez-faire approach. Choose a good novel, stimulate your mind, and pedal away at your own leisure!” 

Yes, it’s real—but the brand only made three of them at a price of $2,493.11 and as of Friday none were available. The stunt continues the brand’s Luddite marketing shtick, which has included the Horatio, a “somewhat smart” speaker and the Hendrick’s Streaming Service, which consists of videos of actual streams—yes, running water.

Number of the week

$21.7 billion: Amount spent online in the first 10 days of November, according to Adobe Digital Insights, which defined that period as the first 10 days of the holiday shopping season. That is up 21 percent year-over-year. Adobe projects total online shopping spending of $189 billion Nov. 1-Dec. 31, up 33% from last year. And if the government doles out another round of stimulus checks, or if the pandemic forces widespread closure of stores, Adobe expects consumers to spend an additional $11 billion online.

Tweet of the week

On the move

Gretchen Saegh-Fleming, who was most recently chief marketing officer of L’Oréal USA, has joined at-home fitness brand Hydrow, which sells rowing machines, as chief commercial officer, a newly created position.

Kate Spade New York tapped Jenny Campbell as chief marketing officer. A veteran marketer who worked in the women’s division of Nike, Campbell most recently worked as global CMO of Tinder, the dating app.

Contributing: Jessica Wohl, Adrianne Pasquarelli