By Nicole Rivard
Think America’s Top Model meets the Ultimate Fighting Championship and you have ” A Gentleman’s Disagreement Tournament” launched by Haggar Clothing Co., the FOX Sports Network and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami. The one of a kind competition was designed to find a model worthy of being the face of Haggar. To prove they were as durable as the clothing and to obtain a $50,000 prize, eight models competed in a series of battles showcased over a five-week period, with segments airing each week for approximately five minutes during FSN’s Best Damn Sports Show Period program.
The battles included Punish Sticks, Paintball Posedown, Shocking Questions, Laundry Dunk, Reverse Tug of War, Lawnmower Joust and Runway to Hell. Paintball Posedown invited the models to strike a pose while being shot with paintballs. The one to flinch the least wins. In Laundry Dunk, each contestant has 60 seconds to dunk as many bundles of clothes into a basket as possible, while his opponent defends. Football rules apply. The winner is the one with the most goals. In all the events the models wore Haggar clothing, from shirts and ties to khakis and polos.
The show was just one element of a recent multi-pronged attack to revamp the clothing company’s image. Haggar has been around since 1926 and it has always been know for product innovations like wash and wear and wrinkle free. But they had become a lost brand. Enter a new management team, who initiated the partnership with CP+B.
“We were very excited to work with them because they were very open to us being involved every step of the way,” explained Evan Fry, associate creative director for CP+B. “The other thing that attracted us to their brand from a strategic point of view–Haggar was so ripe to speak to a target that is not spoken to in fashion at all. This man who is between 35 and 65 or even 70, who is the salt of the earth guy who works really hard, who likes to do things the right way. He’s not a fashion plate. He doesn’t want creative stitching on his jeans. He just wants to look like he knows what he’s doing whether traveling on a plane to a business meeting, sitting in his cube at work, golfing or whatever.”
The agency started with the actual products, renaming some things to sound more relevant and a bit cooler. They clothing label was also given a broader tagline, Haggar, A gentleman’s supply company. “All of this was designed to give Haggar a point of view again,” Fry said.
The company also had been known for giving their clothes the first ever lifetime guarantee and the agency ran with that too, resulting in “A Gentleman’s Disagreement.”
“One of the coolest ideas we had was we thought that if their clothes are so tough and so strong, an ordinary model wouldn’t be quite right. The idea was let’s search for the right model to model their clothing. We wanted a good stage to do this search so we partnered with FOX. Haggar was really open to taking some degree of risk. But they are smart enough to know it’s not really a risk. What’s risk is to not do it, to remain quiet.
To make an even louder fashion statement, a new Web site, www.haggar.com was launched as the online headquarters of “A Gentleman’s Disagreement.” Not only can visitors watch the battles there, the site also features in depth information about the contestants, the clothes they are wearing in the competitions, and they can choose specific clothes for the contestants to model and put through some paces.
“We have a long range plan to make the Web site the place for men to go. What it is now is all about the ‘Gentleman’s Disagreement.’ But there will always be really engaging interactive ways to check out the clothes and our goal is that those ways will be so much fun for our guy, the Haggar guy, that he’ll tell people about it and they’ll want to hang out there too.”
The most difficult part of this entire endeavor for the creative team was conceptualizing the battles.”And once there is a cash prize involved you have to get a level of legal approval that was really mind-blowing. It was good learning experience,” added Fry.
He also noted another interesting part of the project was during filming there were six cameras shooting live tape. “I am in a control room. There’s a guy standing with the headset on going, ‘Now cut to two, go to three ,zoom in. He’s creating the episode there live. You don’t have as much input in terms of figuring this or that out in edit. It has to come off good. And because it involves a contest it has to be legit, you can’t ask them to do it again.”
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More