In one of the plot lines of the premier of Mad Men’s Season Four, Peggy Olsen and crew are concocting a “news event” in which two women will tear at each other for the last Sugarberry ham in some local supermarket. We had seen the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce ‘ad men’ contemplating another plan to hire a hundred or so women to stand in line for their client’s tasty piggy goodness (the kind, probably, in a placenta of that coagulated brown goop found in those egg-shaped tin-canned hams), and thus make it seem a must-have Thanksgiving dish. Instead, they opt to hire two spirited but old-haggy housewives to yell, scratch, and claw for the last Sugarberry since… it’s cheaper.
The shenanigan is a success. The Daily News covers the fight (btw, didn’t you just love the line when someone asks, “In what section?” and Pete quips, “It’s the Daily News — it’s just one big section”), and the ham gets the great coverage as being a product people will fight over.
In the 30s, PR people and advertisers staged a similar news event during an Easter parade in NYC. (Notice the clever way holiday cheer is coopted to sell products!) Check out: