The American Mustache Institute

In case you haven't heard, there's a Fallon Mustache Contest going on and I'm a proud participant.

It started yesterday, the same day that New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott wrote this feature on the American Mustache Institute (leadership pictured above).

As Elliott points out, this is more than a humor site. It's a net-roots PR effort designed to raise awareness for an annual event held in St. Louis, called 'Stache Bash, that raises money to fund a baseball league for disabled kids.

So instead of sending out a few press releases and crossing their fingers, they created a community with a fun hook that caught on with bloggers and even mainstream sports media.

According to Dan Callahan, a VP at Fleishman-Hillard in St. Louis (Omnicom) and one of the guys behind this idea (and, presumably, his mustache):

“...based on where things are headed, we thought we could do better by creating a community” through the online poll because “the idea of online community-building is the future.”

Ah yes, The Future.

The poll that launched the site last summer asked visitors to vote for the Top Sports Mustache of All Time.



Write-in candidate Keith Hernandez won.

Now they're asking us to vote on who deserves to be on Mount "Stachemore".



Are they really going to carve a memorial to the greatest mustaches of all time? I hope so, as long as the kids still get their baseball gear and everything.

And by the way, from Wikipedia: "The word is pronounced with the stress either on the first syllable or, more properly, on the second syllable."

'Stache on ya.

(Fallon Mustache Contest updates to follow. End date: Nov 1, 2007)