Obligatory Fahrenheit 9-11 Post

I finally saw the movie on Tuesday night (a late showing) and definitely had mixed feelings about the experience. The movie was definitely persuasive - walking down 86th Street after the movie let out, I saw two separate couples arguing about what they had just seen. One couple nearly launched into a full-blown fight, with the guy not really wanting to confront the allegations in the movie, and the girl pleading with him to discuss it with her.

As I walked back toward my apartment, I went through a number of distinct emotional states. At first, I was completely charged up, upset and feeling betrayed by the administration. A couple minutes into my walk, though, this started to wear off and I began to feel suspicious about Moore's version of the facts. During the film, I noticed a few things that at the time I thought were "sins of omission" - a truncated Condi Rice quote here, an out-of-context Bush clip there. Then I reminded myself that I was warned that everything Moore puts out there has to be taken with a grain of salt.

As I walked past 2nd Avenue, I was hit with this incredible wave of disappointment. As I thought about some of the things I had seen in the movie that distorted the facts, I felt betrayed by Moore. I mean, here's a very intelligent guy with a point of view who, instead of laying things out matter-of-factly and completely, leaves things out of his "documentary" that might cause people to jump to incorrect conclusions. Did Moore need to do this? Is it necessary to create propaganda in order to get a point across? Am I naive to assume that Moore would have taken the moral high road and attempted to bring clarity to the issues he discusses?

As I reached the front stoop of my apartment, frustration began to hit me. I thought about all the people who would see this movie and make decisions based on incomplete facts. I thought about all the people who would dismiss Moore's legitimate arguments after his "sins of omission" in making his case for other points of view. And I thought about all the apolitical folks out there who simply don't give a shit one way or another, or who are disillusioned from being lied to by spin doctors at all points along the political spectrum.

I'm not going to call Moore's film pure propaganda. There's a good deal of truth in the points of view he expressed in the film. But I will say that the movie's interpretation of the facts is distorted in certain instances. There's no reason to cut off Condoleeza Rice during her testimony to make it sound as if she was claiming a direct connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. I know what she really said. A lot of people who don't follow politics don't know the difference, though. And that's what bugs me about Moore's film. He could have made his points without distorting the facts, but he didn't.

With Michael Moore's elevation to hero status by most of the left, I'm worried that people will lose faith in his overarching message when they find out that F911's version of the facts leaves out quite a bit. And that would be a shame. I do believe that the Bush administration engages in cronyism. I do believe that the administration duped the American people into scapegoating Iraq for 9/11 (with the help of a lazy press). I do believe that we didn't do enough in Afghanistan. But I didn't arrive at these conclusions by believing propaganda. F911 could have made its case without the sins of omission, but it didn't. And I think that's what disappoints me the most.

UN Expels Iranian Security Guards

Not much detail here, but the two guards were reportedly "taking pictures of New York City and transportation systems" including landmarks. This was supposedly the third time that the two guards had been observed taking pictures and videotaping.

What isn't clear is whether the two had been warned previously about their picture-taking, what landmarks were being photographed, and whether they took pictures in restricted areas of public transportation networks.

Nice reporting. (Not.)

"One Large Honda Generator, Please..."

Say the people who work at power plants were all suddenly turned into zombies. How long before the power grid would collapse? That's the subject of a recent piece on The Straight Dope.

Okay, so zombification sounds far fetched. How about a biological, nuclear or conventional attack? Years ago, my Dad and I had a customer on the East End of Long Island who mounted a brand new Cummins Turbo Diesel running a generator to a trailer so that he could have power in the event of some sort of catastrophic event. Seemed silly at the time. I wonder whether he ran his air conditioner during last summer's blackout.

Yes, Blogs Are A Great Advertising Environment

I've been reading posts about how blogs are great for advertisers and how blogs reach desirable audiences.

If you're here, you likely know that I'm a founding partner of a media agency called Underscore Marketing. It's my job to know how blogs can tap into desirable audiences from an advertising perspective. I can give you some anecdotal evidence that blogs get the job done, but please know that clients are usually very skittish about talking about their online advertising publicly. (So what I'm about to say here needs to be somewhat vague.) Suffice it to say:

• I have a client that was willing to test a blog this quarter.
• We did.
• Said blog kicked ass and was one of the best performers on the campaign.
• It performed very well despite the fact that mainstream sites cover the same category, have larger audiences and have offline components (like print magazines).
• If I had to attribute its success to something, it would likely be the dedication of the audience to said blog and the audience's trust in the blog's coverage.
• Our next media plan for this client will include more blogs. This is driven by the success of the blog we tested, plus the desire to tap into audiences that haven't seen the client's message before.
• We will likely renew our deal with the first blog, and possibly increase our commitment to them from a monetary perspective.

A few other things I want to mention...

There are quite a few media buyers who end up here for one reason or another. I have this message for them: If you're not considering advertising on blogs that deal with topics of interest to your clients and their target audiences, you're doing your client a disservice. Put down the @Plan runs and the MRI crosstabs for a sec and take a calculated chance for your clients. It will pay off. Relevance is one of the prime drivers of success in online advertising. Blogs have dedicated audiences that come back again and again to consume quality topical content. Your client wants to be associated with such editorial environments (or at least they should). Propose a small test with a blog, gauge its success, and you'll likely find it to perform particularly well.

Here's another thing...I like the concept behind BlogAds, but major advertisers are going to want to run larger size GIFs, Flash and rich media. My preference is to cut the deal directly with the person running the blog for an ad package that's more robust than what you can get through BlogAds. And I'm looking for something that's persistent, so that every person who visits the blog is exposed to the ad. That means sponsorships, locked-in positions on the home page, and possibly ads on every archive and story page.

Some words of advice to bloggers hoping to attract advertisers:

• Place an "advertise" link somewhere on your homepage. Link this to a page that lists contact information for someone who can sell advertising on your blog. Make sure this isn't a submission form that sends an e-mail out to whoever is handling ad sales. Reason: When online media buyers are putting plans together, they're typically dealing with tight turnaround times (usually just a few days). When they find a site they want to advertise on, they want to get someone on the phone to discuss that possibility, asap.
• Know everything you possibly can about your audience. I just got an ad proposal from a blog that was absolutely terrific - It contained a snapshot of traffic growth over several months, names of companies whose executives visited the site regularly, and plenty of other statistics that painted a picture of the audience for me.
• Know how your blog's competitors set pricing. If your blog competes in a category with non-blogs, know what their prices are (usually available on a "rate card" linked on the site itself). Advertisers tend to have a range of CPMs (Cost Per Thousand ad impressions) that they pay to reach audiences in their particular sector. If your blog is priced too high, the advertising opportunity looks less attractive to the advertiser.
• Offer test rates. Most advertisers haven't advertised on blogs before, and they consider blogs an unproven vehicle. If you can put together small test packages, consisting of ad runs that span 2-4 weeks and cost between $2,000 and $5,000, you'll have more success attracting advertisers. And those advertisers will likely renew once they've pulled off a successful test.
• Don't get discouraged if media buyers say no. Most media buyers are lazy. They don't want to be bothered with smaller sites that are unproven. They're so used to buying ads on the Yahoos, MSNs and AOLs of the world that they tend to ignore niche opportunities. You'll know within a couple minutes of talking on the phone whether or not you're talking to a media buyer who is interested in blog advertising. The uninterested ones will harp on "potential reach of the site" and say "your site is too small." The interested ones will ask you questions about who your site reaches, what kind of repeat traffic you get and what ad opportunities are available to reach your audience.

I think blog advertising will be a force to be reckoned with eventually, but it's going to take some time. First, blogs need to get on the radar screens of major marketers with money to spend. Then it's going to take some time for them to engage in small-scale testing before they make serious commitments. My advice to the blog community is to be patient and to keep doing what you're doing. Content truly is king, and as blogs draw more eyeballs away from mainstream news and topical sites, the dollars will follow the eyeballs.