Gene Siskel Is Alive and Well, Battling Oprah, Roeper and Mancow

This is just precious:

Gene Siskel is not dead. He is in stasis in a cryogenic chamber deep under city hall. Gene Siskel is the finest secret agent the world has ever seen, and he is needed again. The nefarious Oprah Winfrey, along with her cohorts Richard Roeper and Mancow, are planning to brainwash Chicago's Soccer Moms and take Daley Plaza by force. Once they have Chicago, the world is DOOMED!

This is actually a really funny show called "Siskel and Ebert Save Chicago," playing at the Factory Theater in Chicago. Among the cast is my bud Tucker and my other bud Abbie is stage managing. And get this... Roger Ebert showed up for opening night and gave it a thumbs up.

Of course, the Tribune and the Sun-Times have posted reviews, as well as a handful of other papers.

There's also a promo up on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

Viral Marketing Is Plaguing Viral Marketing

An article in this morning's Advertising Age asks "What's plaguing Viral Marketing?" The article points to a sociology professor's work that suggests influencers aren't as important as folks once thought they were.  Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is that advertising messages are at a huge disadvantage as compared to things that are, well, cool when you're talking about something "going viral."  Yet clients have no problem telling their agencies to "go create a viral video" and there is no shortage of agencies willing to take up the challenge, despite the notion that the overwhelming majority of them will fail and never deliver on the client's expectations.

Check out this list of well-known Internet phenomena, all of which have spread virally. How many of them are commercial in nature?  Just three of them, by my count.  The Blair Witch stuff was a hoax, and hordes of marketers tried to use the same tactics to replicate their "success" and failed.  The Snakes on a Plane stuff was grassroots until New Line decided to get involved and turn it into their new marketing campaign - and it didn't translate into butts in theater seats because New Line failed to realize the difference between laughing with and laughing at.  There's a local commercial on the list, but local commercials are funny.  (Again, there's a difference between laughing with and laughing at.)  Note the absence of campaigns from national advertisers, despite all the money and effort sunk into "going viral."

The fact that the square peg of commercial communications can't fit into the round hole of viral success doesn't stop marketers from trying.  They do it all the time, in defiance of the notion that they can't possibly be as cool as Numa Numa.  And they blame their agency when the effort fails.

Making Progress

My best man Dan used to describe home ownership as a "never-ending series of projects."  Indeed, that's true.  There's so much to do, and so much on the list of stuff to do in the future that the list might as well be endless.  Add to that all my other tinkering projects and it just.  never.  ends. Over the past few weekends, we installed a hot tub, organized the garage and shed, removed a bunch of plantings, fixed the pool slide and a bunch of other things.  Yesterday, the quad got new nerf bars to replace the one I bent and we bought a new chain saw so we can start taking down trees in the back yard.  That's a next weekend project - I'm also trying to figure out how I'm going to get my truck into the back yard so I can yank stumps out.

All in all, there's too many projects and not enough time for people to come over for swimming and such.

Do We Revisit Audience-Based Buying Models?

A lot of buying we've been doing lately hasn't been predominantly against psychographics, interests or lifestyles, but predominantly against demographics with interests and lifestyles functioning as qualifiers.  Context still matters a heck of a lot, but in the end, clients are measuring delivery via Reach, Frequency & GRPs.  Putting aside the relative merits of the buying models for a sec, can we take a look at what an audience-based online currency would look like? Most sites have the ability to frequency cap.  Instead of calling them up and asking how many gross impressions a site can get in a given content area, what if I were able to ask them what type of reach they could deliver at a 3X frequency?

The quantitative portion of media planning would probably get easier for clients who plan against demos.  After a while, we'd have reasonably stable Cost Per Points to work with, once vendors started selling this way and got used to it. Networks would get a fairer shake.  Entities that could roll up the long tail, or portals with wide and deep content, would compete with one another on a more level playing field - at least as far as demographic delivery is concerned.  Plans against demos would take less time to put together.

In the past, I've said that moving toward demographics would sell the Internet short.  By and large, that's true if the audience-based model replaces the impression-based one currently in use.  But if advertisers had a choice of buying models, it would make online easier to measure, easier to plan and more acceptable to advertisers who buy on demos.  The folks who "get" the advantages of the impression-based model could continue to buy that way.

I think it's time to look at this again.  We certainly have in the past, and most of the technology to do this exists today.  The big questions would be:

1. Could comScore and Nielsen be able to project demos from content areas more granular than that reflected in current data?
2. What would we post against?  Actuals from the server or something from comScore or Nielsen?
3. What would be required on the adserver side to manage demand/allocations between impression-based and audience-based campaigns?

Thoughts?