• by September 9, 2005

"THE ULTIMATE TEST MARKET" -- We thought hard and long before advancing today's thesis. For one thing, it's not exactly politically correct given current events. And we're already in enough hot water with plenty of people these days. Among other things, we've managed to get MediaCom chief Jon Mandel ticked off at us. More on that later. The other thing that concerned us about today's column is it's really not about media per se, much less "real media." It's more about, well, we're not sure, but you could call it marketing. Or, at least test marketing - of sorts.

Anyway, here's the theory.

What if the tragic events triggered by Hurricane Katrina were avoidable? What if the Army Corps of Engineers new about the inability of the levees surrounding New Orleans to hold up to a category five hurricane? And what if the top command of the corps in the region warned higher ups and asked them to allocate the resources necessary to bring the levees up to snuff? And what if a certain Secretary of Defense gave the engineering equivalent of an order to "stand down?" That would be a scandal of, well, disastrous proportions. Okay, so those scenarios don't seem so far-fetched to some who've already heard similar rumors circulating around the buzz-o-sphere.

Well, here's the really disturbing part about the way the Riff thinks. At first, we just didn't understand the motivation for letting the levees burst. Well sure, we understand the whole economic trade-off thing. That it would have cost billions of dollars to make the necessary improvements to the levees at a time when the U.S. military needed those resources elsewhere, ironically, in a place close to another gulf. As that scenario goes, policy makers simply did a scientific economic assessment of the cost of fixing the levees vs. the cost of a disaster should the levees actually fail. Whoever did that assessment, apparently failed as badly as the levees. Right, that's speculation.

Okay, so hang with us a minute. Let's assume the policy decision had less to do with economic assessments than it did with a need to assess homeland security. What do we mean by that? Well, think about it? What is one of the most strategic events the Department of Homeland Security is preparing for? That's right, the crisis relocation of a mass population impacted by a disaster - not a natural one, but a man-made one such as a terrorist attack using a weapon of mass destruction. Let's face it, it's never happened. And God willing, it never will. But some people - especially some high-level policy-makers - now believe it is inevitable and only a matter of time. How in the world do you prepare for that? You don't. You react to it.

In the relatively short history of weapons of mass destruction, no populace has been given notice. Right. That defeats the whole point, doesn't it. We didn't give the Japanese time to prepare for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Saddam didn't give the Kurds any notice before he launched poison gas attacks.

Thankfully, the world has not had to experience the recovery efforts surrounding a major chemical or biological warfare episode, but increasingly, the Katrina affected regions are beginning to resemble one. We're not saying military or government officials actually knew what might happen if a category five hurricane burst through the levees surrounding New Orleans, but whatever decisions they made contributed to what has become the ultimate test of Homeland Security -- the recovery of a major U.S. population center. And from the looks of it, we've failed.

"When you look at it that way, New Orleans is the ultimate test market," a wise Madison Avenue figure said, discouraging the Riff from running with that idea.

Okay, so now that we've demonstrated that we have issues that keep us from operating in favor of better judgment, let us explain the Riff's rift with Jon Mandel.

Earlier this week, we ran a column that essentially synopsized a series of exchanges that took place over the course of several issues of electronic newsletter Television Business Reports. In one installment of that debate over whether TV ratings should be regulated by the government, Mandel pointed out that it's not Madison Avenue's problem, but the fault of local broadcasters who've failed to support competition for Nielsen's TV ratings.

What got Mandel upset is that we pointed out that his boss, WPP chief Martin Sorrell, is in a joint venture with Nielsen that provides TV ratings outside the U.S. It seems we may have implied that Mandel might have been withholding that fact. The truth is that Mandel is the last guy on Madison Avenue, to use his own words, "give a shit" what his bosses think. Moreover, Mandel held this position on Nielsen way before MediaCom was acquired by WPP late last year.

In fact, one of the things we admire most about Mandel is that he always says what's on his mind, often to the surprise of bosses, clients, industry conference-goers, and trade journalists.

We hope he keeps it that way.