The Obamamercial

I watched the Obama infomercial last night and kind of enjoyed it. (It's up on the Obama site.) I doubt it changed any minds, but Ad Age didn’t name him "Marketer of the Year" for nothing. As any marketer knows, it’s nearly impossible to tell which thing you do is the one thing that really matters. You have to do lots of things and let the totality of your efforts carry the day.

The things he has done (or that have been done by others in support of him) online in the form of viral marketing and YouTube videos have been especially effective, but even those things take a back seat to his personal ability to communicate. These skills are going to be sorely needed, and tested, in the coming months.

But the main thing I thought as I watched last night was that the infomercial format is much more effective than the faux debates we suffered through. My proposal for 2012 is a series of dueling infomercials. Over a five week period each candidate would submit a series of weekly thirty-minute videos to various networks. Each video would deal with a different broad theme, e.g., health care, energy, foreign policy, etc. No other rules. The candidate can sit and speak to the camera, but would be free to include visual aids, charts, guests – whatever. If the candidate wanted to use part of the time to slam the competition it would be his call, but the more time doing that, the less time available for making that week’s case.

This time could be paid for through public financing. I think most networks would actually be happy to donate the time if they were permitted some flexibility on when the videos were broadcast.

The photo? Ron Popeil -- father of the infomercial. Here’s a link to the Ronco web site in case you are struck with a sudden urge to own a five-tray food dehydrator.