They Just Don't Get It 2.

A few days ago, I became tangentially involved in a discussion of MySpace audience demographics stimulated by this Fred Wilson post. Now it's no surprise that online measurement data is questionable - in these relatively early days I guess that's inevitable, but it is crucial we realise that. It's not enough to take any set of figures at face value because if you don't truly understand what's going on, you don't get it and things like this happen.

Notwithstanding the inherent misunderstanding of the slow burn of viral campaigns and my assumption of a disparity between the demographics of the MySpace and back pain sufferer constituencies, I think this claim goes to the heart of it "We tried out quite a few different things on focus groups and found that people enjoyed the humour of the rock group." Focus group enjoyment and marketing effectiveness are very different things and, so it seems, are common sense and fiscal responsibility.

On the upside, they won't need to test for public reaction to this cutting-edge campaign.