The Zeitgeist of Brian Sacca

A couple of years ago, I signed up for AdWords that triggered on my brother’s name, Brian Sacca. The ads weren’t intended to direct traffic anywhere. In fact, I had the ads point viewers at the Salinger Group website without much explanation. Taking out AdWords, and then watching the impression data in the account, is a great way to get a sense of the popularity of a certain term. For my brother Brian, an actor, comedian, and indie filmmaker, I figured this would be a cool way to track the buzz around his work.

Back in 2003, when I first started tracking searches on his name, there was an average of 8 queries per day looking for Brian Sacca. Brian has a pretty unique name so it was easy to link bumps in activity to events in his life.

He would do an off-off-Broadway play, get a good review, and traffic would spike to 22 or so queries per day and then settle back in around 17. When Brian was a member of Machio, the NYC sketch comedy group, the number of people Googling him hit new highs and leveled around 28 per day.

Interest really spiked when Brian’s troupe went on tour opening for Dave Chappelle. Brian had some extremely funny bits in the show that led over 40 people a day to be looking for him on Google. Soon thereafter, in April of 2003, Brian made his solo stand-up debut at Caroline’s in Manhattan, with dozens of follow-up shows at Gotham Comedy Club, Comedy Cellar, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, etc. I could essentially tell his performance schedule by looking at the AdWords account traffic screens. It would spike every night he played. It was fascinating to see how people would head home and want to know more about him.

At that same time, Brian started a two-man stand-up act with his buddy Pete Karinen. The duo, daringly named Pete and Brian, were knocking audiences dead all over NY with really intelligent and unorthodox acts. Side-splitting and mind-boggling stuff. Because their material was so unlike anything being played elsewhere, there was a real audience hunger to follow these guys and see more of their shows. By the Spring of ‘05 daily traffic on Brian’s name started reaching 60 queries per day. So wild to consider. Every day that many folks were curious about who he was and where they could see him next.

Fast forward to the present. Pete and Brian recently staged “Pete and Brian’s One Man Show” in NYC for a limited engagement of three shows plus an industry preview night. The show was ridiculously funny, with all kinds of showbiz regulars calling it the “funniest thing they had seen in 20 years” and comparing Pete and Brian to David Cross and Bob Odenkirk.

Sure enough, searches for Brian have been about 85 per day for the last couple of weeks. What is particularly intriguing to watch is that despite the fact the show was only put on in NYC, almost 40% of these searches are coming from California now. Accordingly, the word from Brian is that the phone has been ringing furiously since the last show, with agencies and production companies on both coasts proposing ways to work together as DVDs of his performance circulate. Demand for these guys is high.

It appears that Brian may be reaching his tipping point into bigtime comedy success. Meanwhile, his geeky older brother is just enthralled by the real time zeitgeist from all this Google data.

Comments

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Pete and Brian are damn hilarious. I routinely wet myself wherever they play. Maybe that's unrelated to the comedy though.

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