Wired has a look at a very successful “viral” marketing video campaign for the yet-to-be-released webseries THE PARTY.
In a series of short videos released to YouTube, we meet purported superdelagate Tom Ryan, who pleads with viewers to help him make the difficult Obama/Clinton decision.
“The tremendous response that the fake superdelegate character received illustrates how quickly grassroots supporters in this heated political climate can pick up and transmit information regardless of its accuracy, in what has up until recently been a closely-fought race where every delegate counts.
“We assumed that people online and in the blog communities would watch the videos and realize that we were doing thinly-veiled satire, but that’s not what happened,” says Howard Thomas, a 27-year-old Democratic political consultant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and the show’s creator and executive producer.”
In this heated political season (is it really a season if it lasts more than a year?) it isn’t suprising that so many people decided the videos were real. The more interesting question will be whether or not these same viewers will be interested enough to follow the character to the upcoming webseries once they know it is all an act.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0AT9XUihnM&hl=en]
Back in the day, most aspiring filmmakers made short films as a way to showcase their potential. These shorts would screen at festivals and a few would get passed around among industry pros on VHS and a few kids would get a shot at the big leagues. This wasn’t the only path but it was the most accessible to true outsiders.
Of course, the internets have changed all that and we are definitely seeing more and more people turning to the web as a showcase.
Tilzy has a quick look at this:
“Larry Strong and Kevin Arbouet, directors of the original Obama Girl shorts, have landed a feature film gig. Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine, creators of Ask A Ninja have a deal to remake Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. ZeFrank and Amanda Congdon both left new media (and New York) to pursue bigger dreams in old media. Sure, they’ve left us, but they’ll come back. Congdon already has.”
In related news, I’ll be chatting about this very topic tomorrow night at this month’s Film in the City event. More info on that here.
Not only has Obama led the way this season when it comes to online fundraising, his campaign is starting to return the favor (via SAI):
“The Obama campaign dumped $1 million into advertising on Google (GOOG) in February, more than six times the campaign’s entire online ad spend for January, according to Federal Election Commission filiings reviewed by MediaPost.
In the past we’ve noted the campaigns raise a lot of money online, but spend almost all of it on traditional media. But February’s report is the first sign we’ve seen that any of the candidates is serious about Web ads.”
It’s cool to see some of the money raised online being spent there as well. The big question will be seeing what forms of advertising the campaigns pursue. Will it be banner ads and AdWords kinda stuff? How controlled will the distribution be? Will I be seeing Hilary-sponsored ads on torrent sites?
In many ways, the online fundraising is, in itself, a form of online marketing and the use of social networking has clearly had a huge influence on this year’s race. The campaigns would be smart to build on what has been working for them and not just try to plaster the web with their bumper stickers.
For years now, we’ve watched as what passes for mainstream news is made into smaller and smaller sound bites that are easy to swallow and, more often than not, not even close to the whole story.
One prime example of this has been the treatment of Barack Obama’s Pastor Wright. For weeks the big news networks have been bombarding the public with very select clips from decades of Wright’s sermons and, amazingly, they’ve chosen the most inflammatory bits. Who cares if they’re taken out of context and aired with no sense of time or place.
Luckily, the internet is full of people who have the time and energy to dig a little deeper and bring out more of the story. Thus, there are now numerous extended sermons from Pastor Wright all over the internet. While it might not change your own personal feelings on the matter, it certainly makes the big news organizations look pretty skewed for ignoring the big picture.
Whether or not the multitude of individuals can counter the power of big media is not clear yet, but for younger people who have already almost completely abandonded the nightly news, these sorts of efforts can become very powerful.
This presidential campaign has truly been the first to be heavily influenced by the internet and it’s been fascinating to see how the candidates have both succeeded and failied in their approaches.
On the failed side, meet recently suspended McCain aide Soren Dayton, who thought it would be a cool idea to post a tweet on his Twitter account to let his followers and McCain supporters know about a great new video. From TPM:
“A McCain campaign aide actively pushed an incendiary, racially-charged video that uses the controversial words of Barack Obama’s pastor to tar Obama as unpatriotic — despite the fact that McCain himself has suggested that Obama shouldn’t be held accountable for Wright’s views.”
You can go look for the video if you like but I just don’t see the value in linking to it myself. Sort of like I wouldn’t post a like to 2Girls1Cup.
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May 30, 2008 3:52 pm | 
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