(She’s the Mike McCurry of California. – promoted by SFBrianCL)
From the San Jose Mercury News:
Swanson derided supporters’ glee over the Internet wave washing over the ad.
“Sixteen thousand hits? That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the 4 to 5 million people they’ll need to convince,” Swanson said. “Everyone heralded the netroots as the next great thing, and you saw it propel Howard Dean initially. But when it came to translating it to votes, it didn’t happen.”
The irony is that this story is about an ad from Bill Hillsman and talks about the Lamont campaign, which translated enough votes to win, beating a sitting US Senator.
It really isn’t surprising that Swanson, who is the shill for big insurance and big oil, would bash the netroots.
However, the idea of integrating youtube into campaigns to get exposure is something that is going far beyond politics.
For example, tonight on PBS, Bill Moyers is devoting Now to the topic of public financing of elections. So PBS put a preview on youtube.
The TV insider publication Broadcasting and Cable took notice:
PBS is getting serious about getting more bang for it promotional buck–or make that no buck–via the Internet.
It has set up a “directors account” on YouTube–allowing for longer clips and some other perks–and begun showcasing promos, with a link to the PBS homepage and the show’s site.
PBS President Paula Kerger has said from the get-go that the noncom service needed to be on the cutting edge of getting its programming to where the eyeballs are, and CPB President Patricia Harrison said just this week that programmers “can no longer broadcast to an audience where you last saw them.”
The PBS clips–14 of them so far–include tune-in information, like “check your local listings.” Kevin Dando, director of education and online communication, for PBS, says it is helping to promote the shows to a huge audience–100 million views a day to all of YouTube. And you can’t beat the price of the screen time: free.
“It’s a great way to get in front of a broad variety of audiences,” Dando says. He points out that the clip promoting a NOW program on “clean elections” is now among the top-50 most viewed recent video posts to the site with 13,600 views to date.
“It’s where the market is headed,” he says.
To increase the chances of getting noticed, PBS loads the clip with tags so that it will come up on a variety of searches–for the NOW show, the tags were “NOW,” “PBS,” “votes,””sale campaigns,” “democracy,” “clean elections,” “election,” “proposition 89,” “vote voting.”
Indeed, it is where the market is headed. Which makes Robin Swanson look extremely out of touch when she bashes us.
The Merc News story quoting Swanson also had some other quotes, from people who actually understand politics:
“I don’t know if we’ll pull this off,” said Bill Hillsman, who created the ad and is the media consultant for Connecticut senatorial candidate Ned Lamont’s insurgent campaign against Sen. Joe Lieberman, “but if the spot goes out enough, people will say this is how I feel, and if for no other reason but this, I’ll go out and vote.”
Joe Trippi, the San Jose State University graduate who helped revolutionize the convergence of politics and the Internet as former presidential candidate Howard Dean’s campaign manager in 2004, said the ad “really captures” the mood of the voter.
“It’s the perfect spot,” said Trippi, a consultant to the Proposition 89 campaign. “It helps create the echo chamber between the Internet and TV that it will need to make that big move. This is getting moved around pretty virally right now.” […]
“We’ve learned from working with underdog and insurgency campaigns that if you do an ad that people are watching (on the Internet),” Hillsman said, “you get a multiplier effect that makes it three to five times worth the amount you paid for it.”
Hillsman’s ad campaign for Lamont was the first political effort to tap into the YouTube phenomenon. YouTube, which was recently acquired by Google, is one of the largest and fastest-growing free video sharing Web sites.
If you haven’t yet, check out the ad and use our tools to email it to your friends.
And check out the youtube promo for tonight’s PBS special on public financing (which I recommend watching).
