12. Video

UP CLOSE & PERSONAL

VIDEO WAS ONE OF THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN’S MOST effective tools because it capitalized on one of their greatest assets: the eloquence and charisma of Barack Obama. The video team was led by Kate Albright-Hanna, an Emmy-award winning producer who had previously worked in CNN’s political division. Albright-Hanna met New Media Director Joe Rospars on the Howard Dean campaign—Rospars was a blogger, and she was filming a documentary. Recognizing the power of video from the beginning, Rospars had employed a videographer and screenwriter/producer team to create campaign footage from the early days of the race. Albright-Hanna wanted to shoot a documentary about Obama, and her interest was piqued when she discovered the campaign shot and produced its own video content. After submitting a proposal describing how Obama could effectively leverage video, she was offered a full-time position as Director of Video.

For Albright-Hanna and the video team, it was important to create content that resonated with people. It was a change of pace from the hyperformatted and ratings-focused newsroom Albright-Hanna was accustomed to. “Here we don’t worry about how many views our videos get. That’s not a priority,” she said. “One of our goals is to get people talking about what’s going on in their lives and why they’re supporting Barack.” The videos brought the blog and email campaigns to life by providing a constant stream of meaningful stories that could be seen and shared with friends. From interviews with Iowa precinct captains to footage from rallies, the emphasis was always on amplifying the feeling of community by showcasing videos featuring the campaign’s most passionate grassroots organizers. Albright-Hanna stressed the importance of user-generated videos, “Early on, we wanted to capture the sense that this campaign is not just about Obama.”

YouTube gave the campaign the reach and distribution of a major television network—for free. It provided users with an almost unlimited volume of content available on demand, 24/7. Over the course of the campaign, the video team uploaded over 1,500 videos and the channel had over 20 million views. Obama supporters watched nearly one billion minutes of campaign footage. YouTube was the perfect holding tank for the campaign’s footage. BarackTV also had a donate button where users could contribute anywhere from $15 to $1,000 using Google Checkout.

Types of Video

The Obama team used three different types of video: live-streaming, campaign-created, and user-generated.

LIVE-STREAMING VIDEO

Through live-streaming video, the campaign documented in their entirety many moments that would have been edited, shortened, or not covered at all by the media. Every stump speech and campaign stop, no matter how small, was filmed. Notices went out using Twitter and text messaging to let people know when a live-streaming event was going to take place. This gave supporters more opportunities to connect with the campaign, and see footage that revealed a side of Obama’s personality that transcended media coverage.

CAMPAIGN-CREATED VIDEO

Albright-Hanna’s team created a variety of videos that captured the spirit of the campaign. For example, the “Signs of Change” video included user-submitted pictures of supporters from every state holding up Obama “Change” signs. They also included interviews with supporters, event footage, and other creative and inspiring content to motivate people to register to vote. In total, the campaign’s YouTube channel had more than 1,831 videos and 162,503 subscribers. The use of YouTube also made sense strategically because members could easily embed those videos in their Facebook page, blog, or other personal site.

USER-GENERATED VIDEO

The Obama team realized that the enthusiasm and passion of grassroots organizers and supporters could be more powerful then any slick marketing campaign. Supporters were invited to create and upload their own videos, which were then shared through the blogs and on BarackTV. This allowed the campaign to increase their bandwidth by sharing the responsibilities of video creation. It also ensured that the campaign had a constant supply of new content from places where the video team couldn’t always be. Finally, it capitalized on the social aspect of video sharing: contributors passed the video to their friends and family, giving it a viral quality that might not have been present in an official campaign-made video.

The Value of Video

Video provided a tremendous value to the campaign in several ways.

ACCESSIBILITY FOR ALL

The video team made a consistent effort to listen to and incorporate user feedback. In June 2007, Tom Faar, a Gulf War Veteran asked the video team if they would make closed captioning available on campaign videos. “When you’re at war,” said Tom, “there are so many guns going off in your ears. So many of our veterans are deaf or hard of hearing and they really depend on closed captioning.” The Obama campaign became the first political campaign to offer closed captioning and Spanish captioning for their online videos.

REMIXING CONTENT

Uploading Obama’s speeches to the web gave them longevity. It allowed voters who might not have discovered Obama until later in the campaign to review content that might have otherwise been inaccessible. His “A MORE PERFECT UNION” speech in March 2008 and “YES WE CAN” concession speech from the New Hampshire primary, for example, had millions of views. Users could also take the content from the speeches and remix it into something new. By adding their own photos or music soundtrack, users turned many of the videos into something original. (Will.i.am set the “YES WE CAN” speech to music and created a viral hit that was viewed over twenty-six million times.) It also allowed supporters to produce their own campaign ads, which increased Obama’s online exposure and presence.

DISTILLING BARACK’S MESSAGE INTO BITE-SIZED CHUNKS

While most of Obama’s speeches were available in their entirety, many campaign videos were less than five minutes long—an ideal length for supporters to forward to their friends. Five minutes was short enough that it wouldn’t demand too much of the viewer’s time, but long enough to capture the essence of the hope/change/action mantra that defined so much of the campaign’s rhetoric. The use of music, images, and video also captured the message of the campaign in an emotional way that might not have been possible with words alone.

LEVERAGING THE COMMUNITY’S RESPONSE

An important part of the YouTube community’s philosophy is the ability to post a video response. Video responses on Obama’s videos led to increased traffic, because when someone posted a comment on their own channel it would encourage those who came across that video response to link to the original speech to see what it was about. This capitalized on existing community behavior to increase traffic and visibility.

EXTENDING THE NEWS CYCLE

YouTube also had a huge impact on the coverage of both campaigns by hosting news clips that might have normally disappeared after one news cycle. This worked both for and against the Obama and McCain teams, as controversy didn’t just disappear after a few days. Governor Palin’s fumbled interviews with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric were edited and remixed by supporters into video clips and passed around virally online. Many popular talk-show segments were also uploaded, giving them a lifespan beyond the one-time broadcast. Supporters would then forward their favorite Jon Stewart or David Letterman joke to their friends and subscribers.

SPOTLIGHT

Zealan Hoover,

NEW MEDIA OPERATIONS INTERN

JOINED THE CAMPAIGN: August 2008

ON HIS AVERAGE DAY: I processed all the television and video ads that the paid media team produced, hosting them online, creating a webpage for them on MyBO, and then getting the URL to that page back to paid media so it could be distributed to the press and they could see the videos or listen to the ads on the website. Once they went public I also got them up on our YouTube account.

ON LANDING AN INTERNSHIP: I was determined to work for the campaign in the national headquarters in Chicago but it turned out to be harder to get in than I had expected. Over the spring primary season I had volunteered as much as my schedule allowed, making phone calls from home, door knocking on weekends, and sign waving after school, but as it was my senior year of high school I could not take any serious amount of time off. Ultimately it was Gray Brooks—a distant family acquaintance and Obama New Media staffer—who said that he could use me in Chicago and asked me how soon I could be there.

ON THE NEW MEDIA TEAM: The new media team was like one big family. There were constant pranks, people sleeping on our pink unicorn mascot, Click-Thru. Gray and I shared one tiny desk so we got to know each other quite well. Team Design adopted me since, at 18, I was the youngest one there, and I was away from home for the first time. It was really amazing having a surrogate family of sorts. By November, I felt like I had been living with them for years.

ON ELECTION NIGHT: I was kinda bummed because everybody else had HQ Credentials to get up front whereas I only had a General Admin Pass that would have me scrapping for a line of sight from behind tens of thousands. Luckily, a certain amazing fantastic friend of mine to whom I am forever indebted [Author’s note: This was me!!] pressed a HQ credential into my hands just as I was about to leave the office!

ZEALAN’S MESSAGE: Anything is possible if we put our minds to it; it’s just putting all of our minds to the same purpose that proves to be a challenge. If we can do that—rally around a common cause and ignore the petty differences—then we can really put our country back on track.