Obama’s Online Success – Two Views
Barack Obama’s speech on race in America — "A More Perfect Union" — has been viewed online on Youtube more than 3 million times as I write (and many more times elsewhere online). A tribute to the spontaneous popularity of what he had to say?
To a great extent. But that’s not all.
There’s no question a candidate who has re-written the political fundraising handbook with the help of one million online donors has the grassroots juice to promote and ensure a huge viral audience for this — or any — online video presentation he cares to make.
But nothing in the online marketing world happens entirely spontaneously.
Here’s an article by a fellow named Josh Warner, boasting of how his firm, Feed Co., a so-called "video-seeding" outfit, ran a campaign to boost online views of the Obama video spot "Hope Changes Everything."
It’s a pretty pathetic effort at self-promotion, capitalizing upon Obama-buzz. But still, it’s revealing for what it says about the efforts marketers undertake behind the scenes to create online buzz about their product — and political — campaigns.
Ironically, Mr. Warner thought he had a winner when he saw the "Hope" video nudging up to his goal of 100,000 views! Then "More Perfect Union" comes along and underscores how puny his effort was in the face of real content on a real issue.
And you thought you heard about it from your Aunt Tilly!
Tom
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