IP Democracy: Quality of Candidates' Videos is All Over the Map

The Washington Post’s Jose Antonio Vargas has this piece today about the role of web video in presidential campaigns. Vargas focuses specifically on the varying quality and effectiveness of the web videos that presidential wannabes are putting out there. Guiliani, for example, talks at viewers by merely posting marathon-length speeches.

Humor, it seems, is lacking in quite a few of the official candidates’ videos, and people want to watch funny videos, it seems.

Similarly, Clinton’s most watched HillCast, titled “Roadmap Out of Iraq,” comes nowhere close in popularity to the video showing her singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” off-key at a rally in Iowa. The HillCast has been viewed more than 15,000 times since it was posted on Feb. 17, the out-of-tune moment nearly 1.1 million times since its posting on Jan. 27.

Georgetown University student James Kotecki has been posting his own reviews of the candidates’ videos that are quite watchable. Here’s a critique of John McCain’s video efforts.

Vargas and colleague Sam Diaz also have this piece today on George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet’s annual conference, which this year drew 500 attendees, mostly political consultants and campaign operatives. The discussions centered on the typical topics, such as Google ads, web video spots, email and message boards, although one entrepreneur had an intriguing suggestion for candidates: develop campaign-centric video games.

Scott Randall, president of BrandGames in New York, is trying to get campaigns interested in creating video games around candidates in the same way his company makes them for other products. “Candidates are brands and the power of video games, like a brand mascot, is to create an emotional connection with the brand,” he said, though he had not managed to persuade any campaigns at the conference.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on March 17, 2007 11:27 AM to IP Democracy