A Mitt Romney campaign Web ad that appeared on YouTube featured Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
In the recent, feverish weeks of the presidential campaign, a video appeared online - produced by Mitt Romney's camp - declaring John McCain the "Democrats' Favorite Republican." It looked a lot like a standard campaign TV ad, except for its fairly luxurious length: a minute and 11 seconds. And the fact that Romney's campaign hoped to distribute it for free.
In the first-ever broadband-fed presidential race, campaigns have loaded their websites with video, from clips of speeches and town hall meetings to ads that also appear on TV. They've also experimented with a new form of campaign message: the Web-only ad, which tries to harness the spirit of the Internet and the power of viral video.
Compared to costly TV airtime, Web ads are cheap. All they take is a little production time and a little server space. They're less restrictive, since they don't need to stick to the standard airtime lengths of 30 seconds or a minute.
But if they're going to reach broad audiences, campaigns and media analysts say, Web-only ads have to be special.
"You want something that folks would want to share with their friends and family," said Stephen Smith, Romney's director of online communications.
That means Web videos employ a level of risk-taking that's relatively rare in today's strait-laced media campaigns. Compared with standard TV spots, Web ads are often funnier, more cutting, or more offbeat. The Romney campaign used a comic-book-style animated "Pow" in a recent Web ad that played off Mike Huckabee's support from action star Chuck Norris. In the heat of the South Carolina primary race, when McCain faced challenges to his war-hero status, his campaign issued a long Web ad that dwelled on images of his torture in a Vietnam P.O.W. camp, as the screen flashed with such words as "Left for Dead."
And last year, Hillary Clinton's campaign experimented with videos that looked less like traditional ads and more like the campaign equivalent of sketch comedy. There was a spoof of the "Sopranos" finale, featuring Bill and Hillary Clinton in a diner, and a "Caucusing is easy" instructional video that poked fun at Bill Clinton's appetite for cheeseburgers.
Campaigns use Web video for a range of purposes. Smith said the Romney campaign sometimes posted ads that were created for traditional airwaves but never used, and sometimes used Web ads as a part of the rapid-response effort. The "Democrats' Favorite Republican" ad, Smith said, was cobbled together quickly after McCain's campaign posted a Web ad of its own, labeling McCain "The Democrats' Worst Nightmare."
Whether it persuaded undecided voters is unclear. In a report issued last month, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that nearly a quarter of Americans have seen some sort of campaign-related video online - whether a produced Web ad or some portion of a speech or press appearance. About 41 percent of people under 30 have watched campaign-related videos, compared to 20 percent of people 30 or older.
But many of those people weren't searching for political news, the report found: 52 percent of Web users come across campaign information by accident.
That's the beauty of a true viral sensation, such as Hillary Clinton's widely distributed "Sopranos" spoof, said Michael Cornfield, vice president for research and media strategy at the firm 720 Strategies based in Washington, D.C., who has written books on Internet campaigning. Most people trolling campaign websites are already converted, or at least engaged, he said. The "Sopranos" video told neophytes something surprising and new.
"It humanizes her," he said. "And also, that video made clear that she was now in charge of Bill, which is now a big issue . . . There's a very solid point that they're trying to make."
In Romney's case, the most broadly viewed of the campaign's Web videos tended to use humor. The Chuck Norris ad - a spoof itself of a Huckabee ad from the fall that got significant viral buzz - drew 90,000 hits on YouTube, Smith said. Likewise, a recent video of Romney's son, Matt - who prank-called his father, pretending to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, in the days leading up to the Michigan primary - drew nearly 200,000 YouTube views. It also got played on cable news channels, Smith noted.
Breaking into traditional media may be the ultimate standard of Web video success, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In a study released last summer, he said, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found most Americans heard about the most famous viral videos because they saw them replayed on TV.
"It's still so contingent on the big megaphones rather than just word-of-mouth," Rainie said. "Mainstream media still matters a lot in the flow of political communication. It's a lesson we keep relearning."
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
