Millions for issue advocacy are being spent on all sides of the healthcare debate. The ability to separate oneself and message is key to rise above the chatter and get noticed. Online videos have become a tool for all as groups try to get their voice heard. Using humor, sprinkled with sarcasm, and a bit of irony can’t hurt.

In a humorous sketch on funnyordie.com, Will Ferrell and other celebrities do a mock-serious critique on health insurance companies.

A video entitled “Overpaid Celebrities” came out soon after as a response to the Funny or Die spoof.

The group Catholic Vote Action put out another video mocking the Ferrell skit.

The Dwight Drake (D) for Governor of South Carolina campaign put this creative web video out over the weekend. It has so far received extensive coverage. For a later entry into the race, Drake is looking for an angle on his opponents. He is connecting the video to a call to have Sanford’s removal from office brought before the Legislature in the next 30 days. A petition is linked to the video. The strategy to gain recognition and momentum seems to be working.

We’ll see if Sanford finishes his last 500.

General elections in Germany are only seven weeks away and one clever candidate has found a way to draw a lot of publicity to her campaign. 
 

That’s Chancellor Angela Merkel in a somewhat revealing, low-cut dress. Across her cleavage, the slogan “We have more to offer.”
 
The picture is at the center of a new campaign strategy for Vera Lengsfeld. She is a fellow member of Merkel’s conservative CDU party running in a left-leaning district of Berlin. Being a conservative in a liberal district, and running against a popular Green Party incumbent, Lengsfeld needed a way to grab voters’ attention. And she has certainly found it. Lengsfeld hung 750 posters with the picture in her district, creating quite the media buzz. Local news stations are covering the story, posters are going missing as people take them for souvenirs, and 17,000 people have visited her campaign blog since they were posted.
 
This certainly plays into the old adage that “sex sells.” But is using sex in political ads appropriate? Advertising guru David Olgilvy’s one rule on using sex in an ad campaign is relevance. Does Merkel’s cleavage have anything to do with the candidate the poster is trying to promote? No. Will it really persuade voters that Lengsfeld is better qualified to represent them in Parliament? Probably not. Lengsfeld is a long-shot candidate needing exposure and desperate candidates turn to desperate measures to get the attention they want.
 
But with the way people view politicians in America today, candidates here need to tread lightly when crafting campaign strategies. Shock-value ads may get attention but do they pay off with votes in the end? Not if you want to be taken seriously and have your platform resonate with voters.
 
While showing Hillary Clinton in a revealing top is the last thing any American wants to see, the thing to take from this ad campaign is how to (appropriately) use new and provocative images to grab people’s attention. The same stock photos and outdated slogans need to be retired. Its time for a more creative approach if you want people to look, listen, and ultimately vote for you on election day.

August is here. Members of Congress use this much awaited recess to go home, listen to their constituents, and reconnect before the fall session. The recent controversy surrounding the cap and trade bill and the looming health care reform legislation has made this time interesting for Members of Congress as they go home and check the temperature of their constituents.

Recent media accounts have shown that the response back home is downright angry. Traditionally, during this time, Members of Congress set up town hall style events where they speak about current legislation and field questions from the audience. Americans have been showing up in droves to these ‘town hall’ events holding signs, yelling, and causing discomfort for their respective members.

Much of the raw footage of these events has made it to the internet. The most notable clip was from a town hall hosted by Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius over the weekend. Senator Specter was hastled and booed over a response he made about the speed at which legislation is passed. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was noticeably irritated by the audience’s reaction. Close to 825,000 people have viewed the two and a half minute video since it was posted last Sunday.

Over 500,000 watched Representative Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) as he was hounded outside a grocery store by irate constituents yelling “just say no” (referencing healthcare) over the weekend.

366,000 viewed a town hall with Representative Tim Bishop (D-NY) as he was taken to task over a variety of issues including his support for cap and trade and the current healthcare reform.

These are just a few examples of what has happened as Members go home and meet with the people they represent. The declining support in the polls for a public option for healthcare rightly suggests that these episodes are an illustration of the feelings of many across the country.

While those taking the brunt of this anger consider these individuals plants and not representative of what Americans are truly feeling, it is clear Members of Congress are walking on thin ice when it comes to healthcare. Whether the protests are orchestrated or organic, they still represent growing concern with the legislative agenda put forth by the Obama Administration.

From a political communication perspective, there are deeper implications that continue to arise from this trend.  Video technology’s effectiveness was first highlighted in the 2006 cycle during the VA Senate race, when George Allen was caught on film calling a videographer a racially incentive slur.  Now, with Flip Camera and video technology on mobile phones, citizens have the power and ability to capture politicians and events en masse. With the widespread popularity of YouTube, people are able to watch these raw videos online, almost immediately. With more social media platforms being utilized for distribution, these videos have a much greater chance of going viral, reaching thousands, even millions of people.

This drastically increases the number of participants in the political dialogue. In the past, one was required to physically attend these events to get the true feeling because news accounts were heavily edited. Now, citizen journalists are everywhere capturing real-time events and posting them, largely unedited, on the internet for millions to view.

The political brush fire over healthcare is well under way.  New videos of public outrage at Congressional town hall meetings have fueled this fire tremendously.

Stay tuned for more from your fellow citizen journalist.

Current Assemblyman, Chuck Devore, representing California’s 70^th district has an uphill battle in front of him. He is running for the U.S. Senate in California against political heavy-weight Barbara Boxer. His litany of life-long accomplishments pitted against Barbara Boxer’s political machine will make this a must follow race in 2010.

However, his New Media Director for the campaign, JUSTIN HART, is shaking things up a bit. He has introduced an innovative fundraising strategy for the campaign that looks promising.

It’s called ChuckBucks.

The site combines ease, transparency, and flair to let campaign donors know exactly where their money is going. The genius is in allowing potential donors ‘pick’ where the money is going by selecting a campaign expense to pay for. The engagement factor is key. When people are invested directly in something, they feel more a part of it. The more excited supporters the better. Finally, the air of transparency builds trust with the donor knowing that their hard earned money is going directly to a specific purpose and not lost in the war chest.

Next, the campaign’s new media savy includes a Twitter feed that lets people know who and how much has been donated. It then links to the individual’s Twitter home page. The focus is on small donations to build grassroots support-much like Barack Obama’s plan in 2008.

In an interview with Wired Magazine’s Epicenter blog, Hart explains,

You’ve got to rise above the noise. You can’t just do it and not have an angle, or a specific thing that makes people want to donate. If you’re a charity, for example, is there a unique angle you can pursue as far as new contributors — new contributors from a specific city, or something around a special event that you’re doing? If you just lay it out there, no one’s really going to pay attention… For us, of course, being conservatives and
Republicans, and having lost the November election, with technology being one of the tools used by the victorious side — not only to vanquish us, but to vanquish Hilary Clinton earlier… conservatives are taking that message to heart. For them, I was kind of this symbolic, poster child of our way back out of the wilderness.

With ChuckBucks’ launch today, we will soon find out whether Hart’s savy will translate into dollars. Yet, the innovative approach and creativity is second to none and will likely be mimicked by campaigns in the future whether or not Chuck Devore is able to take down the Barbara Boxer behemoth.

A new television ad campaign launched Monday by the RNC accuses President Obama’s push to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system as a “risky experiment.”

This ad is sending a strategic message with word choice. Bold words like “bailouts,” takeovers,” and “spending spree” emphasize what this administration has already delivered. Describing the proposed health care reform as a “risky experiment” purposefully concerns viewers. Experiment implies a trial of something new to determine whether or not it works. Experimenting with a policy that will affect 267 million Americans and cost trillions of dollars is dangerous. No one wants their health care to be put in jeopardy by a reckless reform that took just months to put together but will be affecting us for decades to come.

The ad is being broadcast in Arkansas, Nevada, and North Dakota; the video is also available at BarackObamaExperiment.com

The RNC runs the website designed to raise opposition to Obama’s health care reform. The site allows visitors to share the link through social networking sites, it provides phone numbers to radio political talk shows, it provides sample letters to send to newspapers, and it encourages people to contact their elected officials, even providing talking points on the opposition.

It’s beginning to be an all-out campaign against Obama’s government-run health insurance plan. And separating this campaign from the RNC’s website makes the issues less about partisan politics and more about the issue at hand. As the health care debate heats up, we can anticipate seeing a lot more ads like this.

Capitalizing on the swearing-in of Democratic Senator Al Franken, the NRSC released a web video last week with quite a message. 
 

 
The ad’s message seems to be a warning: with 60 Democrats in the Senate, the party has the magic number allowing them to pass any legislation they want. The Senate will approve government-run healthcare and higher energy taxes. Elimination of the secret ballot will pass. Negotiating with terrorists will no longer be off-limits. It’s a scary thought. 
 
The message appears to convey how NRSC wants Americans to know the Democrats are in charge. And when this administration’s economic policies fail to bring relief to the people, the Democrats are the only ones to blame.
 
The erratic motions of Franken portray the Democrats as crazed politicians. The newspaper quotations emphasizing “THEIR” distances and separates the Democrats and their policies from the will of American people. The music conjures up feelings of despair, as if mourning the death of accountability and partisan oversight.
 
Ads like this run over the next 18 months could be effective as long as current economic trends continue. Coupled with ads promoting Republicans as fiscally responsible and pro economic growth, the message could turn things around in 2010.

Here is an interesting snapshot posted on Facebook.  If you look closely on the left side of the gas pump you can see a red and white sticker outlining the effect on the price of gas if a particular gas tax supported by Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, was signed into law.

Despite signing the 2010 budget that imposes more than $1 billion in additional taxes on state residents, including the first increase state sales tax in 33 years, Patrick continues to strongly support raising the gas tax.

In true colonial spirit, people opposing the gas tax increase have placed these stickers at gas station pumps explaining how Deval’s proposed nineteen cent increase would put the tax at staggering 60 cents a gallon.

This is an interesting and effective approach to highlight a political issue.  The “opposition to the gas tax” sticker couldn’t be placed in a better spot with a more a captive audience. As Massachusetts motorists fill their tanks, they are asked to imagine what their bill will look like if the price were to go up even more. 

This has the potential to resonate because it addresses what’s actually on the audience’s mind at that moment – paying at the pump.  What makes it effective is the innovative approach. The sticker reads like a public service announcement rather than a partisan attack on the governor responsible for the higher tax. It doesn’t look like a political ad so people aren’t tempted to ignore it. 

Traditional political advertising can sometimes carry negative connotations with the prevalence of attack ads and partisan politics.  Thinking outside the box with strategically placed ads like this are the future of smart political advertising tactics.

Today, YouTube added a new feature to the advertising portion of their website. The addition of “Call-To-Action-Overlay” allows subscribers the ability to have a translucent pop-up ad appear at the bottom of the video linking to a third-party website.

The only catch: subscribers have to enter their video into YouTube’s Promoted Videos program. The new feature is free, per se, but subscribers are required to pay the advertising fee.

Before, sponsors had to include the website in the description of the video inconveniently off screen. As a result, many ignored these links and, thus, they were ineffective in driving significant traffic to the sponsors website.

Now, the options are endless for politicians, singers, musicians, video bloggers, interest groups, etc to dramatically increase flow to their website. The group “charity: water” was one of YouTube’s first beta tests for the project. They were able to raise $10,000 in one day for their cause of bringing clean water to developing countries. 

TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid puts it best,

Brands can link their commercials back to the products they’re selling. Publishers (like us) can link back to relevant articles. And politicians can link back to their campaign homepages or petitions. But there’s almost certainly some other kind of creative use for the new ads waiting to be tapped, just as YouTube’s annotations were used to create choose-your-own-adventure video journeys.

With YouTube making a significant mark on the 2008 election cycle, the options are endless for politicians, interest groups, and parties wanting to create avenues to their websites. Ad overlays capture the emotion felt from a video, streamline the connection between parties, and translate into dollars, advocacy, or support. A few politicians are already doing this. Senator Patrick Leahy is using an ad overlay in a video calling for investigations into the Bush administration linked to a website with a petition. Taking down this barrier has cracked the political advertising floodgates. Put your rain coat on.  

If you haven’t noticed Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube offer beefed up targeting strategies based on demographics and interests.  For example, if you’re on Facebook and you’ve recently gotten engaged, you will immediately begin to notice a plethora of ads pushing all types of wedding services.  This is what many in the advertising world believe is the future of smart advertising.

According to respondents in a recent survey this is a good thing.

A study by Q Interactive, and reposted on Mashable, offers some interesting insight for advertisers. Notably, 56.6% of US internet users between the ages of 35 and 44 would view and advertiser favorably based on online ads tailored to their interests.  56.2% of this same age bracket also prefers to receive free online services and information in exchange for the use of their data to target relevant data to them.

According to the study, while some suggest creating ads targeting a consumer’s interests would be excessive, the study found consumers welcome it.

This is just one of the many ways in which social networking sites provide advertisers with plenty of data that can be utilized to make ads as effective and potent as possible.

For political campaigns and issue advertising, this is the beginning of an important new trend. Political advertisers put tremendous stock in the ability to target audiences.  As it’s been determined long ago, voters rarely act in one mass group, voting for people based on one overarching issue.  Voters, like consumers, have niche tastes and interests, and vote according to which candidate appeals to them on the issue(s) they care about most as an individual or member of a particular demographic.

While most voters get weary of the constant drumbeat of ads touting one or two specific campaign issues, this new advertising method, based on interest targeting, may prove more welcome.