Could "The Rock" Change the '08 Presidential Race?

It took almost a month for it to really 'hit' but a short video on YouTube uploaded on May 27th could perhaps be the most Earth shattering online political video yet of the 2008 presidential campaign.
For more than a minute, former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel and current candidate for the democratic presidential nomination sternly stares at the camera before turning around throwing a rock into a lake and walking away.
Yes, instead of attacking his opponents or stating political hyperbole, he throws a rock in the water.
What does it all mean? Well it turns out this video wasn't produced by his campaign in the first place. Rather two 24-year-old art teachers in the bay area requested he take part, and without Lew Dobbs beating down his door (Gravel is currently running about 1 percent in the polls) he agreed, and spent a day shooting three segments.
Two of the segments are currently making the rounds on YouTube, The Fire, in which Gravel collects wood from a forest and builds a fire, and the more publicized video, The Rock. Since its release Gravel has been gaining traction on the internet, likely helped by the dozens of policy speeches that are show up next to The Rock on YouTube.
UnknownParameters had a great comment on the message board:

First the rock now a fire. His state of the union [address] would be an hour of silence followed by him taking [off] his right shoe.

Will it help Gravel win the election?
It most likely won't be enough, but this is a former senator with so little name recognition before that newscasters covering the videos have have been mis-pronouncing his name with a hard 'a' yet hardly anyone knows to correct them.
Webisodes are not a new thing to the 2008 race though. At first there was the "Let's Start a Conversation" videos from the client camp, then there was the spoof the iconic 1984 Apple ad featuring Big Sister Clinton (using the conversation videos) produced by Obama supporters. Most recently there were a series of webisodes coming from the Clinton camp leading up to a Sopranos spoof announcing their campaign song that made us wonder why, if he is such a bad actor did we ever believe Bill about the Monica thing.
But Gravel's video is something more than those. They were at best well done political ads that talk about issues directly but quickly turn people off, the best they get is a mild chuckle. Gravel's videos, even if it wasn't his intention, have branded him as the independent free spirit that he wants to be known as. They've given him tens millions of dollars of name recognition, and perhaps the first chance that he has yet had in this race.
Many reports touted his most recent debate appearance as his most impressive appearances yet, which may be--in part--due to confidence gained by a solid online conversation about his candidacy. But now the question is... where to go from here.
Building on a small group of young tech savvy fans, Gravel could create a ground swell by capitalizing on these troops and getting them to spreed his message. Use user generated content to get teens and 20-somethings with too much time to start recruiting their friends and build a base that can shake his black sheep label.
The spots are clever and intelligent and though may not be beating down doors with the issues he cares about, like tax reform and getting troops out of Iraq, but they do make people want to listen. And when was the last anyone wanted to hear what a politician had to say? These webisodes are a job well done.

This Bud's Not for Everyone - Part Deuce

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is part two of a continuing series about Bud.TV and advertiser generated content. The previous posting in the series is from June 13th.

The underlying question of the whole thing still remains what is the point of Bud.TV for Auhiser-Bush when doled out at a 30 million dollar price tag? How many eye-balls will see this content and will they even deliver the message they are looking for. I’ve scene a lot of online ads looking to find a way around the cost of broadcast, but the truth is that TV is expensive for a reason it has a built in audience that’s be growing for years.

Bud.TV is an attempt at vertical integration but with restrictions on who can access the site (which a number of state attorney’s generals have said aren’t strong enough) there is no way for it to ever achieve the viral status of a YouTube video. The most watched videos that I have found so far on Bud.TV have play counts around 25,000. Bud Cursing jar video on YouTube has achived close to a half million views. Yet despite all that success that number of viewer times ten could be achieved by running during Dr. Phil, times a hundred and it would be on the Super Bowl.

CBS said in their first month of launching their inter tube player they received more than 11 million views. I haven’t seen any metrics since then but we can only assume the numbers have sky rocketed since then. This are established content providers though. Will Bud.TV ever be able to establish themselves?

Well the news from A-B is not good for Bud.TV and the project is expected to be scraped at years end.

But the idea of ad-supplied content is far from gone.

ABC is currently running a fun little show twice a week called Fast Car & Superstars - The Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race and is streaming the episodes via the ABC viewer. One might see the show and think it is just chocked full of product placements, especially for Gillette who the announcers plug about once a minute as they talk about the Gillette Young Guns, a group of young superstar Nascar drivers who guide celebrities like Jewel, Bill Shatner, John Elway and other around the track.

But for those who stick out the credits and stay till the end will see that the show is actually a commercial caulked full of content. In prime time it is a paid presentation of Proctor and Gamble, the owners of Gillette and the largest TV ad buyer in the world.

When judged as a show, I’m not sure if I can say it’s that good, when judged as an infomercial, it’s fantastic. Nascar may be one of the only venues that can support this much product placement while still fooling people into thinking it’s a real show. On the other hand P&G has scored what some might consider a miracle; an ad so attention getting that they can sell ads for it.

What the financial arrangement between P&G and ABC is for the show is not clear though based on the amount P&G paid for the production (co-produced by ad firm BBOD) I wouldn’t be surprised if ABC got the show for free and called it a day.

The ratings haven’t been great but you know that people aren’t fast-forwarding through it on TIVO. These sorts of shows aren't going to be replacing the fall lineup anytime soon, or at least I'd like to hope not, but everyone is pitching their advertiser created content and at some point some of these are going to start sticking to the wall.

Four Eyed Monsters For Free (but you should really pay for it)

One of the best, most original uses of a webisodic for marketing has to be Susan Buice and Arian Crumley, the creators behind Four Eyed Monsters. In a style uniquely their own, they created a movie to retell the story of falling in love with each other without words. But while doing so they also opted to make a webisode chronicling the creation of the movie.

Quickly the webisodic shot to the top of iTunes but their film, sadly, was not as successful. Failing to get into Sun Dance and failure get a distributor in many ways tanked the main stream possibilities of success for the film. But with a cult following of hundreds of thousands because of the webisodic, they've since opted for self distribution.

During the past week they've been offering the full 70 minute film for free on YouTube, where its been watched more than a quarter million times. They are also offering the film, starting at only three dollars, via their Web site.

In a strange arrangement, to say the least, the movie review, social networking start up Sprout.com sponsored the YouTube appearance by paying the monsters a dollar (to help repay the debt from the films production) for everyone who signed up for Sprout as a response to a short plea at the beginning of the film.

When I signed up, on the second to the last day of the film's seven day run on YouTube only about 20,000 people had signed up, far short of the sated goal of 100,000 the approximate amount needed to cover the about of debt the couple cites as having amassed. It appears web celebrity has still yet to come with wealth.

Take a look at their webisodic, it defiantly ranks as one of the top ten defining series of the genre. Episode three is my favorte and it doesn't just have to do with my unexplicible large attraction to Moulin Rouge. If you have a chance also sign up for Spout at www.spout.com/foureyedmonsters. It helps two struggling artists and it's actually a pretty good site.

If you haven't seen the film and missed the YouTube viewing, you can download the film from their site here.

This Bud's Not for Everyone

Bud TV was launched by Anheuser-Bush earlier this year to great fanfare from the advertising world. It wasn’t that everyone thought it was a great idea, it’s just that they were excited to learn how it was going to turn out. A-B, one of the top five advertisers in the country was going to be re-directing a large part of their 2007 ad budget away from conventional TV and putting it into their own online content channel.

So, now, half-way through 2007 is Bud TV paying off?

It terms of content, they’re doing alright. There are some shows that have garnered decent attention, Replaced by a Chimp, is one of the most well recognized series. But it only has a few episodes and they loose their appeal pretty quickly. Swear Jar, has done well after leaving the confines of Bud TV and being seen almost a half million times on YouTube. But it's not anything new, it's just another one of A-B's creative but old school advertisements. There are also accusations that it plagiarizes an early 90's episode of the Simpsons.

Afterworld is one of my favorite shows though it play count only barely breaks 2,000. It’s a post apocalyptic piece that is done in a jumpy animation style. Afterworld's plot is some where between Lost and Jericho but the story telling style approaches noir in tone. Though when placed against boob feasts like What Girls Want, it’s hard to see how it advances Bud Light’s goals at all. Maybe they are trying to depress us into drinking more, but the plot is so depressing I would skip the light stuff and go straight for the scotch.

A new interactive game show called Hardly News is also going to be launching soon which I think is one of the most creative items on the site from a use of the medium standpoint. Using multiple screen video clips provides humorous clues and a host narrates from another screen. The series is light in nature, ties back into the product subtly but most importantly is interactive, it draws people in, it's a show you literally can't fall asleep watching.

One of my biggest issues with Bud TV is not the quality of the content but that the content really is just short snippets that make a larger show. When given such a budget, 30-million dollars to be precise—about the same as an entire prime time season series—you’d think A-B could have come up with something more interesting that what are essentially bad mini-tv-episodes.

Now this may also be what are called webisodes, but websiodes when done well are not one-beat jokes or sixty minutes long stories told in three minute segments. Afterworlds is the rare exception on Bud TV of a webisodic done right and taking advantage of the medium. But shows like Sebastian on the other hand is literally a funny comedy show broken down into 20 three-minute segments. Some of the episodes separated by nothing more than an edit.

Bud TV is on the brink of releasing a desktop player to access their site. Not exactly a novel idea, it may help retain the viewers who are already visiting Bud TV. As that audience has slipped from a few hundred thousand to only a little over a hundred thousand in a few short months, there may not be an audience left to save.

Editors Note: This posting is part one of a series about Bud TV. In the next segment learn how Anheuser-Bush is hoping to bring Bud TV back from certain cancellation.