Check out these simple — yet very effective — videos from the Obama Transition Team’s website, Change.gov, and contrast them with anything that’s been done by Republican elected officials.
In this first video, which was posted on Nov. 18, we get a sneak peek behind the curtain at Obama Transition HQ as Carol Browner meets with the Energy and Environment Transition Team and they pretend to discuss what their first steps should be when they take office in January.
Of course, they don’t actually discuss any real strategy on camera or even announce anything new. But the viewer is left feeling as though he’s getting exclusive behind-the-scenes access to a meeting he’d never been invited to before. And the brilliant b-roll shot selection is almost voyeuristic in nature — a shot from the hallway into a staffer’s office, a shot over another staffer’s shoulder in the conference room, etc. And at the end of the video, a call to action: a plea for people to submit their ideas through the Change.gov website. Smart, smart stuff:
Now check out this video that was posted three days later – on Nov. 21. It shows Heather Zichal, a member of the Obama Transition’s Energy and Environment Policy Team answering questions that viewers of the first video submitted through Change.gov. This is so simple — just a woman answering questions in front of a webcam or a tiny camcorder. Yet as of today, the video’s been viewed more than 80,000 times. And more importantly, it’s given those 80,000 people another seemingly vouyeuristic peek behind the curtain and left them with the feeling that their ideas and suggestions are being heard — probably for the first time.
Finally, here’s one more behind-the-scenes video from the Obama Transition Team — this one illustrating how they’re offering real people a “seat at the table” for the first time and transparently posting all policy suggestions from every outside group they’re meeting with. Again, there’s brilliant voyeuristic shot selection on display — through the conference room window, for example — that gives the impression that you’re seeing something you’re not really supposed to have access to.
Of course, this is all scripted to give the illusion of access where little, if any, actually exists, but even a jaded political hack like me felt a little twinge of hope that I might get the chance to sit down with the transition team and politely yet persuasively explain to them how higher taxes, unlimited government spending and extreme environmental overregulation will destroy what’s left of the American economy. I’ll let you know how that turns out. In the meantime, check out this last Obama video:
Now contrast those creative, engaging videos with the ones our elected officials on the right have posted. Most of them consist solely of unedited news conference footage and speeches from the House and Senate floors, which is ok, but the last time I checked, C-Span wasn’t exactly challenging Dancing With the Stars for the top spot in the Nielsen ratings. There are a handful of relatively unscripted, made-for-Internet videos that show lawmakers looking into the camera and explaining why some legislation or issue is important, but there’s often no real call to action or effort to engage or connect with the viewers.
The only truly outside-the-box video I found is this one by the RNC, which manages to achieve a very, very modest level of humor by attempting to tie Obama to the stereotype of cheesy, uber-trendy Europeans after his campaign speech in Berlin. But the video fails because it doesn’t really send a clear message. What is the message, exactly? That a lot of relatively normal-looking people in Germany and other nations around the world really like Obama? Gee, we can’t have that, can we? And while Obama’s online videos explain to people how deeply concerned he is about their skyrocketing health care costs, the RNC was comparing him to David Hasselhoff? Seriously?
So while Obama and his team are producing easy, cheap, but extremely effective videos that give the American people a feeling of access to the levers of power for the first time, the right is either posting boring Congressional speeches or videos that feature lots of people saying how much they love Obama. It’s little wonder that Obama’s videos routinely rack up hundreds of thousands of views, while most videos posted by Republican elected officials only log a few dozen or a few hundred views.
The good news is that it’s really not that difficult for the right to replicate what Obama is doing with online video. The vast majority of his material isn’t something we need George Lucas or Steven Stephen Spielberg to produce. There aren’t any fancy special effects or elaborate editing techniques in the videos above. All it really takes is a basic camcorder, a tripod, a basic video editor and just a little bit of creativity.
So let’s get going…
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