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I hate living in texas because I never get a chance to see outlandish ads like this one. I need to move to a swing state at some point. I'm sure they get to see all sorts of good stuff.
I was about to ask this same question. When you think about it, it's genius marketing regardless of which party is responsible for the ad. You create an ad but don't pay for any advertising time. You leak the ad to both the DNC and the RNC and to the media. Not only do you get your message out but you save on buying actual airtime. Then again, I'm sure they do air these somewhere.
It's genius marketing if you like working for free. Otherwise you could convince them to pay you to make them, like they normally do!
It's not "genius" if it only runs in viral videos and is only seen by people who follow politics enough to go to a blog or website to get the link to this. Usually those people have already made up their minds.
Here's an interesting take on YouTube political ads. Political races not taking advantage of YouTube October 24th, 2006 YouTube is the most powerful means of sharing video yet created. It also has a great demographic, and is an easy way of getting out a grassroots message. So lots of politicians are taking advantage of it for next month’s election, right? Nope. Reel Pop’s Steve Bryant did a little YouTube digging and found a woeful lack of interesting campaign-contributed video. The official ones that are there are boring TV ads. The most successful official one seems to be - no surprise - a funny one for the Ned Lamont campaign. Steve also has some good practical advice: if you don’t control your keywords, your opponent will - and will use that against you. How are candidates missing out on this obvious - and free - opportunity to reach young voters? The days of spending jillions on wasted TV time are ending. Put a real, human message on YouTube and let your passionate supporters help spread it. http://www.lostremote.com/2006/10/24/political-races-not-taking-advantage-of-youtube/ http://www.reelpopblog.com/2006/10/the_2006_midter.html The 2006 Midterms According to YouTube Can YouTube help predict an election? If the paucity of political videos on YouTube is any indication, nobody's going to voting at all. While browsing YouTube the other day I noticed that there weren't very many political videos. I don't mean copies of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. I mean videos uploaded by politicians running for office, or video mashups by voters or other footage from live events. So I started researching the midterm Senate races on YouTube. I copied this Wikipedia list of Senate races and searched on YouTube for each candidate's name, taking note of the number of videos that search returned. I also noted the most popular or interesting videos, and the number of views and comments they received. The results for the first ten states of the Union (in alphabetical order) are here. The results aren't encouraging. If viewing political videos is any measure, YouTubers aren't very engaged with our government. Of course, YouTube may not be an ideal test bed for measuring engagement. But in an Internet era supposedly dominated by social media, it doesn't hurt to test our assumptions on what should be the most democratic medium of them all. Here's what I've learned so far: Television ads predominate. But they're not very popular. Politicians either don't have time to speak directly to video-sharers, or they don't know how. The most successful television ads on YouTube seem to be the funny ones. Such as Ned Lamont has a Messy Desk. (143,468 views) Candidates don't typically upload their own videos or go to pains to "own" their keywords on YouTube. Most videos are copied segments of national TV shows. If a race or candidate isn't covered by the national news, it probably won't be very popular on YouTube. Dark horse candidates don't appear very often on YouTube. This may be because they don't have television ads, and thus nobody copies them to YouTube. If a candidate doesn't try to control his/her keywords on YouTube, their opponent can use that weakness against them. For example, Michigan incumbent Debbie Stabenow (D) doesn't have a good presence on YouTube. The most popular videos containing her name were uploaded by her opponent, Mike Bouchard (R). Those videos have titles such as Debbie Stabenow Doesn't Want You to See This and Shh...Don't Let Debbie Know You've Seen This. Videos about female candidates seem to concentrate on their sexuality. For examples, see videos about Florida's Katherine Harris or Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar. Mashups of political ads are funny. One of my favorite's in a mashup of Mark Kennedy's (R-Minnesota) TV ad with this footage. Politicians should fear these mashups. But they could also use them to great effect. The ones they put on TV now are too slow. Guess they're just playing to the base of older voters. The apparently don't like the Internet in Indiana. None of the senate candidates have any type of video on YouTube. Barak Obama is popular. Ted Kennedy is not unlike Bluto Blutarski.
I've seen this commercial. It's great. I try to stay as completely as biased as possible. Wow, I said as a lot.
It also gets run on news programs when it's controversial. Not saying it's the best way to advertise but it's pretty cost effective.
