The Big Picture

The Obama camp, by contrast, took a targeted approach to how their channel would be run. One of the first things they did was hire an Emmy-winning CNN producer to shape what the camp would post. The basic idea was to document Obama on the road and upload speech clips from the trail, clips of voters talking about the senator and informal meetings of Obama talking to his staff. They even had camp manager David Plouffe—who likely took a page from Rick Davis's playbook—give strategy briefings by chatting into a webcam in his office and occasionally referring to a slide. It was, in essence a 50-state strategy for the Web. "Today it seems like an obvious decision but back then it really wasn't," says Grove of the operation. "They [created] a sort of experience that made you feel like you were there and that the campaign was personal."

Traditionally, campaigns have produced TV ads, press releases and direct mail, often thinking of themselves as advertisers within, say, a TV show. "What we tried to be on YouTube was the actual television show," says Joe Rospars, the Obama campaign's New Media director. That would explain why Obama first used his channel to respond to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy and later to break the news that he would forgo public financing for the general election. Grove says the constant pumping of two or three videos online a day left no question about the camp's key messages. "That's why user-generated ads like "Yes, We Can" really caught on," he says. "Because they were so well tailored to the campaign's points."

The laserlike approach created thousands of online foot soldiers that took it upon themselves to serve not only as supporters, but also defenders. Where former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry was Swift-Boated with few effective counterattacks during the 2004 election, Obama supporters often came to his rescue by posting video responses to online smears.

But not all posts could be rebuttled. McCain had his "Bomb Iran" moment, which folks were reminded of well into the presidential debates. Obama had the Reverend Wright clips, which forced him to address his relationship with the preacher and eventually renounce the man. Still, YouTube played more like the go-to source for campaigns and viewers and less like the virtual burn book many candidates imagined.

President-elect Obama plans to continue using online video when he's in the Oval Office. In a November 2007 interview on YouTube, he told Grove it would be like President Franklin D. Roosevelt's use of radio during his administration. "We're going to have 21st-century fireside chats where I'm speaking directly to the American people through video streams because it allows me to interact directly in a way that I think will enhance democracy and strengthen our government," Obama said. There will be some differences, of course. Just as Obama used the medium to respond to Bush's State of the Union address, Obama's listeners will likely use video to respond to him. Call it the YouTube effect.

© 2008