Viral Buzz and the campain trail

The YouTube age is upon us. The simple user-generated content video site reels in about fifty million unique visitors every month. There are currently 9.5 billion online videos viewed by 138 million Americans. And if you haven't noticed yet, marketers have already caught. Interestingly enough, these so called viral video campaigns are popping up everywhere, trying very hard to hide their advertising intentions. Check out this blogpost from a over a year ago. Its a nice compilation of the top ten viral videos of all time. The Nike one with soccer star Ronaldino is particularly fascinating.

To get more recent however, lets take a look at what presidental canidate Barack Obama is doing with viral video in order to promote his campagin. The video is a song called "Yes We Can," starring Barack Obama and a host of A-list celebrities generating 5.3 million hits on YouTube since its creation in early February. Vocalizations of the speech from the likes of Scarlet Johansson, John Legend, Kate Walsh, Common, Nicole Scherzinger, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Herbie Hancock and other celebrity supporters are heard throughout the song. The song itself is inspiring and encourages young people to get out and vote. A cool fact however is that Obama didn't even come up with the idea himself, The Black Eyed Peas did, with intent to get Obama support. "The Internet and technology empowers people," will.i.am from the Black Eyed Peas said, "and the 'Yes We Can' song is proof that they don't need a big record company or a big movie company ... to go out and captivate people's attention."
I am glad to see Obama is cognizant of contemporary American culture. The video is a great example of a good viral video campaign. People see it, and forward it to their friends and from there it organically grows. Lets see if Hillary takes a similar approach.