10:45 am
John McCain, YouTube Superstar?
John McCain’s latest YouTube ad:
McCain’s advertising strategy reminds me of the story Leslie Stahl tells about Ronald Reagan and a piece she did on 60 Minutes:
Stahl recalled one of her most famous stories for “60 Minutes” — an expose on the 1984 Reagan re-election campaign that aired the night before the election. In a blitz of images showing a benevolent Reagan appearing at nursing home openings and hospitals, Stahl narrated that Reagan had, in fact, cut the budget for such projects.
Stahl feared the backlash of the White House the next day; instead phone calls of praise began to pour in from [the Reagan Administration] thanking her for the “positive” newscast and free advertising the night before. Stahl was befuddled. Her broadcast was obviously meant to question Reagan’s budget cuts. It was then she was told a stark reality. . . . “No one heard what you had to say in that piece,” [Michael Deaver] told her. “They just saw the pictures.”
I have no idea whether Stahl’s story is true or not, but it does point to a problem for McCain. His campaign ads have become all about Obama. And in the YouTube-only ads, even the usual (and I thought mandated) shtick at the end, where McCain says “My name is John McCain and I approved this hatchet job message” is missing. So to what degree is this actually influencing the campaign?
It depends on who you ask. According to a recent report in (the incredibly conservative and Unification Church-owned) The Washington Times, all these ads have given McCain a boost, with his YouTube viewership now surpassing Obama’s:
Mr. McCain has pumped out a series of brutal yet entertaining attack ads and Web videos mocking the press and Mr. Obama, and the combination of wit and insult has pushed his YouTube channel to the sixth most watched on the site this week. Mr. McCain has beat Mr. Obama’s channel for seven straight days and 11 of the past 14 days, in a signal he intends to compete for the YouTube vote.
Brutal? Absolutely. Entertaining? Maybe.
But effective? I don’t think so.
Let’s use a different metric instead of views: votes. Very few of McCain’s YouTube videos get more than three (out of five) stars — and most of the ones that do tend to be the positive, focusing on McCain’s biography rather than Obama’s shortcomings. Perhaps more telling, the most viewed clips on his site are among the least popular.
For example, “Celebrity” (the notorious Paris-Britney-Barack ad) is by far the most viewed ad on the site, receiving nearly 2 million hits. Yet it is also the lowest rated, receiving only two stars. The next most watched, “The One” (which mocks Obama as a false messiah), has 1.2 million hits and is the second lowest-rated clip. You have to go down to the 6th most-watched video to watch one that gets more than three stars. Not coincidentally, it’s the first one that’s positive — but does so by having a bunch of Democrats talk about what a great guy McCain is.
In contrast, most Obama videos get between four and five stars. You have to go to the 46th most watched video on Obama’s site to get one that receives less than four stars. (His top video, at 4.7 million hits, is his “Toward a More Perfect Union” speech in Philly — all 37 minutes of it.)
I know that these are not exactly scientific numbers, but it does mean something. To put it another way, the most talked about kid in high school is not necessarily the most popular.
I think what we’re seeing here is that Obama supporters are going to the McCain site to see what the fuss is about — and some of them are voting against the clips. In contrast, almost no McCain supporters appear to be going to the Obama site (or at least they’re not voting.)
So this is mostly a case of rubbernecking. People are slowing down to watch these ads, but they’re still driving by the McCain campaign to support Obama.
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