Got viral videos?
Republicans can already claim a 2014 victory in one of the fastest growing campaign battlegrounds: viral videos.
Fueled by partisan frustration with Obamacare and edgy online spots featuring everything from wedding dresses to pig castration, GOP ad makers have cooked up their own digital secret sauce for getting the word out about their slate of candidates.
Continue ReadingA POLITICO analysis of midterm Web ads found Republican-affiliated campaigns dominating the online space, with 16 of the 20 most-viewed spots on YouTube and Facebook made by or on behalf of GOP candidates. Americans for Prosperity, the Koch brothers-fueled political arm, is responsible for seven of the most viewed Internet ads this election cycle — all attacking Democrats over their support for the Affordable Care Act.
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By generating hundreds of thousands of clicks, the Republicans’ digital success represents a remarkable tech turnaround compared with 2012, when President Barack Obama’s campaign easily outpaced Mitt Romney and the rest of the GOP field in the production of the most popular Web content.
Campaign strategists chalk up the Republicans’ viral ascendancy to their insurgent mentality: more candidates and outside groups game to take chances online using sharply partisan rhetoric, memorable imagery and sarcastic humor that generates free media coverage about their ads and also prompts viewers to share links via social media and email.
“They’re storming the castle to try to get control of the full Congress and to tee it up to win the White House,” said Josh Silver, an anti-corruption campaign activist who has produced his own string of viral ads in 2014 featuring a fake Kentucky Senate candidate, Gil Fulbright. “When you’re the insurgent, you have more latitude than when you’re the incumbent.”
Democrats are still making online videos this cycle — Charlie Crist in Florida had a recent surge in Web traffic for a pair of videos slamming Gov. Rick Scott — though at a much slower rate than in past elections. Party operatives and some of the candidates say they are not obsessed with seeing their work catch fire with Web viewers. Instead, this year’s tech focus has centered on blitzing potential donors with incendiary fundraising emails and airing a more carefully targeted slate of digital ads that avoid the kind of attention-drawing edge that’s seen in many of the spots created by Republicans.
(POLITICO's 2014 race ratings)
“If someone clicks on a video, they’re not clicking on a donate button,” said a Democratic campaign operative.
Setting out specifically to make a viral video is never a good idea, digital experts say. Yes, campaigns can pay for clicks, which Americans for Prosperity admits doing for a spot challenging Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Gary Peters on Obamacare. The commercial has more than 835,000 views, making it among the most-watched political spots this cycle, according to the POLITICO analysis, which examined videos on YouTube and Facebook and was conducted with help from overseas-based media tracking firm Mediametric.
But spots that truly catch fire on their own are difficult to predict. Digital experts say there’s no single recipe for a viral video. The Web works in mysterious ways. And while making a popular video usually requires something with a personal and often humorous message, it also requires luck.
“They come in with these high expectations that we’re never ever going to meet. Because people who want to go viral are the ones who don’t want to do anything else,” Wesley Donehue, head of the GOP consulting firm Push Digital, said during a conference earlier this summer in San Francisco hosted by Campaigns & Elections magazine. “It’s just like, ‘Can you make this video of me and my dog go viral?’ I’m like, ‘No, f—- no, I can’t make your dog go viral. Unless your dog is doing something really friggin’ crazy.’”
Plenty of ideas are just met with a thud.
Consider a pair of Club for Growth videos first aired in May attacking Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Mark Begich of Alaska over Obamacare. The nearly identical spots feature a parrot squawking at Obama as he makes promises about health care and ends with the bird defecating on a paper edition of The New York Times. While the ads got some media buzz, they didn’t quite take off online.
“It was really gross. When I watched it, I was like I don’t want to see that again. With a viral video, you actually want to watch it again. You don’t want to watch this fake bird poop that was mixed together with mayo and relish,” Amanda Bloom, a GOP consultant at BASK Digital Media, the firm that worked on the parrot ads.
Even the ads that do go viral come with no guarantee of success where it matters most on Election Day.
Montana Republican Matt Rosendale finished third in the June primary for an open House seat despite making one of the most widely viewed videos this election cycle: the spot of him shooting a rifle at a drone has more than 580,000 YouTube hits. J.D. Winteregg came in 45 points behind House Speaker John Boehner in the Ohio GOP primary even though the tea party candidate gained national attention and more than 400,000 YouTube hits for a video spoofing a Cialis commercial and warning against “electile dysfunction.”...
