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Public Relations Summary Fall 2008 Prepared by LaunchSquad

611 Mission Street, 7th Floor  San Francisco, CA 94105 415‐625‐8555  nnn@launchsquad.com

Executive Summary Since Barely Political's debut in June of 2007, LaunchSquad has worked hand in hand with the network's creative team to develop a video content strategy with the goal of attracting viewers and creating mainstream media buzz. From the get-go, LaunchSquad executed an aggressive consumer broadcast and print media outreach campaign, leveraging the active political climate for timely features and television spots. In October of 2008, LaunchSquad began to expand its relationship with NextNewNetworks to include strategy and outreach around the launch of its newest network, TMI Weekly. In November of 2008, LaunchSquad began working with NextNewNetworks on promoting its corporate story and developing a PR and messaging platform for use across all its networks.

Some of Barely Politicalʼs most prominent business and consumer coverage from Fall 2008 includes coverage in Fortune, Associated Press, USA Today, GQ, and The Wall Street Journal, broadcast coverage on dozens of local and national outlets including, "Good Morning America,” "The Today Show," CNN's “Situation Room,” "The Rachel Maddow Show," and “The OʼReilly Factor.”

LaunchSquad secured guest appearances for “Obama Girl” on “Geraldo at Large” and “Inside Edition."

In addition to executing media pushes for Barely Political, LaunchSquad helped launch TMI Weekly with a print feature in the Los Angeles Times. LaunchSquad also worked with Channel Frederator to promote its Election Day "NiteFite" YouTube takeover resulting in trade coverage in Media Week, Ad Week, Brand Week, and TV Week.

Since October 2008, NextNewNetworks corporate coverage included funding news in the opening spread of Fortune, as well as coverage on the Conde Nast Portfolio blog and in key trade news sources Television Week, Media Week, MediaPost, Brandweek, and WorldScreen News.

Threadbanger, Indy Mogul, and TMI Weekly have been featured in a wide range of major publications including the Associated Press, Popular Mechanics, Los Angeles Times, and AskMen.com, as well as on several popular blogs such as WebTVHub, Stylelist, Mashable, and ShinyShiny. LaunchSquad also secured CNN broadcast coverage for Channel Frederator's "Howl to the Chief."

The following document provides further details regarding NextNewNetworksʼ and Barely Politicalʼs public relations achievements and activities for Fall 2008, including a summary of coverage highlights and briefings secured.

NEW YORK (AP) _ Given the historic election we've all just experienced, it's hard to remember back to last week, let alone June 2007, when Barack Obama was a true underdog, polling way behind front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That's when a 32-year-old ad executive came up with an idea for a new Web video. Seeking something catchy to launch a new site, barelypolitical.com, he sensed that Obama, though well behind Clinton, had a huge following online because of his youthful appeal.

And so Ben Relles made the "Obama Girl" video, a racy paean to the candidate that's been seen millions of times on YouTube and other sites, spawned sequels, was picked up by mainstream media across the globe, and made bikini-clad model Amber Lee Ettinger a unique kind of political Web celebrity.

Pop culture in political campaigns is nothing new. But it's easy to forget that in 2004, when George W. Bush ran against John Kerry, there was no YouTube. If it seems like pop culture took a more prominent role in this election than ever before, it's largely due to technology that now makes pop culture such a participatory experience.

"People aren't just receiving pop culture from mass media anymore," says Montana Miller, professor at Bowling Green State University. "They're agents themselves, producing mashups, videos, making T-shirts. It's difficult to tell anymore what's amateur and what's not."

So everyone was producing pop culture this election season: The media, the candidates themselves, their supporters, or just people with a computer and a little time. Here's a chronological look at some of the top pop culture moments of Election 2008: ___ THE POWER OF O: In May 2007, Oprah Winfrey endorses Barack Obama on "Larry King Live," the first time the talk show queen has ever endorsed a political candidate. "What he stands for, what he has proven that he can stand for ... was worth me going out on a limb," she says.

Oprah's endorsement — still viewable on YouTube, of course — leads to a media discussion of how valuable such endorsements are. Most experts say not so much. But this is Oprah, and two economists later claim they've calculated that Winfrey's endorsement gave Obama about a million votes.

I GOTTA CRUSH: The above-mentioned "Obama Girl" video comes out the next month, with catchy lyrics along the lines of: "You're into border security, let's break this border between you and me!" Obama himself indicates he's not pleased. In any case, Relles estimates the video has been seen about 20 million times — 10 million on YouTube alone.

"The Web, especially online video, has given us a way to participate in this election," says Relles.

"Something that's created in an afternoon can be seen millions of times across the globe."

YES WE CAN: This one, Obama likes. In February, rapper, songwriter and producer will.i.am brings together a star-studded cast for his own viral video, the song "Yes We Can," based on the candidate's acclaimed speech after a second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary.

"It was as if he was talking to me," will.i.am says of that speech. The song features Obama's voice set to will.i.am's music and melody, plus vocalizations from Scarlet Johansson, John Legend, Kate Walsh, Herbie Hancock and others.

DIRT OFF YOUR SHOULDER: When was the last time you saw a presidential candidate proudly displaying his hip-hop knowledge? In April, at a rally in Raleigh, N.C., Obama is bemoaning political attacks from the Clinton camp.

"You just gotta kinda let it ..." the candidate says. And then he brushes the dirt off his shoulders.

It's a Jay-Z move, and Obama does it once, twice, three times, then brushes some off his leg, too. "That's what you gotta do," he tells the crowd. They roar back their approval. Immediately, there are mashups galore.

AN ARTFUL ENDORSEMENT: Los Angeles street artist Shepard Fairey creates in May what will become a wildly popular poster of Obama. Getting permission from the campaign first, he chooses a photo of the candidate gazing ahead, then uses colors of red, white and blue to create his image, underlined by the word, "HOPE." The posters sell like hotcakes.

THE ANTI-CELEBRITY MOVEMENT: "He's the biggest celebrity in the world. But is he ready to lead?" The words of John McCain's anti-Obama campaign ad are provocative, but the images really get the attention: Obama speaking to an adoring crowd in Berlin, interspersed with footage of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Does it work? Some pop culture analysts and humorists say the attack ad is silly and even passe, given that Spears and Hilton are hardly in the news anymore. But it certainly gets attention. Then, to surprise us all, Hilton pipes up with her own video riposte, actually wittier than the original.

SARAH/TINA/PALIN/FEY: It's Sarah Palin time! Some have called this THE pop culture moment of the campaign — certainly it's one of them. In September, Tina Fey, who looks uncannily like the Alaska governor, launches her much admired impersonation on "Saturday Night Live," getting the look and the accent — and the wink — just right. The first sketch, with Amy Poehler as Clinton, comes after Palin's shaky TV interview with Charles Gibson on ABC, and includes the iconic line, "I can see Russia from my house!"

KATIE'S COMEBACK: Katie Couric scores a viral video hit, and unfortunately for Palin, it's not a song but an actual news interview with the VP candidate — and one in which she stumbles badly, wrapping herself in tongue-twisters over foreign policy, unable to give details on running mate McCain's record, and in one segment, unable (or unwilling) to tell Couric what newspapers she

reads. For the anchor, though, it's a major coup, after two years of low ratings and negative stories about her tenure at CBS. SNL SUMMIT: A great season for SNL gets even better — the show earns its best ratings in 14 years when Palin herself appears on the show, appearing on the same screen as Fey for only a split second, but then bopping along during a "Weekend Update" segment as Poehler raps: "All the mavericks in the house, put your hands up!" '' McCAIN HUMOR: Not to be upstaged by his running mate (well, not this time), John McCain makes his own appearance on SNL, just two days before the election. The GOP candidate shows he has a sense of humor, announcing he'll pursue a new campaign strategy: "The reverse maverick. That's where I'd do whatever anybody tells me." McCain is a hit; unfortunately for him, the ratings don't translate directly to votes.

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Since Sarah Palin was named the Republican party’s vicepresidential candidate, comic videos about the Alaskan governor have sprouted across the Web. Now, an advertiser is joining the fray, sponsoring a spoof video about Palin’s life to promote Oliver Stone’s “W,” a new Lionsgate’s biopic about George W. Bush.

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The parody video clip, called “The Real Sarah Palin,” features “Obama Girl” in the role of Palin. It has generated more than 1.5 million views on YouTube since it was posted Tuesday.

“On Oct.17, one film will change the way you view George Bush. Josh Brolin is W. A film by Oliver Stone. On the same day, another film will take what you know about Sarah Palin…and completely blow your mind,” a narrator says at the introduction of the video. The video goes on to poke fun at the life of Palin, with scenes of her expressing anguish at being named the first runner-up in a beauty pageant and issuing contradicting statements about the Bridge to Nowhere.

The video was created by political-satire site BarelyPolitical.com, a unit of New York-based Web-TV company Next New Networks. Barely Political also produced the popular viral Web video “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama.”

The site was acquired by Next New Networks in 2007. Next New Networks has worked with Lionsgate in the past to promote such films as the Jet Li movie “War.” Lionsgate declined to comment on the new spoof video. Barely Political plans to release another video with deleted scenes and outtakes, likely to coincide with tonight’s vice-presidential debate.!

 

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Barack Obama had a brigade of Web denizens backing his election, from comedy star Obama Girl to throngs of young voters, and now they are clamoring for the Internet to play a big role in his presidency.

Early in his transition to the White House, the Democratic president-elect seems to be complying, and his actions could signal a change in the way U.S. citizens expect their political leaders to communicate with them in the future, experts said.

Obama, who has become the first president-elect with a MySpace page, has bolstered his online presence since last week's election by creating a site called Change.gov.

The site has news updates on the transition and is also the place to apply for jobs in the new administration, which takes over from President George W. Bush on Jan. 20.

With his high-profile online presence, Obama faces the higher expectations of supporters who, during the election campaign, became accustomed to regular updates in video and text form and who turned social networking Web sites YouTube, MySpace and Facebook into cyberhangouts for pro-Obama activism.

"It doesn't stop here, they are going to expect government in general to be operating under different rules now," said Michael Wood, vice president of TRU, a research company that tracks how young people use the Internet.

"They're going to want a window into the world of what's going on here, and that's all very different from anything that we've ever seen before," Wood said.

Republican candidate John McCain also used the Web to build support, but Obama often outshined him online, experts said.

Obama's Facebook page, boasting a list of his favorite movies and updates on campaign news, became the most popular page on the site, with more than 2.5 million online supporters.

The Obama campaign posted 1,800 videos on the video sharing site YouTube, compared to fewer than 350 for McCain.

OBAMA GIRL 2.0?

Obama Girl, the alias of model Amber Lee Ettinger, also became a YouTube star by appearing in comedy videos about Obama. The videos were seen more than 70 million times.

With all she has done to lip-sync the praises of Obama, Ettinger, 26, said she would like an invitation to his inauguration. And she said more online videos are forthcoming from Obama Girl and her comedy group, Barely Political.

"I definitely think we have four more years of good material to use, whatever's going on with him I'm sure we can come up with our own comedic spin to it," she said.

The team at Barely Political made a name for itself during the campaign by making quick and cheap videos for YouTube and promoting them at MySpace. Similarly, Obama used his own MySpace page to win supporters during the campaign.

"We expect and hope that he continues to use his page in the White House and create a continuous dialogue with these millions of Americans that are involved on MySpace," said Lee Brenner, political director at MySpace.

An Obama representative declined to comment on the president-elect's online strategy.

But Obama has pledged to involve Americans in his decision-making, by giving them five days to comment online on any non-emergency legislation before he signs it. And he has said he plans to appoint a chief technology officer.

The Obama administration might get some Web inspiration from Britain, where since 2004 the government has run a site called Directgov, www.direct.gov.uk, that gives users a one-stop-shop for information on public services.

Brenner said that with the Internet, Obama has an opportunity to reach out to Americans in new ways.

"In the past they did a weekly radio address. Why not do a weekly blog that goes out to millions and millions of people online?" he said.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Mary Milliken and Frances Kerry)

Make Your Own Halloween Fairy or Mummy Costume WHICH/CRAFT: Tips for making your own fairy costume from ThreadBanger.com

By The Associated Press October 9, 2008 (AP) Looking for a Halloween costume that's cheap and easy?

There's no need to shell out big bucks when you can work wonders with a white sheet or some hangers.

Doing it yourself isn't just trendy, it's economical and eco-friendly. The Craft and Hobby Association estimates that more than half of U.S. households now engage in some kind of crafting.

These costumes from ThreadBanger.com, a network for people who make their own fashion, make great use of items you may already have around the house.

FAIRY WINGS Materials: — four identical wire hangers — 2 pairs of old tights — 2 1/2" ribbon or a bunch of smaller ones — thick string — twine — water-based glue — glitter — an old paint brush — a pair of pliers — scissors 1. Firmly hold a hanger in one hand and use the other to twist the top apart. Please be careful when working with hangers.

Make sure to hold them firmly when bending unless you want to be a Cyclops for Halloween.

2. Make the hanger as straight as possible. it helps to use a thick pair of pliers. There will be a little bit of curl at the ends where you took the hanger apart but on one end the curl is up higher. Try to work the curl out of the one that is higher but it doesn't have to be perfect. The other end doesn't matter cause it won't be in the wing body.

3. Now take an end in each hand, and slightly bend the hanger so that the ends cross at the bottom — about 2.5 inches of overlap.

4. Bend the ends in so the wire catches on itself.

5. Do this to the rest of the hangers.

6. Take two segments and shape them for the top half.

7. Then take the other two segments and shape them for the bottom half. Again, the pliers are useful at this point. You can shape them any way you want.

8. Take whatever thick string you are using and tie a reinforcement knot at the joint of each segment. Bring the string through the middle of the wing segment so the string is equal on both sides and tie a knot down the middle of where the overlapping wire "V's."

9. Now take one top piece and one bottom piece and place them together. One of the overlapping wires on the bottom segment should touch the outer part of the top segment, and vice versa.

10. Use your twine to tie them together. Take your time with this and make sure they are together very securely. Wrap the twine diagonally, up around where the overlapping wire meets the outer part of each wing. Tie a knot and cut remaining string.

11. Take a pair of your tights and pull one of the legs down over the bottom segment like you would if you were putting it on your foot. If there are holes in your tights use a strong craft glue to fix them. Just make sure whatever seam is created gets turned to the inside.

12. Pull the tights down so that they are fairly tight. Don't worry about losing your wing shape — you will fix them in a minute. Once you have the tights pulled down to where you think they are tight enough, cut the other part of the tights off around the leg. Remove the part of the tights you don't need.

Pull the foot part tight again over the bottom segment and tie a knot.

13. Repeat to the top segment with the other foot of the tights.

14. Put the remaining tights aside, they should be like Capri tights now.

15. Repeat all these steps to the other top and bottom segments.

16. Position the two halves together. Use your twine to tie them together. Take your time with this also. Go round and round with the twine north, south, east, and west...go all directions with the twine. Pull it really tight. Be sure to cover up the overlapping wire. Use your pliers if you need to push the wire down in position.

17. Take time to shape your wings and decide which side will show and which will be against your back.

18. Take out your ribbon and cut two long equal strands.

19. With ribbon one, pull it through the midsection of the wings so the ribbon the same length on both sides. Tie a knot on the side of the wings that will be touching your back.

20. Repeat with ribbon two.

21. Slightly burn the edges of the ribbon so they don't fray. Make sure the end of the ribbon is hard and dry before you set it down. (It only takes a few seconds.)

22. Next use your water-based glue and paintbrush to paint designs on your wings. Only do little bits at a time and add glitter as you go so the glue doesn't dry before you get to the glitter. Glittering the edge of the wings helps disguise the wire and reinforces the edges. You can also glue and glitter and spots on the tights that may have imperfections in them.

23. If glitter's not your thing, there are so many other was to embellish: Carefully sew in little bells, strands of ribbon, feathers or crystals.

MUMMY COSTUME

By Rob Czar, ThreadBanger.com Materials: — White sheets (2) — White pants/jeans — White long sleeve shirt (preferably turtleneck) — Box of 100 tea bags — Some 3-5 gallon buckets — Seam ripper — Sewing machine — Scissors 1. Get that dirty, off-white, century-old mummy look by dyeing all the material in black tea. Put the tea, hot water, and materials into the big buckets and steep for about 2-6 hours. Take them out and dry them.

2. Lay out your sheet, grab your scissors, and cut 2- to 3-inch slits down the side of your sheet.

3. Tear the strips up the length of the sheet. They'll all rip pretty evenly and have a cool, frayed edge. You now have your mummy bandages.

4. Start wrapping the strips around your shirt and get to sewing the strips around your shirt. The sloppier and less conformed you sew these on, the better. Overlap your strips, leave some pieces longer than others, go crazy!

5. Once you get to the chest area, cut the inseams of each of the sleeves.

6. Lay them down flat, cut some pieces of material out to cover the sleeves, and sew them on.

7. After you finish the sleeves, sew on strips to the remaining blank parts of the shirt, turn it inside-out, and sew your sleeves back up.

8. Now, take your pants and rip open the inseam all the way to the crotch.

9. Lay your pants flat, and cut strips out to cover them.

10. Start from the bottom and sew the strips up both legs. You can stop when you get to the crotch because your shirt will cover that.

11. Turn your pants inside out and sew back up your legs.

12. Now all you need to do is wrap some extra material around your face and throw on some baby powder to get that dusty, ancient mummy effect.

GENERATION O is that college kid at the White House gate early Wednesday morning, lifting his shirt to reveal “Obama� painted in red on his chest.

Or that stylized Obama T-shirt that makes irony look old, the “Obama Girl” on YouTube, or the thousands of notes on Barack Obama’s Facebook page: “U are the best!!!” “yeah, buddy.”

And, of course, Generation O is the president-elect himself.

Only a Fugees-loving, pick-up-basketball-playing, biracial president-elect would send supporters an e-mail message on election night that said: “I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first.”

He signed it simply “Barack.” After all, they were close. He and his biggest fans, the generation of young adults who voted for him in record numbers, together had slogged through 21 months of campaigning. And in his moment of victory, Barack Obama shared the glow of success.

“All of this happened because of you,” the e-mail message said. “We just made history.”

With that simple “we” in millions of in-boxes, the post-baby-boomer era seems to have begun. The endless “us versus them” battles of the ’60s, over Vietnam, abortion, race and gender, at least for a moment last week, seemed as out-of-touch as a rotary phone.

Of course, that was Mr. Obama’s goal. In his book, “The Audacity of Hope,” he was explicit in his desire to move beyond “the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.”

Mr. Obama’s victory was greatly helped by his young allies. More 18- to 29-year-olds went to the polls this year than in any election since 1972 — between 21.6 million and 23.9 million, up from about 19.4 million in 2004, according to preliminary estimates from the Center for Information and Research of Civic Learning and Engagement. And 66 percent voted for Mr. Obama, according to exit polls by Edison/Mitofsky.

These young voters and those slightly older, who together may forever be known as Generation O, were the ground troops of the campaign. They opened hundreds of Obama offices in remote areas, registered voters and persuaded older relatives to take a chance on the man with the middle name Hussein.

They saw in Mr. Obama, 47, who was born at the tail end of the baby boom era, the values that sociologists and cultural critics ascribe to them.

Government under Mr. Obama, they believe, would value personal disclosure and transparency in the mode of social-networking sites. Teamwork would be in fashion, along with a strict meritocracy.

The pinnacle and promise of that approach can be seen in Tuesday’s stunning victory.

But as January’s presidential realities inevitably chip away at November’s idealism, a few valleys may be around the corner. With two wars and a financial crisis to face, this generation may soon discover the limits of their consensus-oriented focus and unyielding faith in networks and communication.

In many ways 2008 looks a lot like 1960, said Robert Dallek, the presidential historian. In both cases, a young Democrat won on a promise of youthful change. Voters, Mr. Dallek said, “want something fresh.”

President Kennedy responded not just with soaring rhetoric and new programs like the Peace Corps. He also transformed communication between the president and the people. At the White House, he projected an image of openness and transparency. He let photographers take pictures of the Kennedy children. He held televised news conferences for the first time.

Theodore Sorensen, the Kennedy speechwriter, said the youthfulness of Camelot brought a new casualness and intimacy to Washington. He recalled a softball game with reporters in the early ’60s, in which the younger staff members invited the Council of Economic Advisers to play. Three older economists showed up and tried to fit in.

“They took off their jackets and ties,” Mr. Sorensen said. “They didn’t go home to change into blue jeans, but they were swinging bats.”

Mr. Obama has created his own jacketless atmosphere, but on a grander scale, with a steady stream of e-mail messages and Facebook postings. Obama supporters know, of course, that the text messages from “Barack” are the work of a campaign aide, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not effective.

Ellen Steiner, 23, a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Denver, said the direct style “makes me feel like I really was part of something great.”

Reid Johnson, 31, a volunteer at the Obama office in Wilson, N.C., agreed. “You get the feeling that you’re becoming friends with him in that casual way,” he said. “I think everyone takes ownership of it because you feel like you know who he is.”

It would be hard to overestimate how much communication and an informal tone means to this generation. They have poured out their foibles and triumphs on blogs, MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Older Americans see this as dangerous exhibitionism, but young adults believe the conversation leads to open-mindedness and consensus.

“This generation has been knocked for putting all of their personal stuff on full display,” said Mik Moore, 34, a founder of the Great Schlep, which used a Sarah Silverman online video to help young Jews win their grandparents’ support for Senator Obama. “But there

is an upside, too, which is a willingness to communicate with large numbers of people in your network about what’s important to you.”

Ideology doesn’t matter. Young evangelicals can be just as creative in their use of the Web as liberal bloggers. The point is that communication technology is the tool that makes all things possible, from hook-ups and pop songs to protests or the president of their choice, said Neil Howe, a sociologist who studies young adults.

And the enthusiasm has a way of spreading. Wearing a pink Chanel suit and gold heels, Holly Hennessy, a wealthy older Republican woman in Palm Beach, Fla., came out of the polls on Tuesday with goose bumps after deciding at the last second to vote for Mr. Obama.

Matthew Weiner, the creator of “Mad Men,” the AMC television series set in the early ’60s, predicted that there would be more to come. “A year from now you’re going to see that 65 to 70 percent of the people are going to claim they voted for Obama even if they didn’t,” he said. “That’s what happened with Kennedy. People will be swept up in it.”

And yet, such a sweeping success could also breed trouble. “The risk is they vote for the first time, and then there’s this incredible long-shot win — ‘Gee this is easy,’ ” said Kurt Andersen, a founder of Spy and former editor of New York Magazine. There is also “a risk of this generation conflating our iPhones with the substantive policy progress that the iPhones and laptops enable.”

Inevitably, he said, “growing up is all about disappointment and things not going well — so that is a natural next step.”

The pain of dashed hopes, if it comes, could be eased by this generation’s news media diet, which has made them fantastically informed and skeptical. Or it could be worsened by the psychology of how they were raised and came of age.

Ronald Alsop, author of “The Trophy Kids Grow Up: How the Millennial Generation is Shaking Up the Workplace,” said that because today’s young people have been trained to trust teams and systems — they love checklists — they often struggle when things do not go according to plan.

Compounding the problem, they have also been told by everyone from Mom to Barney the Dinosaur that they are destined for greatness. They have seen 25-year-olds become millionaires overnight with companies like Google, and after helping Mr. Obama win, the question is whether they will settle for anything less than a central role.

“They are used to getting a lot of awards and coddling from their parents, coaches and teachers,” Mr. Alsop said. “So if they’re put in some menial position, in a political or corporate environment, they are not going to be happy.”

On Mr. Obama’s Facebook page, there are already needy supporters like Viki, who wrote, “Please keep this dialogue going.”

“We are here for you,” she added, “and I am anxious to see, now that you have won, if you will keep your momentum with the people or let us go.”

Mr. Johnson, the volunteer in North Carolina, said that the new president needs to refresh his Internet presence to keep young constituents passionate. “There’s a lot of attention deficit with this generation,” he said. “You have to keep people engaged and active because it’s a highly technical society and there are lots of ways to distract our minds.”

As if on cue, President-elect Obama posted pictures of election night on flickr and introduced a new Web site, change.gov, on Thursday. “Share your story and your ideas,” it says, “and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.”

The site is in many ways an extension of the Obama campaign: casual, cool, interactive.

BUT if these are the traits of the young, might they alienate older Americans? Mr. Dallek said that for the new president to succeed, he must be seen as representative of not just the new, but also the traditional. “This is the challenge: How to sustain the energy of these young people and fulfill their expectations but not go so far to be seen by these older folks as overreaching.”

Many baby boomers are unlikely to be comfortable with this generation’s technological boosterism and ease with blurred identities and mixed ethnicities. Peter Wolson, a psychoanalyst and former dean of the Los Angeles of Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, said the crucible of the 1960s helped give baby boomers a deep suspicion of “the other.” Their world was bifurcated: pro-war versus antiwar; communist versus capitalist.

“There is a fear of intimacy and merging because of the sense that you’ll be taken over by the other,” Mr. Wolson said. “The fear is: ‘We’ll get the wool pulled over our eyes.

We’ll get taken advantage of.’ ” Seeing a new crop of young people texting their way to the Oval Office may never soothe those fearful boomers. For others, the generational transition may bring relief as the country seems to move past old, entrenched conflicts.

Chuck D., 48, the rapper and former lead of Public Enemy, said he has been amazed at the ease with which his 20-year-old daughter and her friends have interacted with politics this year. While he spent his youth shouting the message, “Fight the power,” his

daughter fell in love with a candidate, voted for the first time and got exactly what she wanted.

He couldn’t be more pleased. “She doesn’t bring the burden of history with her,” he said.

“She’s not pigeonholed. She’s free to make a healthy decision for the future.”

November 05, 2008 When Barack Obama was named President-Elect Tuesday night, thousands across America celebrated, including one of Obamaʼs first fans who stripped down and professed her love in the song “I Got a Crush on Obama." The Internet sensation received more than 10 million hits on YouTube.

Amber Ettinger, 26, known as “Obama Girl” screamed and cheered when Obamaʼs triumph over John McCain was announced on television – a victory she says she had a part in.

“When we started the video, he was polling at about 11 percent so I think we definitely got him a little bit of notoriety early on in the campaign and thatʼs exactly what he needed,” Amber told OK! at NYC hotspot, restaurant/lounge Haven on Nov. 4 where she hosted an election party. “I donʼt want to take any credit where creditʼs not due but I think it definitely helped.”

Thereʼs no doubt pop culture and comedy played a large roll in this yearʼs election, from Tina Feyʼs widely celebrated Sarah Palin

impersonation on Saturday Night Live to the Daily Show and Colbert Report on Comedy Central, to Obama Girlʼs music video where Ettinger danced seductively and lip synced to lyrics: “I cannot wait, 'til 2008/ Baby youʼre the best candidate/ Of the new oval office/ Youʼll get your head of state/ I canʼt leave you alone/ ʻCause Iʼve got a crush on Obama.”

“I just feel like I was a part of this election and that is incredible to me,” Amber said. “Itʼs like history in the making. I would never want to change it.”

With the elections over, one canʼt help but wonder: What will become of Obama Girl? The buxom brunette hasnʼt wasted any time capitalizing on her 15 minutes of fame and says sheʼs currently working on an album and starting a jewelry line with her mom. While sheʼs grateful for the doors that have been opened, she also wouldnʼt mind a little appreciation from the Obama camp.

“I would absolutely love a little, little thank you note from Barack Obama,” she said. "Thatʼs what Iʼm waiting for.”

Thank you note or not, Amber says she will continue celebrating and says she will always be an Obama Girl.

“Iʼve been with him since day one and this is exactly what I hoped for,” she revealed. “I donʼt think Iʼve ever been this excited in my life.”

By Laura Lane

Campaigns in a Web 2.0 World Shortly after 9 a.m. on Oct. 19, Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for president during the taping of “Meet the Press” on NBC. Within minutes, the video was on the Web. But the clip was not rushed onto YouTube; it was MSNBC.com, the network’s sister entity online, that showed the video hours before television viewers on the West Coast could watch the interview for themselves.

Old media, apparently, can learn new media tricks.

Not since 1960, when John F. Kennedy won in part because of the increasingly popular medium of television, has changing technology had such an impact on the political campaigns and the organizations covering them.

For many viewers, the 2008 election has become a kind of hybrid in which the dividing line between online and off, broadcast and cable, pop culture and civic culture, has been all but obliterated.

Many of the media outlets influencing the 2008 election simply were not around in 2004. YouTube did not exist, and Facebook barely reached beyond the Ivy League. There was no Huffington Post to encourage citizen reporters, so Mr. Obama’s comment about voters clinging to guns or religion may have passed unnoticed. These sites and countless others have redefined how many Americans get their political news.

When viewers settle in Tuesday night to watch the election returns, they will also check text messages for alerts, browse the Web for exit poll results and watch videos distributed by the campaigns. And many folks will let go of the mouse only to pick up the remote and sample an array of cable channels with election coverage — from Comedy Central to BBC America.

But as NBC’s decision to release the Powell clip early shows, the networks and their newspaper counterparts have not simply waited to be overtaken.

Instead, they have made specific efforts to engage audiences with interactive features, allowing their content to be used in unanticipated ways, and in many efforts, breaking out of the boundaries of the morning paper and the evening newscast.

“Old media outlets — the networks, the newspapers — learned a lot of lessons from the last cycle and didn’t allow others to own the online space this time,” said Rick Klein, the senior political reporter for ABC News.

Some of those lessons have been painful. Consider what has changed since the last presidential election. Four years ago, the network news operations were still the go-to source on election night, with a total audience of 38 million in prime time, compared with 17 million for the three cable news channels. On Tuesday, the ratings race will surely be tighter. On a historic night in August, when a black man became the first endorsed candidate of a major political party, the biggest audience of all belonged to CNN. “Some of this began back in 2006, but I think that cable news has transformed the way that elections are covered,” said David Bohrman, the Washington bureau chief for CNN. “I don’t think networks are irrelevant, but network news is less relevant than it has been.”

But those who suggest that 2008 is a postnetwork affair should consider that, it was Gov. Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, the anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” and her impersonation by Tina Fey on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” that defined her in the public imagination. When Senator Obama’s campaign sought to make one last push with a 30-minute infomercial, it bought time on three major networks, using money harvested on one platform — the Web — to buy time on another — broadcast television.

“We should be careful of these zero-sum games where the new media drives out the old,” said Andrew Heyward, a former president of CBS News who consults for the Monitor Group. “I think what we see is growing sophistication about making the channels work together effectively.”

The Republicans have made a habit of running against the media in elections past. This year, the mainstream media found itself at times running against both parties. Perhaps drawing on Mr. Obama’s background as a community organizer, his campaign decided early on to build a social network that would flank, and in some cases outflank, traditional news media.

With a Facebook group that had 2.3 million adherents and a huge push on YouTube — last week alone, the campaign uploaded 70 videos, many of them tailored to battleground states — the campaign used peer-to-peer communication to build a juggernaut that did not depend on the whims and choices of the media’s collective brain trust.

The campaign mined its online community not just for money, but for content. A video titled “Four Days in Denver” about the Obama campaign had the kind of access that journalists would kill for, including the candidate working over his acceptance speech with a staff member and showing the family backstage making ready for their moment in the spotlight.

It looked like a big-time network get, but it was produced by the campaign itself.

“We’re constantly experimenting with videos,” said Joe Rospars, Mr. Obama’s new-media director. In fact, the most popular videos on BarackObama.com weren’t TV ads; they were biographical and Web-only spots.

Mr. McCain, in part because he appealed to a less digital demographic, made sparser use of the Web, but Republicans were not immune to the charms of new media. The Web never forgets, giving new life to old video, like those showing sometimes-inflammatory sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

“No one knows the impact of quasi-permanency on the Web yet, but it surely has changed the political world,” said Allan Louden, a professor who teaches a course on digital politics at Wake Forest University. “The role of gatekeepers and archivists have been dispersed to everyone with Internet access.”

And late last month, the McCain campaign solicited users to come up with their own Joe the Plumber videos and showed the results on its Web site.

“I think that this time around, campaigns got used to the fact that anything that they put out there could be pirated, remixed, mashed-up and recirculated,” said Henry Jenkins, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It is a much more rapid environment.”

Raw footage of political speeches — which no network except C-Span considers hot content — racked up huge numbers. With 5 million views since March, Mr. Obama’s 37-minute speech about race is the most popular video on his YouTube channel.

To compete, major media companies had to change how they produced their coverage. Before almost every big interview — like ABC’s interview with John Edwards about his extramarital affair — the networks released excerpts on their Web sites.

“SNL” videos proved to be particularly popular online; Ms. Fey’s impressions were viewed more than 50 million times. “The idea that something can be seen more online than on TV, and arguably have more influence that way, is a tipping point,” Mr. Heyward said.

Politically oriented video, much of it topical and much of the juicier bits lifted from network programming, is everywhere on the Web. YouTube videos mentioning either Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain have been viewed 2.3 billion times, according to the measurement firm TubeMogul. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in October found that 39 percent of registered voters had watched campaign videos online.

“What is striking here is not the dominance of any one medium, but the integration of various channels,” said Lee Rainie, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. By the time the conventions rolled around, some networks realized the game had changed. Ms. Couric christened her own YouTube channel and was turned loose in Web extras. But network news divisions are expensive operations based on a television business model. They can’t be run on the relatively small money that online advertising draws but they can’t compete for audiences if they ignore the Web. “At a time when almost anyone can check voter turnout in certain neighborhoods in Cuyahoga County, I don’t think everyone is going to sit there and wait to be spoon-fed the election results in the order Brian Williams thinks is appropriate,” said Joan Walsh, the editor of Salon, referring to a closely watched county in Ohio.

Given the profound change in the media landscape in just four years, in 2012, voters will be following the election through news sites that have not been invented on platforms that cannot be anticipated. “There will be a lot more of me in 2012,” said Mayhill Fowler, the blogger for The Huffington Post who publicized Senator Obama’s “bitter” remarks.

Perhaps the only thing that could be predicted with any reliability is that, viewers who now watch cable news on a set that looks like the desktop — running streams of data framing the main page — while streaming video on a nearby laptop will probably be watching just one screen that can do all of those things.

“There was a palpable hunger for information and data about this election that has nothing to do with media,” said Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “Nobody reports, you decide.”

3 Great DIY Halloween Costumes to Inspire Geeks Everywhere Not content to trek down to the mall for a pre-made costume, these three builders devised and constructed their own elaborate outfits. Some are quick and cheap, like a rotating cardboard Gatling gun, or laborious and intricately detailed, like a life-sized replica Iron Man costume. We tracked down the creators and asked them how they pulled it off. Halloween lovers, start your screwdrivers!

By Andrew Moseman

Published on: October 28, 2008

Gatling Gun Arm

One day not too long ago, Erik Beck was just another coffee shop employee who hated his job and built crazy stuff in his off hours. And then, before he knew it, he was an underground Internet hero. Beck is the man behind Backyard FX, a weekly video series that Beck posts on YouTube under the name IndyMogul. He's been building homemade creations for the show for more than a year now, including a simulation of the face melt effect from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ash's chain-saw arm from the Evil Dead films. Two of his personal favorites are a replica lightsaber hilt—his pride and joy—and Hellboy's oversized gun, the Good Samaritan, which Beck said was a true labor of love. But our favorite Beck creation is one from an episode broadcast earlier this month—a Gatling gun prosthesis.

Beck tells PM that he got the idea from the recent Japanese movie The Machine Girl, in which the main character, Ami, has a Gatling gun for an arm. But the gun only fired bullets

and didn't spin, Beck said, and spinning is half the fun of the Gatling gun. So he decided his version would rotate: "I thought come on, how hard would that be?" Harder than he thought. All Beck needed was $35 to buy (or scavenge) his supplies—cardboard tubes, a cordless screwdriver, a piece of foamcore, a film canister cap, L-brackets, plastic tubes, a plastic bucket, a couple pieces of wood and a skateboard wheel. The cordless drill provides the power, turning the skateboard wheel, which turns the barrel. Beck attached the film canister lid to the wheel, and then attached six 16-in. cardboard shipping tubes to the canister lid. With more plastic and cardboard he finished the shell around the barrel.

However, cardboard parts don't last. "It looked cool," Beck said, "but by the end of the shoot, it was broken." Beck repaired the defective part, an office chair wheel that he'd glued to the drill bit, with a whole lot of tape. You can watch the whole episode here.

Ideally, Beck said, he would've built his prop out of something more durable, like aluminum. But he builds all his projects in a day or two, and on a shoestring budget. Beck said that Backyard FX projects average about $40 dollars to make, and he didn't think he'd exceeded $100 on any of them. While that's frustrating, and he said he wishes he had more money and time to build, Backyard FX's budget constraints mean the show's viewers can reproduce his projects without going to the poor house. For Beck, despite all the hours spent cursing a project and wishing it was done, the love of building is what it's all about—that's why he's up at 3 a.m. using a Dremel tool to build a lightsaber.

‘Nite Fite’ Claims Key YouTube Real Estate October 7, 2008 12:01 AM

Next New Networks Web series “Nite Fite” took over the home page of YouTube Monday, Oct. 6. The show was featured in the upper-right slot of the home page, a spot usually reserved for advertiser videos, as part of a promotional commitment from the show’s sponsor Starburst.

This is an important “milestone” if you will in YouTube’s history because “Nite Fite” is not an ad, nor is it a branded series. It’s an independent show that has a sponsor integrated into each episode, Next New Networks pointed out on its own blog. The company is betting the YouTube home page placement can drive subscribers and audience for the show going forward.

Channel Frederator, the Next New Networks channel that carries “Nite Fite,” already counts more than 20,000 subscribers.

I’ll be curious to check back to see whether the sub count rises significantly in the next few days as a result of this promotion. For now, weigh in on whether you’d be apt to subscribe to the channel after watching this video.

Daniel Dale Staff Reporter Two days after the Republicans were thumped in the U.S. presidential and congressional elections, the founders of RebuildTheParty.com announced how they would rebuild the party.

Their platform suggested the recruitment of "inspiring candidates with clear messages to rally around." But it did not name any particular candidates or advocate any specific messages. Those trifling matters, evidently, could wait.

The group wrote, the party's "number one priority in the next four years" should be "winning the technology war." To rebuild, the Republicans did not need a "political saviour." They needed "five million new online activists" and a "more open technology ecosystem."

They needed geeks.

"We can't keep fighting a 21st century war," the group wrote, "with 20th century weapons."

On several of the most important fronts – messaging, voter outreach, fundraising – technological innovations changed this year's fight.

President-elect Barack Obama won the election, in part, by effectively deploying the tools of the modern campaign arsenal. None was more important than YouTube. The video website, which did not exist in 2004, both reinforced and subverted the dominance of the campaign sound bite.

The minor verbal goofs of the type every exhausted candidate makes – McCain saying "my fellow prisoners" instead of "my fellow Americans," Obama saying "my Muslim faith" instead of "my supposed Muslim faith" in addressing false rumours – were no longer merely noted at the bottom of news wire service stories and forgotten the next day.

Thanks to YouTube, the daily events of the campaign became something permanent.

For ill, sometimes, but also for good. It gave Americans a more complete understanding of the candidates. The most inconsequential blunders may have sometimes made the campaign more trivial – 400,000 people watched a seven-second YouTube clip of Obama sneezing during an interview. The ability to review speeches and moments from interviews sometimes made the campaign more substantial. Obama's poetic speech on race, chopped into bite-sized snippets on the nightly news, could be digested in all its 37-minute glory online. More than 7 million people watched at least part of it.

YouTube allowed Americans to challenge the rhetoric by giving them unfettered access to information that would, as recently as 2004, have been rationed by the mainstream media.

When the McCain campaign portrayed Obama's support for a tax plan that would "spread the wealth around" as a major gaffe, thousands watched the Democrat's entire two-minute exchange with "Joe the Plumber" – rather than merely the controversial three seconds on which McCain zeroed in – and came away impressed.

"People hear that 'Joe the Plumber' crack from McCain, but unlike in the past they can go see the tape," wrote The Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates. "That's what the McCain guys never get."

The "Obama Girl" video, viewed 11 million times, is more memorable than any Obama ad; Sarah Palin parodies are more memorable than official McCain campaign productions featuring his running mate. The people with the deep pockets no longer own the discourse.

But those people themselves used YouTube. Obama's campaign posted more than 1,800 videos on his personal "channel" on the site. Some were official campaign ads, many were low-budget productions featuring enthusiastic Obama supporters and helped emphasize Obama's appeal to non-elites.

Obama's social networking application had more than 1 million users by election day.

Once he had a literal connection to them, a cellphone number, supporters received messages imploring them to register to vote, to watch campaign events, to inform others of campaign events, and to go vote. The texts, studies show, are more effective than the infuriating automated "robocalls" on which McCain heavily relied.

Finally, there's the money. Using YouTube, social networking, Obama raised more than $600 million, a presidential campaign record.

Obama may well have won even if he had not used modern technology so effectively.

Running as a Republican in a poor economic environment after eight years of George W. Bush, the deck may have been stacked against McCain.

But the old soldier made a classic military mistake his instructors at the U.S. Naval Academy surely warned about: fighting the war you're in using the tactics of the last one.

Oct 28 2008 5:52PM EDT

If You Embed It, They Will Come Andrea Chalupa writes: As I said last week, online video may be recession proof. Today, a bunch of online video execs (Mike Hudack the CEO and Co-Founder of Blip.tv, Andrew Heyward former President of CBS News and now Senior Advisor of Marketspace LLC/Monitor Group, to Victoria M. Brown co-founder of Big Think) sat around a table at Rockefeller Center for Beet.TV's Online Video Summit and discussed ways to make sure that's true. The full three-hour conversation can be heard here. But if you don't want to listen to the whole thing, here are a few of the highlights: * Embed, and they will come. Fred McIntyre from AOL talked about embedding as a critical component to video discovery -- that the biggest problem in online video is simply finding it. Adam Berrey, senior VP at Brightcove, echoed this sentiment, adding that most people consume online video like it's a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Berrey advocates keeping audiences' eyeballs by providing context for a video; so, embed. * The dog and the skateboard, or that's industry speak for user-generated-content. For all of the industry buzzwords and attempts at understanding monetization today, the funnier moments came down to what makes good content. As Mike Hudack of Blip.tv pointed out, videos showing "how-to's" build dedicated, but small, audiences willing to sit through TV-length episodes. * And now, monetization. Despite a supposed clamoring of video inventory by advertisers, Next New Networks is taking a sponsorship approach to its thirteen online "TV networks" targeted at specific audiences. For ThreadBanger, a "network" for people who make their own clothes, signed just one sponsor, Janome Sewing Machines. Tim Shey, co-founder, claims his company makes a couple hundred thousand dollars a month with this approach.

In response to the point that “which is best” should have been “which is better” in the post about the two Palin parody vids, you’re right. I’ll say only that the error resulted when the third video option was cut (too coarse and obscene etc., lots of swear words) but the superlative in the opening question was not. However, rather than make the question right, I’ll just add another video option, bringing the total to three, and now licensing the question: Which is best?

One more Palin video for you all, in other words:

Taking Measure of Measurement Measurement is a blessing and a curse on the Internet. It's wonderful to have so many facts at our fingertips, but vexing when we don't know which ones are the most accurate.

The Internet is perhaps the most accountable ad medium there is. But the downside is there are often too many numbers to wade through - total spend estimate, return on investment, number of online views, unique visitors, ad growth and so on. Separating the wheat from the chaff can be tough. How does a media buyer, advertising executive or venture capitalist decide which reports to use? More specifically, how do they choose which projections to lean on for the online video ad market?

Because that's the segment that's causing the most confusion when it comes to numbers. We know that Web video is probably the fastest growing ad medium, but the estimates on the size of the market vary widely. Lehman Brothers said advertisers would spend $1.1 billion on online video ads this year (and look where that got them), Forrester Research pegs the year-end total at $989 million, while eMarketer predicts the dollars will come in at $505 million.

But that eMarketer figure is a recently revised estimate, down from an original prediction of $1.4 billion; it cites a change in methodology. David Hallerman, senior analyst, explains that eMarketer sliced its estimate by two-thirds after the Internet Advertising Bureau said this summer that

online video ads had pulled in only $324 million in 2007. The IAB measures "digital video commercials" - those that appear before, during or after a variety of content - but not brand integration. "We believe we are capturing the biggest part of a growing market," says David Doty, senior vice president for thought leadership and marketing at the IAB. That's also the issue with the eMarketer figure. Neither its initial nor its revised projection accounts for money flowing into brand integration, product placement and host mentions. Those ad formats drive a significant number of buys in the medium.

"The share of the money going to product placement is a bit harder to gauge," Hallerman says. He points out that most TV ad spending numbers don't take product placement into account, either. eMarketer measures pre-rolls and other ads that look like TV ads online. Hallerman says product placement should be counted, perhaps as a separate category. "The medium may be more measurable, but ad spending isn't necessarily," he adds.

The uncertainty surrounding market estimates touches nearly all parties with a stake in the Web video business, including media agencies that use macroeconomic figures when evangelizing the medium and venture capitalists who search out growing markets.

Omitting a robust and growing portion of video ad spending suggests the size of the Web video economy is being underestimated, described only in terms of the ad dollars flowing into high-profile Web shows such as nbc-backed "Gemini Division," EQAL-owned "LG15: The Resistance" and Revision3's "Diggnation." That's a problem, because they generate most of their ad revenue from product placement and host shout-outs, as do many other Web studios, including NextNewNetworks, ManiaTV and ForYourImagination.

"The vast majority of revenue we derive for our shows are from brand integration," says Greg Goodfried, one of the executive producers of "LonelyGirl15" and its spinoffs; he's inked deals with MSN, Disney, Paramount and Procter & Gamble.

Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey says his company's survey methods leave room for interpretation by agency respondents. To estimate the online video ad economy, Forrester asks advertisers if online video ad spending is trending up or down. That can be a complicated question to answer, because a large chunk of online video ad spending comes from multiplatform buys in the broadcast upfront.

"We have found it difficult to disentangle what should be the online video ad spend when a Nissan sponsors Heroes, for instance," he says. "There is a lot of room for error."

Still, McQuivey expects his original $989 million estimate to be close to the final tally at year's end. While YouTube has faced difficulties in

monetizing its ads, entities such as Hulu have grown faster than expected, balancing things out, he says.

Research, by its very nature, is imprecise. Bill Tancer, the global head of research for online audience measurement firm Hitwise and author of the book Click, urges everyone to be skeptical when evaluating studies.

"Open up the chart, look at the source, ask what the methodology is."

He adds, "Most research companies will ask agencies, advertisers and publishers, and all of them are incentivized to make those numbers look larger, because the larger they are, the more people will spend. That's the problem with any type of study that pegs ad dollars. It's fortune-telling."

The situation is further complicated. What is known about product placement deals is that Web TV networks such as Revision3 and ForYourImagination say they charge $60 to $80 on a cost-per-thousand basis for such buys.

So where does that leave advertisers and programmers who rely on market research? If estimates don't include product placement, are advertisers getting the full story?

Michael Hayes, executive vice president of interactive at Initiative North America, says he would like to see market estimates that include all formats, including brand integration. "We would love for it to be broken out by category," he says. Forrester's McQuivey says he's likely to break out spending by format next year. But eMarketer's Hallerman says he does not have plans to do so at the moment.

But the truth is Hayes and others say they aren't terribly troubled by the fluctuating estimates. That big picture is simply that online video ad spending is increasing this year, whether it's by 56 percent, according to eMarketer, or by more than 100 percent, per Forrester.

Besides, Web-content creators and distributors also say they don't rely on market estimates to sell their inventory to marketers. Instead, Revision3 says 100 percent of its viewers can recall at least one advertiser; NextNewNetworks talks up its 20 million monthly views; and online video health information network HealthiNation sells ads based on engagement with its content.

So does market research matter anymore? 

  Consumers seeking a sense of community, camaraderie and conversation have built platforms where they can talk about anything and everything. Portals dedicated to dog lovers, moms, artichoke or political aficionados, sports fanatics, gossip mongers and any other common and uncommon interest groups abound. Social networks are huge and scalable, and they facilitate emotional brand connections more than anything we've seen so far in digital media. Consumers have set up more than half a million custom social networks. Today, there are 100 million Facebook users and close to 1 million active Twitter users, according to company estimates. Marketers are racing to find unobtrusive ways to enter these conversations.

In September, a group of social-media junkies from across Publicis Groupe convened with leading social-media vendors to answer the most pressing question about consumer conversation: "How can our clients use social media to power the connection of people to each other and to brands, globally and at scale?" We determined that the solution is to create a common marketplace for social insights, experiences, ads and outcomes.

Advertising has historically been an exposure and intrusion practice -get in someone's face and talk about the attributes of a brand. That approach works less and less effectively all the time, and it is absolutely

fatal in the social arena. As in every successful marketing campaign, actionable human insights are critical to social media. Understanding the passions, expectations, needs and desires of the people you want to talk to -- or inspire to talk about you -- is vital. Marketers (and those of us who serve them) need to take a close look at what's going on in the consumer's world. We need to listen. That's no small task when you consider the vast number of conversations going on in the social Web, but the truth is we can get plenty of data about social networking from resources like Converseon, TruCast and BuzzMetrics to help us figure out what's happening in the consumer's intimate sphere. This data well augments the rich insights we have become expert at gleaning from other sources and studies.

Want to reach Millennials? Just observe how these 18- to 24-year-olds behave in social sites. Digitas did just that on behalf of Starburst and its new Gummi Burst candy. When Starburst launched its "Share Something Juicy" campaign, it offered Millennials an opportunity to express themselves through an animated Web series called Nite Fite and a Starburst-branded YouTube channel that hosted short "Starburst Moments" videos. By allowing consumers to express individuality and participate creatively in the campaign, Starburst joined and enhanced consumer conversation.

Still enjoying relative infancy, social media does not have a lot of built-in access points or mechanisms to achieve scalable audiences. This has to change. Perhaps the most beneficial thinking we can bring to social media is to push for platforms that help deliver the scale and access of other mass media while remaining sensitive to the unique qualities of social audiences.

Off-the-shelf social-media programs and platforms are a powerful starting point, although not a complete solution. There are a number of vendors and partners in the online space that are developing tools that make activation in the social space easier and more efficient. Leveraging widget and social-application platforms allows us to focus on the messages and the social experiences that bring them to life.

We also need to source social-media audiences at scale. Agencies and their clients can build platforms around brands, much like we did with Audience on Demand (AOD), a partnership between VivaKi and four major internet networks (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Platform A). We need to aggregate social-media inventory in much the same way, reaching keenly defined communities via influencers and with ads that resonate within the social context.

Finally, we need to more carefully align social and search, which feed each other. Social bookmarking, blogs, review sites and social-network

listings increasingly influence search results. Social media has opened up new avenues for pay-per-click ads and has created more opportunity for search to be a vital function for each site (e.g., Twitter search). We must capitalize on this interconnectivity to create more points of entry.

With the right combination of scalable social insights, experiences and ads, a social-media program can go far. However, it will fail to succeed until we put the proper measurement mechanisms in place.

Right now, the systems don't exist. Media planners can't pull comparisons of social media and TV, even though social media is quickly becoming a breeding ground for more consumer conversations and interactions. This is a priority for us and for others who want to find the best way to measure social-media engagement. But what is engagement?

It must be something more than page views or downloads in this context.

Perhaps the number of fans or the number of pass-alongs to friends?

User-submitted content, from photos or comments to reviews or full blog posts to well-produced videos, needs different weighting. We must decide, define and deliver.

We believe the solution lies in the intersection of emotion and performance. When we can capture and combine emotional outcomes and performance metrics, we will have a more complete understanding of how well a particular effort is working, and what we might do to make it work harder.

Social media is perhaps the most powerful communications platform of the future. Making it viable is more than a VivaKi priority: it is an industry imperative. An open source, collaborative effort is the most effective way forward. In other words, "friending" all partners.

David Kenny and Jack Klues are managing partners at VivaKi, Publicis Groupe's entity overseeing the digital and media assets of Digitas, Starcom MediaVest Group, ZenithOptimedia and Denuo.  

Barack Obama's influence shows in online book sales after '60 Minutes'

By Lauren Johnston Tuesday, November 18th 2008 Barack Obama's influence became apparent following his '60 Minutes' appearance.

Move over Oprah, it may be time for Obama's book club.

When it comes to pop culture, the president-elect's influence has been far-reaching - he has inspired clothing, artwork, the YouTube sensation "Obama Girl," and now he's even changing the way we read.

Online sales spiked Monday for a title on FDR's presidency after Obama made vague reference in a "60 Minutes" interview to a book he'd been reading to help prepare for life in the White House.

"There's a new book out about FDR's first 100 days and what you see in FDR that I hope my team can - emulate, is not always getting it right, but projecting a sense of confidence, and a willingness to try things," Obama told correspondent Steve Kroft in the Sunday night interview.

Obama did not mention a specific title in the CBS segment, but that didn't stop eager readers from pulling out the plastic to place their online orders.

Sales for Jonathan Alter's "The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope," rose dramatically on Amazon.com Monday, hitting a peak 810% increase and boosting its rank on the Web site's bestseller list from 1,538 to 169.

Sales tapered later in the day, but never dipped below a 564% increase.

The list is updated hourly based on sales data from the past 24 hours.

Obama staffers confirmed he had been reading both Alter's book, published in 2007 by Simon & Schuster, and "FDR" by Jean Edward Smith.

"Often times when celebrities or notable figures are seen with a book, mention a movie, pick out a CD, etc. we tend to see increased customer interest in those products," said Amazon.com spokeswoman Tammy Hovey.

Obama also told Kroft he had spent "a lot of time reading Lincoln."

Though it was not clear which books he was referring to, staffers revealed Obama had been reading up on that other president from Illinois in Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln."

Judging by the online bestseller lists on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, Borders.com, and the NYTimes.com, not only are people clamoring to read what Obama is reading, they also want to read what he's written, and what others are writing about him.

Obama's two books "The Audacity of Hope," and "Dreams from My Father," along with the Time and Life magazine books about him rank in the top 25 book on all three bookseller sites.

A word of warning though for commuters considering the FDR volumes for subway reading: At 423 and 880 pages (Alter and Smith, respectively), neither classifies as "light reading." 

Valleywag might not be dead, but it’s not in a valley anymore.

Forecasting major gloom and doom for online media industry, Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton made public Wednesday his decision to fold its tech gossip blog Valleywag into New York media blog Gawker.

The news set off a rumor mill throughout the tech world, as readers and industry insiders predicted that the blog is teetering on extinction. A highly read site in the San Francisco Bay Area since it was launched in 2006, Valleywag has become notorious for its particularly pithy, gossipy coverage of the industry. Valleywag.com attracts 415,000 monthly unique U.S. visitors, according to Web measurement firm Quantcast. Gawker.com draws 1.7 million.

Mr. Denton contends that the site is alive and well. “Valleywag.com lives on. The brand remains. The only real change is that the individual stories will be hosted under valleywag.gawker.com — a bit like news.com remains within cnet.com or Fortune is found within CNN.com,” Mr. Denton wrote in an email. “(Valleywag Managing Editor Owen Thomas’s) scathing coverage of Silicon Valley will continue — but now in front of an audience four times the size! Larry Page shouldn’t relax just yet.”

But Mr. Thomas will be the blog’s only employee. The other writer, Paul Boutin, is fired. (Mr. Boutin and Mr. Thomas have been best friends since 1996, when they met working at Wired magazine.)

The rumor of Valleywag’s demise was met with cheers across the tech industry, particularly among people who have been skewered in coverage in the blog. (There is a Facebook group called “Slammed by Valleywag” with 197 members. Mr. Boutin is a member.)

“I think they will be crushingly disappointed to find that I am not going anywhere,” Mr. Thomas says.

Adds Mr. Boutin: “If anything Owen is going to get meaner because of this. The people who think Valleywag is going away are going to be very very surprised, and they are going to be very very sorry. Owen is only going to get meaner now. I was the nice guy.”

In an ode to the way things were, we asked some what they will miss.

Here’s what they said: Mr. Boutin: “What will I miss most? The paycheck,” says Mr. Boutin. “But Nick Denton’s competitors already have said, ‘Hey let me know if you are looking for work.” (Mr. Boutin plans to freelance. He also writes book reviews for the Wall Street Journal a few times a year.)

Web entrepreneur Julia Allison: “Valleywag has singlehandedly linked me to just about every male tech entrepreneur in the United States — even, in one vaguely humorous example, a software company owner who most decidedly was not interested in my feminine wiles, as he’s been married — to a man — for the last decade. So obviously I’ll miss waking up and checking Valleywag to see who I’m sleeping with this week…I just typed ‘Julia Allison’ into the search bar and got back 194 posts. I think it’s safe to posit that, of those, 189 are unfortunate bastardizations of the truth and/or ethical journalism. I gave them 5 as a gesture of goodwill.” (One of her favorites.)

Kevin Rose, founder and chief architect at Digg, a social-networking site whose users vote on their favorite news stories: “I actually (believe it or not) don’t read Valleywag. I’ll only go there if someone sends me a link.”

Lance Tokuda, chief executive at RockYou, which builds several popular applications for social networking sites: “You can’t be famous in the Bay area unless you are on Valleywag.” His favorite post: The false rumor that MySpace was buying RockYou for $800 million.

Om Malik, founder of tech blog GigaOM: “I think Owen’s features are really good, and he is a great guy. I am glad he is going to be writing more on Gawker. Yes, less of him on Valleywag, but so what.”

Sarah Lacy, who reports on startups and venture capital in Silicon Valley for Business Week and Yahoo, even blogged about Valleywag’s demise.

“I’ve had a love-hate relationship with ValleyWag, but mostly love. No other blog has consistently, amusingly or absurdly written about me as ValleyWag. They’ve stepped over the line a few times, but mostly haven’t been mean-spirited, even when loads of other bloggers were.”

Readers, what do you think? Leave your own “Ode to Valleywag.”

- Emily Steel

 

Recently I presented the steps for hacking an Apple TV so that it could use boxee (yes, that's small-b-boxee), the open-source media center application that allows that Apple TV to stream content from such sources as Comedy Central, Hulu, BBC, Last.fm, SHOUTcast, Flickr, and PicasaWeb to an Apple TV or computer. But what of boxee itself and its implementation on the Mac? That's for today.

The big idea The giant minds behind boxee describe it as a social media center. Using boxee you can play unprotected videos and music and view images that are stored on your computer's hard drive or on devices on your local area network. Additionally, you can enjoy content from Internet sources such as Hulu, SHOUTcase, and Flickr. The "social" component is the friends you add (and who add you). Friends can see what they're watching and listening to, with the idea that if your buddy Marty had the good sense to watch the latest episode of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, maybe you should too. boxee is based on XBMC, an open-source media player with versions available for Mac, Linux, Windows, and Xbox.

Getting In order to use boxee, you need an invite. And you can get that invite in one of two ways. You can visit boxee and sign up for an invitation. As of today, that invitation will be slow in coming as there are loads of people who'd like access to boxee and the service is weeding through endless requests. The other way is to find someone who has a boxee account and ask them for an invitation. Currently, there's no limit to the number of people someone with an active account can invite.

Once you have that invitation you can download the boxee application.

Versions are available for the Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Navigating boxee is designed with TVs and their remotes in mind. Although the Mac boxee application works perfectly well with a mouse and keyboard, you can be forgiven if you instead use an Apple Remote if one came with your iMac or laptop, or use the keyboard's arrow, Return, and Escape keys to navigate around the interface. It lends itself to that kind of control.

The interface bears seven entries along the left side--Video, Music, Pictures, Profile, Downloads, Settings, and Exit. The local temperature and time are displayed in the bottom left corner.

When you select Video you'll see options for Movies, TV Shows, Internet, and Sources. Select Movies and you'll see movies you access locally-either on your hard drive or local network. TV shows, same idea. Select Internet and you have access to streaming content via CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, Hulu, Movie Trailers, RSS feeds you've added, MySpaceTV, Next New Networks,. On Networks, Public Torrents, Revision3, and YouTube.

Sources is where you add locations that you've stored media. For example, if your iTunes library is stored on an external drive, you'll want to add that source so that boxee can find it.

The Music entry works similarly. You can view local music by artist or album. Select Internet and you can get audio content via BBC, Jamendo, Last.fm, RSS feed, or SHOUTcast.

The Pictures entry can take you to local images as well as images stored on Flickr and Picasa.

Why it's cool iTunes is a terrific media player, but it's limited to certain types of media and it's unwilling to stream the majority of media on the Internet. boxee is far more accepting of different media types and is happy to incorporate any kind of Internet media it can lay its hands on. boxee and your TV go together like dill and pickle. This makes it a natural for an Apple TV. But it also makes adding a Mac mini to your home entertainment system even more tempting. If you've felt hampered

by Hulu's insistence that you watch its content on your computer screen, boxee mixed with a TV makes a lot or sense, regardless of how you do it.

The social networking component also makes a lot of sense. While viewing or listening to content you have the option to rate it with a simple "Love it!" or "Nah..." as well as recommend it to all or a selection of your friends. Presumably you trust your friends' taste as they trust yours, making this a great way to discover new media.

And, finally, it's good for viewers as well as content providers. Those networks frustrated that viewers zip through advertising with their DVR's controls may feel a little better that there's no way to do that with the short commercials embedded in a lot of Internet streaming content. And because these advertisements are so short, viewers aren't going to kick too much about having to sit through them, particularly when they have access to entire seasons of quality programming for free. 

Throughout history, high-profile political figures have attracted public curiosity, heated debate and worldwide attention. President-elect Barack Obama, the first black voted into presidential office, is no exception. And to up the ante from former administrations, the music industry has prepared a soundtrack.

Artists including rapper Ludacris and Black Eyed Peas member will.i.am were so inspired by Obama’s symbolic, political message, they released hip-hop ballads to inform the world.

“I came up with the idea to turn (Obama’s) speech into a song because that speech affected and touched my inner core like nothing in a very long time,” will.i.am said in a Huffington Post blog.

Will.i.am’s “Yes We Can,” which debuted online earlier this year and was performed live in Denver at the Democratic National Convention, depicts the singer’s hopeful sentiment toward new leadership.

The star-studded collaboration, produced in part by Jesse Dylan, features segments of Obama’s New Hampshire speech put to musical harmony.

Celebrities including Scarlett Johansson, Kate Walsh, John Legend and Nick Cannon show support and sing along in the background: “‘Yes we can’ to justice and equality. ‘Yes we can’ to opportunity and prosperity.

Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world.’”

“I just wanted to add a melody to those words,” will.i.am said in the post.

“I wanted the inspiration that was bubbling inside me to take over.”

He also created a follow-up music video, “It’s A New Day,” which was promptly released following Election Day. Both videos can be found on YouTube and dipdive.com.

“The world is ready for change because Obama is here,” Ludacris said in his poltically charged piece, “Obama is Here.”

However, the rapper stirred controversy with negative lyrics directed at Sen. John McCain and President George W. Bush.

“McCain don’t belong in any chair unless he’s paralyzed,” he said in the rap. “Yeah, I said it ’cause Bush is mentally handicapped.”

The Obama campaign did not embrace the song’s message.

“Ludacris is a talented individual, but he should be ashamed of these lyrics,” Obama’s spokesman Bill Burton told BBC news in a July interview.

Obama tunes aren’t limited to big names in the industry. YouTube has become a popular site for those lacking professional resources to express their political beliefs via music.

Videos such as “Crank Dat Barack Obama,” a spin-off from rapper Soulja Boy’s 2007 single, have generated numerous hits, as well as “Obama Obama,” a parody of rapper Lil Wayne’s “A Milli.”

“I got a crush on Obama” made “Obama Girl” Amber Lee Ettinger famous when “Saturday Night Live” alluded to her video.

“You’re into border security,” she sings. “Let’s break the border between you and me.”

Junior Josh Wold, frontman for local band Pessoa, said he thinks unsettling events in past years might be a contributing factor.

“Songwriters and musicians write a lot about things they’re unhappy with in their personal life or society, and how they’d like change them,” he said. “I can see how Obama would fit in with that, because he’s pretty damn inspiring. I don’t have trouble believing that he inspires music.”

  When the book is written on this election, it should not be titled The Making of a President but The Marketing of a President. Barack Obama's campaign is a case study in marketing excellence.

True, it was always going to be a Democratic year. An unpopular war, an incumbent Republican president with rock bottom approval ratings, and many Republican incumbents retiring from Congress as a result all meant that change was in the air. Add to that the economic meltdown that decimated millions of 401(k) retirement plans and undercut any Republican claim to be the better steward of the economy.

But, even so, for an inexperienced, single-term, African-American senator tagged with the most liberal voting record to defeat the heir apparent in his own party and then go on to hold off the much-vaunted Republican machine is a truly remarkable achievement. Much of it has to do with Obama's instinct for marketing.

First, Obama's personal charisma, his listening and public speaking skills, his consistently positive and unruffled demeanor, and his compelling biography attracted the attention and empathy of voters.

Second, Obama converted this empathy into tangible support. More citizens volunteered time and money to help the Obama campaign than any previous presidential candidate. Indeed, he attracted more donors than the entire Democratic or Republican party nationwide. Almost half of Obama's unprecedented $639 million in funds raised from individuals came from small donors giving $300 or less.

Third, his fundraising prowess was aided by his appreciation and use of all communications media, notably the Internet, to engage voters. Obama picked up where Howard Dean left off. He leveraged his website, the blogosphere, and even user-generated content (remember Obama Girl) and video games to engage not just donors and volunteers but all citizens. From the imaginative campaign logo to the thirty-minute infomercial, Obama's communications were professional without being slick, attention-getting without being in-your-face.

Fourth, Obama reached out to all citizens. He targeted his message beyond previous or likely voters. He built a coalition that energized young, first-time voters and registered thousands of previous nonvoters. His organization encouraged early voting by Democrats to build well-publicized poll leads and to reduce the chances of supporters being discouraged from voting by long lines at polling places on election day.

This policy of inclusion meant that voting records were set in the general election and the primaries.

Fifth, his advertising messages and his tone and demeanor throughout the campaign consistently communicated his upbeat themes of hope and "change you can believe in." The emotional appeal was buttressed with solid and specific policy details. The ability to combine emotional with functional benefits and the discipline to be consistent in positioning and message delivery are core to all successful branding campaigns. Ads that dealt with specific policy issues, even ads criticizing McCain, all continued to communicate the core themes.

Sixth, he anticipated and outsmarted the competition. Throughout, he showed respect for Clinton and then McCain, even as he successfully tagged a McCain administration as Bush's third term. But he and his advisers managed the political chess board brilliantly. Early on, he anticipated and defused negative criticisms by admitting to past indiscretions in his autobiography. His campaign rebutted the criticisms in a hostile biography point by point before they gained traction.

Negative advertising by his opponents was countered quickly, not only in ads but on the Internet as well.

Seventh, he fought the ground war as brilliantly as the air war. Building on Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, he built his primary delegate count by investing time in Democratic caucuses in red states; the organizations he built for the primaries in these states set him up to win several of them in the general. In the closing weeks, he put McCain on defense in multiple red states, making it tough for the Republican to focus his efforts. Having relied on public funding, McCain ended up having to make some tough trade-offs regarding where to go and where to spend his money. Obama did not.

Finally, Obama chose an excellent marketing and campaign team, and managed them well. From start to finish, there was no public dissension.

He chose a non-controversial, experienced Senator as his running mate who complemented his lack of foreign policy skills. McCain only assembled a smooth-running campaign team late in the day. And the maverick made a surprise choice of an unknown running mate that, in the final analysis, undercut his ability to tag Obama as inexperienced, and called McCain's judgment into question.

Like any great brand, Obama has built up a bond of trust with the American people. His election has also given the United States the opportunity to reestablish its moral leadership around the world. But like any brand, he has to deliver now on his promises, both actual and perceived. In the current economy, that will not be easy. 

  Yesterday, I hosted and moderated the inaugural Broadband Video Leadership Breakfast, in association with the CTAM New England and New York chapters, here in Boston (a few pics are here). We taped the session and I'll post the link when the video is available. Here are a few of key takeaways.

My opening question to frame the discussion centered on broadband's eventual impact on the cable business model: does it ultimately upend the traditional affiliate fee-driven approach by enabling a raft of "overthe-top" competitors (e.g. Hulu, Netflix, Apple, YouTube, etc.) OR does it complement the model by creating new value and choice? As I said in my initial remarks, I believe that how this question is ultimately resolved will be the key determinant of success for many of the companies involved in today's broadband ecosystem and video industry.

I posed the question first to Peter Stern, who's in the middle of the action as Chief Strategy Officer of Time Warner Cable, the second largest cable company in the U.S. I thought his answer was intriguing: he said that it is cable networks themselves who will determine the sustainability of the model, depending on whether they choose to put their full-length programs online for free or not.

Later in the session, he put a finer point on his argument, saying that "a move to online distribution by cable networks would directly undermine the affiliate fees that are critical to creating great content" and that finding ways to offer these programs only to paying broadband Internet access subscribers was a far better model for today's cable networks and operators to pursue (for more see Todd Spangler's coverage at Multichannel News).

Peter's point echoes my recent "Cord-Cutters" post: to the extent that cable networks - which now attract over 50% of prime-time viewership, and derive a third or more of their total revenues from affiliate fees withhold their most popular programs from online distribution, they

provide a powerful firewall against cord-cutting. Speaking for myself for example, the prospect of missing AMC's "Mad Men" (not available online anywhere, at least not yet...) would be a powerful disincentive for me to yank out my Comcast boxes.

These thoughts were amplified by the other panelists, Deanna Brown, President of SN Digital, David Eun, VP of Content Partnerships for Google/YouTube, Roy Price, Director of Digital Video for Amazon and Fred Seibert, Creative Director and Co-founder of Next New Networks, who held fast to a highly consistent message that broadband should be thought of as expanding the pie, thereby creating a new medium for new kinds of video content. David, in particular cited the massive amount of user-uploaded and consumed video at YouTube (amazingly, about 13 hours of video uploaded every minute of every day) as strong evidence of the community and context that broadband fosters.

Still, our audience Q&A segment revealed some very basic cracks in the panelists' assertions that the transition to the broadband era can be orderly and managed (not to mention that afterwards, I was privately barraged by skeptical attendees). First and foremost these individuals argued the idea that the cable industry can maintain the value of its subscription service by using the control-oriented approach typified by the traditional windowing process flies in the face of valuable lessons learned by the music industry.

Of course most of us know that sorry story well by now: an assortment of entrenched, head-in-the-sand record labels forcing a margin rich, but speciously valued product (namely the full album or CD) on digitally empowered audiences, who decided to take matters into their own hands by stealing every song they could click their mouses on. Consequently, a white knight savior (Apple) offering a legitimate and consumer-friendly purchase alternative (iPod + iTunes), which would grew to be so popular that it has made the record labels beholden to it, while simultaneously hollowing out the last vestiges of the original album-oriented business model.

Does history repeat itself? Are Peter and the other brightest lights of the cable industry deluding themselves into thinking that a closed, highmargin, windowed platform like cable can ever possibly morph itself into a flexible, must-have service for today's YouTube/Facebook generation?

I've been a believer for a while that by virtue of their massive base of broadband-connected homes, high-ARPU customer relationships and programming ties, cable operators have enormous incumbent advantages to win in the broadband era. But incumbency alone does not guarantee success. Instead, what wins the day now is staying in tune with and adapting to drastically changed consumer expectations, and then

executing well, day after day. One look at the now gasping-for-breadth behemoth that was once proud General Motors hammers this point home all too well.

As Fred succinctly wrapped things up, "The reason I love capitalism is that it forces all of us to keep doing things better and better." To be sure, broadband and digital delivery are unleashing the most powerful capitalistic forces the video industry has yet seen. What impact these forces ultimately have on today's market participants is a question that only time will answer.

 

    On the night of his historic election victory, Barack Obama's supporters received a text message from the president-elect: 'All this happened because of you. Thanks, Barack.' The US voted for change over experience, galvanising a host of voters to make their voices heard for the very first time.

The presidential election campaign was a prolonged and mighty battle between two megabrands - Barack Obama and John McCain - each with a distinct proposition, image and positioning. Both employed every possible marketing and media tactic, from selling badges and T-shirts on street corners to celebrity endorsement; from negative advertising and knocking copy to the wholesale harnessing of the internet.

The effect was to envelop the US in 'a gigantic bubble of election madness', says Marc Sands, marketing director of Guardian News and Media, who was in New York days before the vote on 4 November.

'The election was everywhere. It was pervasive,' says Sands. 'Marketing has played a role that would be inconceivable in the UK, where political marketing amounts to producing a poster. I didn't see a single traditional election ad during the time I was in New York. What was amazing was the candidates' ability to put out multiple messages in multiple media without diluting their brand images. It was all carefully orchestrated, with no sense that anything was spontaneous or unscripted.'

The pitting of the 73-year-old Vietnam veteran against the 47-year-old African-American was the stuff of Hollywood drama. 'This has been, to some extent, just great TV,' says Steve Harty, chairman of Bartle Bogle Hegarty New York. 'In fact, it was so entertaining that we ran the risk of losing sight of what it was about.'

Although 35% of US households watched the third presidential debate on TV, according to Nielsen, much of the election drama was played out on the internet in what has been dubbed the first YouTube election.

The first intimation of this phenomenon was the Obama Girl video posted on the network early in the race for the Democratic candidacy. Her song, I Got a Crush on Obama, led to a wave of sycophantic postings - and Hillary Clinton just couldn't compete.

Of the myriad ways in which Obama's campaign exploited the internet, however, its fundraising was 'the most amazing', says Kristian Sumners, a freelance creative director based in New York.

In September alone, Obama raised $150m (ÂŁ93.7m) - almost half the total amount that previous Democratic candidate John Kerry raised for his entire presidential bid in 2004. By the end of September, Obama's campaign coffers totalled more than $600m (ÂŁ375m). In 2004, Kerry and President George W Bush raised a combined total of $695.7m.

Even more impressive was the high percentage of the funds that came from first-time donors - many in traditionally hard-to-reach groups, such as young people and those with criminal records. 'Obama has appealed to the grass roots, and the internet played a big part in that,' says Harty.

Online fundraising was pioneered in 2004 by Howard Dean, when he ran for the Democratic party nomination. 'It didn't pay off for Dean, but Obama digested it and realised the potential of all the channels,' says Harty. 'His campaign demonstrated that if you have a powerful message, enabling technologies allow you to communicate with millions of people immediately and effectively. Many commercial brands have not fully realised this power.'

Through the web, the Democrats sought to attract many $100 and $200 gifts. 'They gave the little guys a role to play by suggesting they could participate and contribute just by doing whatever they could,' says Harty.

'They created a sense of allowing ordinary people to take back government from the special-interest groups - the lobbyists, fat cats and politicians - who used to control it. That created a huge sense of community, momentum, confidence and inevitability among Democrat voters.'

He adds that '[Money] is the lifeblood of campaigns, [but] what was different this time was that rather than spending a huge amount on conventional advertising, the candidates would put out an ad on YouTube, which would spread virally and be picked up by the press. As

marketers know, press coverage is far more compelling than paid-for ads.'

McCain started off at a disadvantage with regard to the web, admitting early on that he never went online. His target demographic was less likely to be online than Obama's, but between 70% and 80% of the US electorate do use the internet. McCain's daughter Meghan's popular website, mccainblogette.com, created street cred with younger Republicans, but it was no match for the Obama campaign's mastery of the medium.

According to Nielsen Online, the total number of video streams viewed via Obama's website increased by 155% between July and August, compared with just 16% for McCain's website. Obama's number of unique video viewers rose by 173% over the period; McCain's by 5%.

Obama's success can also be attributed to his integrated approach to brand building, says John Quelch, Lincoln Filene professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and co-author of Greater Good - How Good Marketing Makes for Better Democracy.

'The internet enables someone to watch TV and respond instantly with a donation rather than waiting for a mail or phone solicitation,' says Quelch. 'But that means TV presentation becomes even more important and McCain was at a disadvantage there, too.'

However, on the presentation front, McCain started out well, says Howard Belk, co-president and chief creative officer at branding agency Siegel and Gale in New York. 'He took his reputation for straight talking around the country on his campaign bus,' he explains. 'He had a refreshingly irreverent style, said what he believed and took on the establishment and even the Republican Party, as well as the Democrats - a classic challenger brand, if you like. He espoused lofty goals - patriotism, equal opportunity, championing the underdog. Notably, one of his campaign's most successful attacks on Obama was when he portrayed the Democrat as a vacuous, shallow celebrity.

'But when McCain started to fall behind in the polls and got swept up in the financial crisis, he became reactive and slipped into a different communication mode. He stopped talking about the real issues and simple solutions and switched to attack-politics in an attempt to distract people from the economy.'

According to Belk, going on the offensive lost McCain his momentum and voter support. In contrast, Obama stayed on-message, maintaining his equilibrium in the face of personal attacks and projecting the stature of a thoughtful leader. He demonstrated an understanding of who he is and where he is from.

Nevertheless, negative advertising is an accepted feature of US politics.

'It's quite different from the commercial sphere,' says Quelch. 'If Pepsi and Coke ran negative ads against each other, it would put consumers off the category and the soda market would shrink. But in this election, where both candidates were relative unknowns, there were more attacks than usual because each side was painting a picture of the other that they felt the public had a right to see.'

The candidates' choice of running-mates was classic co-branding territory, according to Belk. 'Each partnered a complementary personality who would overcome their own shortcomings and reach new audiences,' he explains. 'It's a good strategy, but it panned out very differently for each. Joe Biden played a narrow and focused role on the Obama ticket foreign affairs and perhaps the working class. It was clear who was leading and who was supporting. McCain's appointment of Sarah Palin, on the other hand, looked smart initially - she is young and a woman - but she became a bigger focus of media attention than McCain himself, which was confusing.'

Sumners adds: 'The side that generates the headlines and narrative of the campaign tends to lead in the polls. Palin's appointment was a political sleight of hand to try to woo disenfranchised Hillary [Clinton] voters. It created short-term interest and hype, the kind of news that brands thrive on. You could argue that selecting a potential future vice-president shouldn't be a tactical move. But when marketing to a small percentage of swing-voters, such tactics can be enough to win it for you in those states.'

However, celebrity endorsements, of which both parties had an eclectic array, had little effect on their positioning, claims Quelch. 'The exception is Colin Powell's high-level endorsement of Obama two weeks before the election,' he says. 'Having a highly visible member of the sitting president's cabinet, and a man of real principles and character to boot, endorsing the opposition was hugely powerful because it encouraged wavering Republicans to switch their allegiance.'

Similarly, the support of Warren Buffett, the world's richest man and, arguably, shrewdest investor, was a powerful vote of confidence in Obama's ability to manage the US economy.

The election revealed a growing dislike of negative campaigning among voters, and a growing indifference to celebrity endorsement. These trends are both symptoms of a better-informed electorate, says Harty.

'US citizens are much more sophisticated consumers of politics now.'

This is partly thanks to the internet, where information and opinion spread quickly and polls can be updated by the minute. Many of the

biggest stories of the election were broken not by the main-stream news networks but by independent bloggers, or 'citizen journalists', who presented a challenge to the candidates.

Among these was Mayhill Fowler, a 61-year-old blogger from Tennessee who first reported Obama's comments about working-class Pennsylvanians 'clinging to guns and religion' to cope with economic distress. The scoop was a seminal moment for the campaign, which underpinned the Republican positioning of Obama as an Ivy League elitist.

Obama's campaign clearly challenged some received marketing wisdom, notes BBH's Harty. 'The McCain brand was very defined, with clear boundaries and a sense of exclusivity, which is the classic branding approach,' he says. 'The Obama brand was bigger and more open-ended, with more permeable boundaries. Its appeal was a bit like that of Google - accessible, open and with a sense of "why don't you come along for the ride", rather than a direct exhortation to join it.

'The McCain brand was like your local TV station - headline-oriented, opportunistic, local, relevant and responsive, but it had to reach out to people to pull them in.'

One defining feature of the campaign was that it brought both presidential candidates closer to voters. Harty claims that if Obama, in particular, walked into a room of strangers, he would be able to relate to them.

Marketers will no doubt be debating the role of the internet in this historic campaign for years to come. Perhaps the biggest lesson, though, is more simple - that the public has made known its underlying desire for authenticity and integrity at a time when once-trusted and 'safe' institutions such as government and banks are proving so fallible.

Top 10 Marketing moments 1 I Got a Crush on Obama, a cheeky video posted on YouTube by Obama Girl early in the race for the Democratic candidacy, was the initial intimation of what has been dubbed 'the first YouTube election'.

2 The Yes We Can video, put together as an unofficial piece of viral marketing by hip-hop producer Will.i.am, was an online version of Obama's concession speech for the New Hampshire primary. It went online on 2 February, in time for the Super Tuesday polls, and attracted more than 1m hits a day.

3 Obama's trip to Europe, the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan this summer was designed to burnish his foreign policy credentials. The

anchors of the US' main evening TV news programmes, CNBC, CBS and Fox, along with a group of top reporters, went too, guaranteeing three days of 'presidential' news coverage.

4 Obama's announcement of Joe Biden as his running mate via an SMS campaign reached 2.9m people, making him seem cutting-edge, generating lots of press coverage and garnering a valuable database of supporters.

5 Sarah Palin's barnstorming speech at the Republican National Convention on 3 September, soon after her selection as McCain's running mate, was a well-executed act of political theatre. She came over as tough, down-to-earth and likeable, thanks to references to 'hockey moms' and 'Joe six-pack'.

6 In late September, McCain dropped everything to head back to Washington to take part in manoeuvres to ease the financial crisis. With his poll ratings dropping, the move was seen as a cynical attempt to rescue his own standing rather than the economy.

7 'Joe the plumber' became a national celebrity and symbol of the US working class after challenging Obama about potential tax rises under the Democrats; he became the subject of a McCain ad the next week.

8 In mid-October, McCain and Palin's attacks on Obama over his association with 60s radical Bill Ayers, whom they called a 'terrorist', reached its apotheosis in a TV ad describing Obama as 'too risky for America'. The ad failed to improve McCain's standing in the polls.

9 The endorsement of Obama by Colin Powell, a highly visible member of the sitting president's cabinet, and a man of moral stature, was powerful because it encouraged wavering Republicans to switch their allegiance.

10 Palin appeared on NBC comedy show Saturday Night Live on 18 October alongside Tina Fey, whose impersonation of the Alaska governor has attracted a great deal of attention. Palin came across well and showed an ability to make fun of herself. 

by Meta Wagner A week has passed since the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States, and Iʼm still high on the history and possibility of that moment.

So, yes, my headʼs in the clouds. But, my feet are planted firmly on the ground and I believe, despite much evidence to the contrary, that this campaign season represented a breakthrough for women.

Of course I recognize that women came close but did not win the presidency or vice presidency. Of course I recognize (and have written about) the sexist treatment of women by the media and, more recently, by certain campaign staffs.

Of course I recognize that Michelle Obama had to tone down her political opinions and ramp up her “First Mom” rhetoric to be more acceptable to the American people.

But I also recognize that most of the standout players in this election year were women.

For starters, it was the first time a woman nearly clinched the Democratic nomination for president and the first time a woman was on the Republican ticket as the vice presidential nominee.

It was also the first time that Oprah, Queen of All Media, endorsed a candidate, and sheʼs credited with swaying voters in Obamaʼs favor simply by virtue of her Oprah-ness.

Katie Couricʼs now infamous interview with Sarah Palin reminded audiences of Couricʼs disarming style and revitalized her career, but it was an earlier interview with Hillary Clinton during the primaries that caught my eye:

Couric: “I know youʼre confident [the winner] will be you, but there is the possibility it wonʼt be, and clearly you have considered that possibility.”

Clinton: “No, I havenʼt.”

While Clinton went on to explain the importance of holding onto a winning mentality as youʼre campaigning, that exchange reinforced a perception of Clinton as arrogant.

And who could forget Campbell Brownʼs scathing indictment of the McCain campaign for sheltering Palin from the press: “Stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment….Free Sarah Palin. Free her from the chauvinistic chain you are binding her with. Sexism in this campaign must come to an end.” Brown had discovered her calling as a political commentator, and CNN came to recognize what they had on their hands: a worthy competitor to Bill OʼReilly on Fox and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. They began airing “Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull” shortly before Election Day. Even the much-watched yet much-maligned all-female cast of The View earned respect from unlikely quarters after John McCainʼs turn in the hot seat. At one point, co-host Joy Behar looked McCain straight in the eye and said, “There are ads running from your campaign… Now we know that those two ads are untrue, they are lies. And yet, you at the end of it say you approve these messages. Do you really approve these?” Beharʼs gutsy, no holds barred style caused columnist Frank Rich of The New York Times to dub her “the new Edward R. Murrow.”

Perhaps most surprising among the rise of female media stars was the ultraquick ascendancy of Rachel Maddow in her self-titled political program on MSNBC. Maddow, who also hosts a radio show on Air America, is not only a woman, sheʼs a left-leaning lesbian with…short hair—a television first!

This campaign season the notion was put to rest—forever, I hope—that women are not as funny as men. Only one comedian had everyone—everyone—talking, and that was Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. (In fact, postelection life feels a little empty without Fey/Palin.) I believe that even the next three most memorable comedic performances were also by women. There was the extremely pregnant Amy Poehler rapping about Sarah Palin while Palin sat at the SNL Weekend Update news desk and grooved to the beat, Samantha Bee on The Daily Show “forcing” attendees of the National Republican Convention to utter the word “choice” in connection with Palinʼs pregnant daughter, Bristol, and Sarah Silvermanʼs “The Great Shlep” video aimed at getting the grandchildren of bubbes and zadies in Florida to vote for Obama.

On the internet, Tina Brown, the legendary former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker launched her latest political-cultural offering, thedailybeast.com, Arianna Huffingtonʼs website continued to be a go-to place for politics, and Joan Walsh, editor in chief of Salon.com, was a frequent guest on MSNBCʼs Hardball with Chris Matthews, distinguishing herself with her reasoned analysis spoken in a quiet but firm manner. And, letʼs not forget Obama Girl, with her internet hit, “Iʼve Got a Crush…on Obama.” Silly as it may seem, she lent Obama, who sometimes seems too cool to be hot, sex appeal.

Some political Mean Girls got their comeuppance, which is good news for the rest of womanhood. In one SNL skit, Tina Fey as Sarah Palin described herself

as “one part practiced folksy, one part sassy and a little dash of high school bitchy,” which seemed to perfectly capture Palinʼs persona. Needless to say, Palin lost the election. And then there was incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, previously considered a genteel Southern woman, who, in an act of desperation, ran an ad accusing her opponent, Kay Hagan, of being “godless”.

Listen up, Mean Girl: Haganʼs in, youʼre out.

Finally, the White House is about to become home to three of the worldʼs most famous females: Michelle, Sasha, and Malia Obama (and maybe a fourth, depending on the puppyʼs gender). Itʼs also going to be home to a man who has a grace about him normally ascribed to women, and whose demeanor serves as a rebuke to the womanizing ways of Bill Clinton and the macho swaggering of George W. Bush. And guess which gender put Obama in the White House?

Women voted 56 to 43 percent for Obama while men only voted 49 to 48 percent for him.

And so, we still donʼt have a woman president or vice president despite the fact that women form 51 percent of the American population. But, take heart: Americans have a lot of women winners, this election.

didn’t like trailers. Roger Ebert says his late, great partner “hated them so much he would stand outside a theater until they were over. If he was already seated in the middle of a crowded theater, he would plug his ears and stare at the floor.” Grace Randolph doesn’t share the classic critic’s sentiment.

In her just launched, Next New Networks movie review program Beyond the Trailer, Randolph shows viewers select scenes from new theatrical releases before explaining the film’s “industry expectations,” divulging “behind the scenes gossip,” and taking a camera crew to New York City’s streets for “audience reactions.”

The show’s intended to go “beyond the fast-cuts and god-like voiceovers to find out what you’re really getting when you buy your movie ticket.”

Here’s a summary in audio/video form:

If Randolph looks familiar, that’s because you’ve seen her star in a character-driven TV recap series on YouTube (her America’s Next Top Model synopses are done with an almost-funny-because-it’s-so-bad Russian accent) or host the more regular movie review show mixed with person-on-the-street interviews, RevYou. If Beyond the Trailer looks familiar, that’s because it and RevYou are basically the same thing.

The show is meant to round out the IndyMogul network - Erick Beck’s BackYard FX is a DIY show for professional and amateur filmmakers without a big budget, Bobby Miller’s Best Short Films in the World showcases those professionals’ and amateurs’ wares, and now Randolph’s Beyond the Trailer highlights what’s playing on the big screen - but I don’t think it fits.

Does the same audience that wants to learn how to Two-Face its face and watch Keg of the Dead care that Jeffery Katzenberg was booted out of Disney or want to hear what toddlers think about Madagascar 2? This is IndyMogul, right? Randolph’s side swept bangs (how does she read the teleprompter?) and prison uniform of a t-shirt kinda look alternative, but the rest of the show (in terms of content, delivery, etc.) is about as traditional as you can get.

Beyond the Trailer is well produced, but for the wrong network. Maybe a movie review show with some monster would’ve been a better choice.

Two more members of Congress are expressing concerns that the FCC, broadcasters and the federal agency responsible for the digital converter box coupon program need to do more to prepare the public for the digital transition. House Telecommunications Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell have written letters to broadcasters and the federal agencies asking them to detail plans to remedy concerns that arose during the September digital transition test in Wilmington, NC.

While a majority of Americans are well aware of the digital transition, primarily because of a public service campaign by cable operators and broadcasters, there are still lingering issues for many over-the-air television viewers. It's critical that the FCC continue to focus on solving these issues prior to Februrary 17 of next year.

Remember, if all the televisions in your house are connected to cable, you're already prepared for the digital transition. If you choose to use an over-the-air digital converter, you will need to determine if your antenna is receiving the digital signals and that the converter is properly programmed to the frequencies in your local area. Come next February, your televisions will continue to work normally during the switch from analog to digital broadcasts as long as they are connected to cable.

Is Broadband TV a Cable Killer? [Light Reading] Light Reading asks the question whether Internet video is a threat to traditional cable video delivery at the Cable and Telecommunications Association for Marketing Summit. One of the better responses to the question comes from the founder of Next New Networks:

AT&T始s Dubious Behavior [Broadband Politics AT&T has rolled out a new tier of DSL service in some areas based on a press release from the company last week, but, as Richard Bennett points out, AT&T is telling consumers that they're required to purchase AT&T's television service if they want to get the new DSL speed tier. I'm all for bundling services to provide a better deal for customers, but forcing customers into a take-it-or-leave-it deal for a group of bundled services isn't an appropriate way to treat customers.

Bundling of different services should be an offer for a discount, not a requirement.

Furthermore, this new tier's speeds sound fairly sketchy. Because AT&T is using the same pipe to deliver the DSL as the TV service (which consumers are required to buy), a subscriber's actual DSL speed is dependent upon how much television content is being delivered. So, don't turn on too many televisions if you've got AT&T's new DSL tier, or you could slow down your Internet download speed. iPhone Best-Selling Phone in the U.S. for Q3 2008 [GigaOm] It's come from a glint in the eye of Steve Jobs two years ago to the best selling mobile phone in the U.S. According to the NPD Group, Apple sold nearly 7 million iPhones during the third quarter of 2008.

As other phone manufacturers introduce their own models designed to compete with the iPhone, the way we use the web is quickly changing. It's a must have feature for new smartphones to have a full web browser, and more and more people are using them for their web browsing. Even this blog gets hits everyday from mobile devices.

And the early conclusion from cable operators, search engines and online services is—ding, ding, ding—the pie is expanding. During a VideoNuze.com breakfast panel at the CTAM Summit Monday in Boston, executives from Scripps Networks, Time Warner Cable, Google, Amazon and Next New Networks seemed to agree that broadband-delivered television shows don't shrink traditional cable network or cable operator businesses, but can, in fact, grow them.

“We think there is a solution that is sustainable,” said Peter Stern, executive VP and chief strategy officer at Time Warner Cable during the breakfast. “Deliver all your Web content to paying customers online and just a small amount to nonpaying customers.”

That sounds like Time Warner plans to offer a replica on the Web to its subscribers of what it already offers on traditional TV to its subscribers. So if you have Time Warner service you could see the cable channels and programs you want on TV and also on the Web. And if youʼre not a Time Warner customer you canʼt.

OK, so this is a forward-thinking solution. I like that Time Warner is making its content available on the Web too.

But, Iʼm not so sure this solution, though well-thought, is going to stem the tide of cable defections in the coming years.

Are people dropping their cable service in droves today? No. It is very early days and traditional cable and satellite programming on a big-screen is still more convenient and more enjoyable for TV viewing.

However, as a recent cord-cutter (Iʼve been without cable programming for four weeks now) I donʼt see a reason to return to the cable fold now that I have seen that life without—life just online—works almost as well.

I recognize that traditional delivery is both more convenient and more enjoyable than watching shows online. But you know what? When you go without traditional delivery for a few weeks, you just get used to it (unless you are a sports fan). You stop missing the old way of doing this. And the new way of doing things— watching “The Office” on Hulu, checking out “The Daily Show” on Thedailyshow.com—becomes a reasonable facsimile for the old way.

My verdict is the pie shrinks some.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Amber Lee Ettinger, better known as Obama Girl Amber Lee Ettinger, better known as Obama Girl, is back in the news in the wake of her man's decisive victory.

Ettinger attended a victory party last week in New York, where she joked about getting an invitation to the inauguration.

More seriously, she said she's appreciate a note from the president elect thanking Obama Girl.

Ettinger's smash video, "I Got a Crush on Obama," has been viewed more than 11 million times on YouTube.

Her publicist, Kelly Brady, told AFP the video wasn't just a joke. "Sex sells, and she was the sexy part of the election. That helped draw in the younger crowd.

They asked: 'What's that hot girl saying about Obama?'"

Ettinger says she wasn't much into politics until Obama's campaign, but now she's ready for anything. "I've got my Super Obama Girl outfit in the back of the car!"

The only sound inside President-elect Barack Obama's press bus was the hum of the motor as it turned into downtown Lancaster. This was the gray morning of March 30, and Obama and his press corps were making their way to Stevens College of Technology for his first visit to the city.

The buses rolled past Clipper Magazine Stadium, Gallery Row and the Fulton Opera House, but none of the press corps seemed particularly interested. They snoozed or studied their laptops.

For many, this was the umpteenth small town they'd visited since the Iowa caucus three months earlier.

Suddenly someone exclaimed "Look at that!" Every writer, TV reporter and photographer raced to the left side of the bus so quickly I thought we'd tip the thing over. Their hands and faces pressed against the glass.

The subject of their intense interest? The castle-like Lancaster County Prison. *** After the high-stakes Philadelphia debate between Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton in April, national and state reporters descended to the spin room. This is where famous surrogates for both candidates enter and "spin" for the reporters what was seen and heard during the debate.

Yet, the main "attraction" in the spin room wasn't the likes of retired Gen. Wesley Clark or Gov. Ed Rendell, but a New York-based model, Internet sensation and champion lip sync performer, Amber Lee Ettinger, aka Obama Girl.

Ettinger, part of a comedy troupe called www.BarelyPolitical.com, slipped through the spin room with a cameraman filming a segment for the Web site. Some of the nation's top journalists quickly made their way to Ettinger, asked for a photo, then cozied up to Obama Girl while someone with a cell phone snapped a shot.

Obama Girl may have a crush on Obama, but plenty of hormonal male journalists were crushin' on Obama Girl, too. *** Anyone who thought Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was the real star of the GOP ticket and not presidential nominee Sen. John McCain would have felt vindicated by what took place on the Lancaster Airport tarmac Sept. 9.

The Straight Talk 737 touched down on a muggy morning just before the GOP rally at Franklin & Marshall College, and an entourage of about a dozen local people were there to greet McCain and Palin just outside the gate.

McCain appeared at the plane's door, descended the steps, shook a few hands, then darted for the bus. There was a tight schedule to keep, after all. Palin, though, with husband Todd in tow,

bounced down the steps, chattered away and shook everyone's hand; she even autographed a hockey puck. Palin was out there so long schmoozin' with the locals you had to wonder if McCain wasn't perturbed.

After the rally, it was nearly the same scene on the tarmac. Airport and security officials waited under the 737's wing, and McCain shook a few hands, had a few photographs taken, then stepped away to climb the steps back into the plane.

Palin? She took much longer interacting with supporters, and the loss of patience was evident on McCain's face. *** When you're a member of the press and you show up to cover a candidate's rally, you show a press pass to campaign security volunteers to gain access to the event. The campaign then gives you its own pass, usually with the candidate's slogan or name on it.

So it was in Downingtown for a McCain rally in mid-October, the day after the Phillies clinched the National League pennant against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The campaign handed out laminated blue press passes with "Country First * McCain * Palin" in white print … and a picture of the Philly Phanatic, the fuzzy green whatever-the-heck-thatmascot-is for the Philadelphia Phillies. The Phanatic is pointing at the camera, and on his shirt are the names "McCain * Palin." It appeared to be superimposed over his usual red-pinstriped jersey, as the red lines were slightly visible underneath the names.

Did the Phanatic endorse the GOP ticket? No, said a team spokesman at the time, and the campaign did not ask the Phillies for permission to use the Phanatic's image.

Said Paul Lindsay, spokesman for the McCain campaign: "We were concerned that the national press pool was infested with some depressed Dodgers fans. So we wanted to make every effort to outfit them with the appropriate Phillies accessories to remind them of the results of Wednesday night's game."

Quotes-of-the-Week "This election really showed me how the county is changing. It certainly did not go blindly by party. Obviously, people split their tickets."

— State Rep. Katie True about Tuesday's election in which down-ticket Republican candidates like U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts received more votes than presidential nominee John McCain. *** "You have no excuse. You can't say 'the man' is holding us back any more. You have to work harder. You can't expect handouts."

— Millersville University student Jessica Hemingway, a member of the Black Student Union, about the black community after Obama's election. *** "If it was a normal year, McCain would have had a real shot. With the economic crisis, that was a real godsend for the Obama campaign."

— W. Wesley McDonald, political science professor at Elizabethtown College.

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com

BOSTON -- Programmers should work with cable operators to distribute TV content to paying customers over the Internet -- instead of throwing it up online for free and undermining cable’s existing business model, said Peter Stern, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at Time Warner Cable.

“The question of whether broadband video upends the cable business lies with the programmers,” said Stern, speaking on the Monday panel “How to Profit from Broadband Video's Disruptive Impact” at the CTAM Summit ’08 If consumers can get the shows they want to watch for free, they will do that, he said: “Free is a very good deal.”

Stern said there’s a sustainable solution to the issue: For programmers to deliver “all your Web content to your paying customers, and just your promotional content to nonpaying customers.”

“The notion should be that consumers who want to pay for great brands and great content should be able to access that on any platform,” he said.

There should be defined windows for cable TV distribution, Stern added. “What we’re not comfortable with is putting content online for free that we’re offering to customers because at the end of the day, it’s the same screen,” he said. “That makes no sense and ultimately will undermine the affiliate fees that are critical to create that great content.”

For cable programmers, distributing ad-supported content online simply doesn’t provide the same level of return on investment, Scripps Networks Digital president Deanna Brown.

“When the Internet is able to provide us with that same economic value [as affiliate fees], we’ll probably shift our activities accordingly,” Brown said.

But rather than trying to replicate cable TV experience online, the Internet provides the opportunity to present content in a new context, said David Eun, vice president of content partnerships for Google and YouTube.

“We should be thinking less about cutting and pasting and more about creating new experiences,” he said.

And traditional TV content is just one part of the vast and growing pool of video available online, accordin to Eun.. He said consumers upload hundreds of hours of video content - the equivalent of 57,000 movies per week -- to his company’s sites.

“People are taking advantage of this as an interactive medium,” Eun said.

Brown said HGTV launched a site last year, Rate My Space, for people to post pictures of their homes and allow other members to comment on those and rate them. After seeing a big response, HGTV decided to develop a show around the site and within 12 weeks had it on air.

“That’s a good example of when the consumer started the conversation and it grew up and became a television show,” Brown said.

Fred Seibert, creative director and co-founder of Next New Networks, an online contentproduction startup, disputed the idea that new Web content or distribution models will displace the existing pay-TV business.

“Nothing ever goes away,” said Seibert, the original creative director of MTV, noting that pundits predicted the death of broadcast TV during the cable industry’s early growth phase. “Well, maybe vaudeville, but nothing else.”

On the other hand, Seibert said, “The model that has made cable a success isn’t going away, but it’s going to go under an incredible adjustment.”

Stern said the challenge for the cable industry is to get content to consumers “on that high-def, communal television when they want it -- and that means we need to aggressively embrace time-shifting… but we need to do that in a way that grows the pie.”

The panel was moderated by Will Richmond, editor and publisher of VideoNuze and an industry consultant.

We’ve long been drawing comparisons between the imaginary Carrie Bradshaw and the real-life fameball Julia Allison. Afterall, there are so many similarities and Julia is no doubt the modern day iteration of the dating columnist portrayed on Sex and the City.

That’s why I was tickled pink to hear the theme song of Julia’s online video installments on her newest website TMI. Now I, Stanley Stuyvesant, do have floppy ears, but I’m not completely tone def. Is TMI’s theme song not very similiar to Sex and the City’s theme song? Maybe its the existence of the Marimba in both (or is it a xylophone?), or the similiar syncopations?

Anyway, listen below and you be the judge!

This was no ordinary week for America, and it’s inspired many to consider being more civically active. Jill Weinberger and Liz Shannon Miller are no exception, and in today’s Station Conversation they make plans to aid one of online video’s more disenfranchised populations: the bikini girls.

Jill: So, Liz, I’m here. What do you want to discuss?

Liz: Well, did anything interesting happen this week?

Jill: Mean Kitty’s dad got a mermaid corpse…Oh. You mean the other thing.

Liz: Yeah.

Jill: That was good, too. Freedom and change and hope and whatnot. Plus, CNN had holograms.

Liz: It’s been fun to see everyone react. Obama Girl, for example, is understandably jubilant.

Jill: Yeah. Oh, did you see? The Downstairs Guys filmed their reaction video the morning of the election, just to get ahead of the game.

Liz: WHY WERE THEY TEMPTING THE WRATH OF THE WHATEVER FROM HIGH ATOP THE THING? Jill: Well, they made a reaction video for either eventuality and found the bright side either way.

Liz: That’s fine, but why is that girl wearing a bikini in freaking November?!? I wore a sweater on the 4th, and I live in California!

Jill: So they could use cleavage and breasts in their tags, duh. That is just good SEOness.

Liz: Yeah, I guess that was kind of naive of me. But it still seems unnecessarily cruel.

Jill: They clearly gave her plenty of alcohol. She seems fine.

Liz: There ought to be an organization to protect the girls in bikinis used for screenshot/seo purposes, like the ASPCA. The ASPCB! Jill: Or at least a bikini girl union ensuring that you get time and a half for any time spent in a bikini.

Liz: Or, in her case, beer and a-half.

I’ll write a letter to Obama. He can take care of it.

Jill: Get Obama Girl to endorse your movement.

Liz: Man, if I could get her to support the ASPCB, then we’d be GOLDEN. That’s like getting Tom Cruise.

Jill: But taller.

Maybe you could get McCain Girl on board. I mean, really, what the hell is she going to be doing with her time now? She’s gotta be free.

Liz: Really, the entire Obama Girl army should enlist. And also, we need to nail down the international audience, which means getting the kids at AtheneWins on board.

Jill: OMG! And Heidi Klum! Although technically she is more lingerie than bikini.

Liz: Heidi Klum might be our biggest challenge, though. While I’m sure she gets paid handsomely to do so, the lady LOVES to show off her ta-tas.

Jill: That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t enjoy time and a half and a heat lamp.

Liz: I’m just saying that it seems like she likes it a little too much, and any obstacles to her being able to do so might be auf’ed.

Jill: But this is what democracy is ABOUT. The privileged using their power to raise the opportunities and protections for the underprivileged.

Of course, Heidi IS German. But America has been very very good to her. And it’s not about taking away anyone’s ta-ta flashing opportunities. It’s about making a safer and more productive ta-ta flashing environment for EVERYONE. USA! USA! YES WE CAN! Sorry. The spirit of the week is getting to me.

Liz: No, it’s good! We are inspired, is all, to follow Obama’s example, and organize within our community. Our community happens to be online video. Hence, we organize.

Jill: We are TA-TA COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS! And how many people can say that?

Outside of porn, that is.

Liz: What are some other rights we feel these ladies in bikinis should demand? I think bikini approval is important.

Jill: Yes. And a guaranteed supply of double stick tape.

Liz: And the right to demand that one crew member, at all times, is tasked with the job of keeping an eye out for nip-slips.

Jill: As well as the right to negotiate beforehand whether or not there will be visible nipple outlinage.

Liz: Ooh, yes. There’s like a whole sub-section here on the issue of nipples.

This discussion, of course, gets to the heart of one of those basic facts about online video, which is that the implementation of a girl’s cleavage is oftentimes the key element of their success. Rocketboom, ScriptGirl…

Jill: The entire premise of this episode of ModelBall…

Liz: As long as there’s been a YouTube, there have been screenshots of knockers on it.

At this stage, it’s kind of ridiculous to ask the community to change, so I suppose all we can do is ask that these young ladies are well-treated, and not exploited…well. You know what I mean.

Jill: We aren’t asking for there to be less bikini girls. We’re just asking for basic workplace protections. I imagine a whole roomful of girls in bikinis standing on tables, holding up signs that say, “UNION.” And shivering.

Here is my question: The screenshots are supposedly random. So how does YouTube KNOW which part of the vid has cleavage in it? ‘Cause most videos with girls in bikinis also feature guys looking like idiots, and they’re never in the screenshot.

Liz: It’s actually a somewhat common practice for editors to insert single frames of bikini girls in spots most likely to be picked for screenshotting. The exact middle of a video is usually the best guess.

Jill: The question is, because a cleavage shot is so essential to the success of a video, do bikini girls have the leverage to negotiate? Or is there always some other new bikini girl, getting off a bus from Omaha, willing to bikini up in less-than-ideal conditions?

Liz: Hmmm, good question. I’d say yes and no. Definitely there’s no shortage of young ladies prepared to brave the elements for their art, but a lot of times these girls become the anchor for their shows, and their personality and charisma adds a lot.

Replacing Obama Girl, for example, is pretty unthinkable. And Rocketboom had serious drop-off after Amanda Congdon left. I think there are probably some not-too-savvy producers who think the answer is yes, but in reality the answer is no.

Jill: Well, then you get back to the Heidi Klum conundrum. Which is that you need your high-profile, more valued personalities to bring their clout to the table to benefit the lesser-known bikini population.

Liz: The nice thing about supporting the rights of the lesser-known bikini girls is that it gives them a chance to connect with their audiences on their own terms. Thus enabling them to build a fan base and gain more recognition. And that is good for the show, and thus good for the producers with whom they are negotiating.

Jill: I think we’ve done good work today for the rights of girls in bikinis everywhere. I feel like I am a part of the solution. And a true American.

A key turning point in the long and brutal presidential election involved a YouTube battle between dueling online videos.

It was primary season and Barack Obama was being battered in the press because of his relationship with controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Some of Wright's more inflammatory sermons were captured on video and were flying around YouTube.

Instead of letting the clips fester online, the Obama campaign immediately posted on YouTube the candidate's full rebuttal, a 37-minute-long speech on race he delivered to an audience in Philadelphia.

The video clip helped calm the controversy and attracted around 5.3 million views on the videoviewing website, proving the popularity and impact of a medium that was first used widely this election cycle.

Dubbed early on "the YouTube election" by some, by late October, 39 percent of voters had watched some sort of campaign-related video online, according to the Pew Research Center, up from the 24 percent who said in December, before the primaries began, that they had watched political videos. "I think it's fair to say that this is the first election YouTube has played a critical role in helping the president-elect to reach audiences and get people out to vote, says Steve Grove, YouTube's head of news and politics.

YouTube videos, which weren't around during the last presidential election, first made their mark in 2006, when George Allen's infamous "macaca" moment was filmed and uploaded to the Web, derailing his Senate re-election campaign in Virginia.

Most of the early YouTube incidents involved "gotcha" type videos, not serious political messaging. That soon changed as more Americans embraced the medium, along with candidates themselves. "I think a lot of candidates said 'Whoa, this is kind of scary, frankly, and maybe a little bit dangerous,' and 'How are we going to deal with this situation?' But then fast forward just a few months later and 7 out of 16 presidential candidates actually announced their candidacy on YouTube through videos," says Grove.

By Election Day, 28 percent of voters surveyed said they had watched speeches the candidates had put online, like Obama's race speech. "Even though it's 37 minutes long, it's the most-viewed video ever uploaded by a presidential candidate to YouTube," says Grove. "[The Obama campaign] understood that YouTube's not just about short clips, or commercials, or "gotcha" footage, or a slick ad. It's about making yourself available to people."

Of course, YouTube was about much more than official campaign videos. While YouTube logged about 200 million views of official candidate videos, there were as many as 1 billion views of videos created by average Americans and groups not associated with the campaigns, according to the website TechPresident. "So YouTube has become the town square for America's future," says Andrew Rasiej, a co-founder of TechPresident, a website that covered the intersection of the election and the Web. The most popular of the noncampaign affiliated videos seems to be "Dear Mr. Obama," a video created by a McCain-supporting Iraq War vet who delivers a message to the Democratic candidate: "Dear Mr. Obama, having spent 12 months in Iraq theater, I can promise you this is not a mistake." This video received about 13 million views.

There were other more professional-looking videos that became hits too. One is "I Got a Crush...on Obama" that turned the sultry Obama Girl into an online and offline pseudo-celebrity.

And then there was Will.I.Am's "Yes We Can" music video that featured a handful of actors and musicians singing and rapping to an Obama speech, which received about 12.7 million views.

"The 'Yes We Can' video captured the culture of the Internet's interest in Obama at the beginning of the primary season," explains Rasiej. "It was the perfect melding of Obama's political message with a desire for more engagement by the American public manifested in a simple video instantly viewed by millions without any influence by the mainstream media and the political parties themselves." The video proved to be so popular online that it was adopted by the Obama campaign to be played at campaign rallies.

Unlike normal campaign advertising, online video was often more persuasive because it was passed virally from person to person. One video that helped shape the campaign dialogue was created by director Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films, a progressive Web video making outlet, called "McCain. Mansions: The Houses That Greed Built." This video circulated the Web even before McCain flubbed a question about how many houses he owned. "Initially there was not a lot of evidence that people would watch serious political messaging. There was clear evidence that they would watch naked ladies fall down in showers and cats playing the piano, but there was not a lot of evidence for what we wanted to do, so it's been very satisfying," Greenwald says.

But Greenwald says his ambition wasn't just to get people to watch videos online. "The goal is to get them to participate, send the video around, get involved, learn something," the director says.

This tactic was also used by the Obama campaign, which used a variety of Web tools, including YouTube, to create a large community online hoping that it would inspire advocacy offline as well. "They used video to gin up interest in Obama's message and ideas, but it was always about what you could do in your neighborhood and your pocketbook," says YouTube's Grove.

Amber Lee Ettinger aka Obama Girl burst into tears at the barelypolitical.com party at Haven when her man was named the new president of the United States. “This is the day I’ve been waiting for,” she told us.

Ben & Jerry’s is giving out free ice cream to voters, Starbucks is hooking you up with twelveounce coffees, and our favorite freebie yet: a glass of sangria from Boqueria. Based on an informal Wafels & Dinges poll, Obama is expected to win (243 Barack waffles purchased versus 141 McCains). If you’re looking for a place to watch it go down, Daily Intel has a good rundown of election parties. There’s also Craftsteak’s fête tonight, and at Haven, Barely Political is celebrating with a special performance

by Obama Girl.

The Quest for "it" Tuesday, November 04, 2008

COUNTDOWN to the ELECTION: The Big Day is Here! MORE Election Night Parties...

Hi! The big day has arrived...have you voted yet? Do you know where you will be as the, sate by state weigh in on Electoral votes is revealed? If not our very own political pundit Chris London of Manhattan Society and NY Consigliere fame gives a few MORE Election Night Party choices to consider, if you happen to be in New York this evening. No need to sit at home and watch the outcome of the swing states, why not view amongst friends over a few drinks specials and provisions? To follow is a select list of Mr. London's Election Night Party picks for STILL MORE elsewhere on this blog click here and if you are still hankering for MORE Election Night parties click here: DL21C's Election Night Bash! New World Stages, 340 W.50th Street (bet.

8th & 9th Ave.) 6:00 pm- LATE. NYC's biggest party celebrating out local and national Democratic victories 20,000 feet of fun! Huge TV's, DJ, Elected Officials and more! For RSVP info visit to www.newworldstages.com Young Professionals United for Change Election Watch Party @ Providence, 311 West 57th Street (bet. 8th & 9th Ave.). 6:00 pm-??? 13,500 square ft. tri-level venue with multiple flat screens on all levels and 10 foot projection screens on 2 levels, 4 bars & yummy bar menu. For those who want to watch and listen: Election Coverage Viewing Room and ample seating, 10 foot projection screen, private bar and surround sound. For those who want to watch and groove: Celebrity DJ D-Nice RSVP via www.yp4c.org Barely Political.com Hosts Party with Obama Girl @ Haven. 244 East 51st St. Time TBA. Invite Only.

If Tuesday night’s election goes the way polls are predicting, not only do we have four years of President Barack Obama ahead of us, we have four more years of Obama Girl.

No wonder she’s throwing a big election night party.

Amber Lee Ettinger, who became famous writhing around in tight clothes while lip-syncing “I got a crush on Obama,” is hosting the party at Haven in New York, in case anyone is up for a road trip.

If that’s too far, but you still want to celebrate election night out of town, consider the University of Delaware. The college sent out a release touting the campus’s designation by another news organization as the “epicenter of this year’s presidential election.”

(The school is Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden’s alma mater. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe and McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt are alumni, too.) If you attend, you might end the night crushing beer cans on your head. More than 500 college students are expected to watch the returns together in the student center.

10 most viral videos of the campaign

They zip in and out of e‐mail accounts, get millions of views on YouTube and sometimes put the Madison Avenue creations of real‐life Mad Men to shame. Viral videos have been part of the Web world since 1996’s digital Xmas card from the South Park boys, but over the past decade they’ve also impacted politics — sometimes changing the course of elections and frequently providing a few laughs in an otherwise wonky world.

The “macaca moment” from way back when in 2006 seems almost quaint by comparison to the viral videos of the 2008 cycle, which include entire "Saturday Night Live" segments, interviews with network anchors and newsreel moments with plumbers named Joe.

Here, then, are the 10 viral videos that have bored deep into our brains over this long election season.

1. Yes, We Can

Sure, this $30,000 quasi‐MTV clip contains more waifs and cleavage and porkpie hats than seems possible, but the spot's mix of speech, music, spoken word, simple

guitar strumming and very pretty young people rings with inspiration and, while minimalist, it may be the most creative video of any type to emerge this year.

Congratulations to singer will.i.am, director Jesse Dylan, producer Fred Goldring and the others who got together one weekend and impulsively decided to translate their political passion to digital video with a little help from their friends.

2. Dear Mr. Obama

“Dear Mr. Obama, having spent 12 months in the Iraq theater…” No, it’s not the lead in the Tikrit road‐company production of "Cats." This heartfelt and straight‐ahead message from veteran Joe Cook, 23, of Wauconda, Ill., was scripted and filmed by Michael Brown, an amateur producer of Christian‐themed videos, to support Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid and relate their feelings about continuing the war in Iraq. The words are simple yet powerful, and when Cook hobbles away from the camera to show his prosthetic leg, one can’t help but get a bit choked up. After more than 12 million hits on YouTube, the video has been reworked and trimmed for use as a TV commercial by the Republican Majority Campaign PAC.

3. “I Got a Crush… On Obama” by Obama Girl

Yes, we know it’s dumb. But 10 million viewers can’t be wrong, can they? Named best Web video of 2007 by People magazine, this is the viral video that launched dozens of imitators and made a star out of former Miss Howard Stern TV pageant winner Amber Lee Ettinger. Though the sequel with former Democratic candidate Mike Gravel was a bit sweeter and a little less sexy, it’s the old‐school original that brings back memories of a more innocent time. Obama Girl Ettinger recently put on glasses and a hair bun to portray Sarah Palin on Geraldo Rivera’s show. Our advice to Ettinger: stick with Obama, girl.

4. Obama and McCain — Dance‐Off!

Crude yet effective special effects, stylin’ break‐dance moves, some crazed looks on the McCain Man, and a surprise challenge by OG (Original Governor) Sarah make this latecomer with bizarre digital magic (said to be created in Russia) a welcome addition to the campaign mix. Directed by yet another Howard Stern alum, this time

his cable series “Son of the Beach” writer‐producer David Morgasen, it’s worth repeated viewings.

5. Time for Some Campaignin’

Sure, the plucky banjos are annoying as hell, but this summer animation from the Spiridelli brothers — who go by the professional name JibJab — is not an altogether bad piece of political satire. Dylan’s “The Times They Are a‐Changin’” gives it some heft, and the Disney‐esque fantasyland featuring Obama riding a flying unicorn while repeating nonsense lyrics about “change” could be the most vicious put‐ down of the Democratic candidate this entire year, even if it does seem merely glib (and not a jab) upon first glance.

6. The Great Schlep

We far prefer Ms. Silverman’s account of Joe Franklin’s alleged molestation in “The Aristocrats” or even her Matt Damon sex tape confession to this heavily ethnic yenta‐go‐round. Still, any clip that begins with a term that's too gross‐funny for use on Politico automatically gets our vote. The best part of the video followed its release, when goy grey goose Anderson Cooper and other WASPy teleprompter readers tried vainly to pronounce “schlep.”

7. The McCain‐Palin Mob

Perhaps the best entry in a disturbing sub‐genre of documentary videos descended from the 1986 “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” cult classic, this 4½‐minute hatefest is like watching a full week’s worth of Hannity’s America. The best participant of all is the annoying blonde with dirty hair who keeps popping up in the frame, first to rail against ACORN, then to ask when the cameraman first heard of “O‐bam‐AH.” It might have benefited a bit from a crunchy guitar soundtrack, but otherwise this cinema verité glimpse around the perimeter of a McCain‐Palin rally is a hit.

8. Terry Tate — Reading Is Fundamental

We abhor violence under most circumstances, especially against women, and even in jest. So we were totally aghast when we first saw this brief clip of office linebacker and obvious lunatic Tate tackling Sarah Palin in the middle of her fateful Katie Couric interview. We’re still not sure what to make of it. Nevertheless, the sheer audacity and seamless editing on display make this a memorable entry.

9. Diddy Obama Blog #16 John McCain Is Buggin the F%^k Out!

Forget the dizzying Brian DePalma camerawork. Sean Combs goes ballistic in by far the best video he’s ever created. “I don’t know if there are even any black people in Alaska!” he cries, before calling “all youth voters” to “protect our future” by voting against the GOP ticket. Among other off‐the‐wall weirdness, he suggests McCain bring on Michelle Obama as his vice president. How this guy got to where he is — raking in billions, partying in the south of France, etc. — remains a complete mystery to us. But he does do incredulity very well.

10. Paris Hilton Responds to McCain Ad

Not as funny as it could have been, but it got slapped together pretty quickly after McCain came out with his Obama‐as‐Celebrity attack ad featuring Hilton and Britney

Spears. “I’ll see you at the debates, bitches” is as good a line as any this season. On the negative side, the video used Hilton’s “hot” cliché too many times and the magazine‐reading joke fell flat, too. Still, when Hilton refers to the GOP candidate as the “wrinkly white‐haired guy,” it felt just as cutting as the first time Tina savaged Sarah. And Paris’ energy plan wasn’t half‐bad — we wonder what she would do about the AIG bailout or fixing problems with derivatives trading.

Campaign Retrospective: Memorable Moments Last Edited: Saturday, 01 Nov 2008, 3:49 AM GMT Created: Saturday, 01 Nov 2008, 3:49 AM GMT LOS ANGELES -- It's been a long election season, and there have been plenty of memorable moments on the campaign trail. From the Obama controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright to McCain's man of the moment, Joe the Plumber, MyFox takes a look back at some of the political season's newsmakers.

Obama Girl/McCain Girls Web site BarelyPolitical.com made a big splash on the scene back in June 2007 when a video with an attractive young woman proclaimed her crush on Obama in the form of a music video.

She went on to make several subsequent videos, battling Hillary Clinton and Giuliani Girl, and paying tribute to our troops. McCain also had his supporters -- three women made a video about how "it's raining McCain."

Rev. Jeremiah Wright One of the more controversial moments of the election season came when video surfaced of Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, making incendiary comments during several sermons at a church in Chicago. Obama distanced himself from Wright and issued several statements denouncing his comments saying "[His comments] rightly offend all Americans and they should be denounced."

Fist Bump The Obamas showed a lighter side of their personalities back in June 2008 when they shared a fist bump on stage before the presidential candidate delivered a speech in St. Paul, Minn.

Commentators went wild, with some calling it a "knuckle-bump" and others calling it a "pound."

Lipstick, Pitbulls and Pigs At the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin told the country what kind of vice presidential candidate she was going to be. "The difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick."

The comment showed Palin's lighter side and ignited a debate a few days later after Obama uttered the words "lipstick" and "pig" in the same sentence.

Joe the Plumber Everyone's favorite plumber gained national attention after John McCain said he's an example of someone who would be hurt by Obama's tax plans. Rumors are now swirling that Joe is looking to release a music album, but for now, his newly hired publicist says that a "book is in the works."

For a brief retrospective on other memorable moments, watch the Fox News video below:

 

Election Night Party. 8:00 pm. Red carpet arrivals, election broadcast and live performances. Hosted by Obama Girl.

Invitation only. Haven. New York. Contact: Kelly Brady.

Event address: 244 East 51st Street, New York.

November 2008

October 26th, 2008 at 7:16 pm | by ThePit

Indy Mogul, the do-it-yourself filmmaking network, have expanded with an all new weekly webseries The Best Short Films in the World. The new series joins Backyard FX, Q&Eric Live, and Four Minute Film School, the latter of which is on hiatus.

The Best Short Films in the World, is hosted by Bobby Miller who chooses four films a week to spotlight based on a specific theme. Past weeks have included dating, prison, nature, and food. This week’s theme is near and dear to my heart, slasher films. Check out the new episode below.

You can watch more episodes and check out Indy Mogul’s whole network of goodies here.

Next New Networks Expands Distribution to YouTube, Joost & More

October 23, 2007 - 12:23 pm PDT - by Kristen Nicole

Next New Networks, the company that was co-founded by former MTVN vice chairman Herb Scannell, has made a few distribution agreements with some big names in online networks, including YouTube, TiVo, blip.tv, Joost and Veoh. This covers the standard gamut of Internet TV offerings that have aggregated and distribute a wide variety of channels for its end users to enjoy.

There will be featured content from three of Next New’s project, including IndyMogul, Frederator, and Fast Lane Daily. If any of this content sounds familiar, it’s because Next New Networks also distributes down to other smaller sites (relatively speaking) like Dailymotion and TVTonic.

As Next New gains more content, such as its recently added Barely Political collection, it is becoming integral for the gathering of content, which then gets to enjoy a wide array of distribution channels across several networks, as well as the trickle-down effect, which enables content to be pushed through ultra niche sites with an accommodating purpose.

ThreadBanger: How-To Series For DIY Designers | Make Your Own Halloween Costume Posted in: Video On Demand and Web TV Series by Iman Peera on October 22, 2008

ThreadBanger is a very specialized how-to site that provides various tutorials for tailors, sewing buffs, or just about anyone who wants to experiment with DIY fashion.

Throughout this month, each webisode of ThreadBanger focuses on Halloween costume ideas for people to make themselves. That is, if you don’t mind saving a ton of money.

Thread Heads, the most prominent show on the ThreadBanger network, is hosted by Rob Czar and Corinne Leigh- indie designers that travel around the US to support local craft fairs and upcoming artists. Basically, if you’ve got a DIY fashion question, they have the answer.

Rookies Stay Away If you’ve never used a sewing machine before, or if your only incentive to make your own clothing is to save a few bucks, then I suggest that you stay away from this site. Many of the tutorials fly by the basics very quickly. Rookies could give it a shot, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

Make Your Own Strait Jacket

In this latest webisode, Rob and Corinne show you how to make your very own strait jacket costume. For more Halloween costume ideas (some are easier/cheaper than others) keep visiting ThreadBanger this month.

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It turns out that W. is getting a major boost from Sarah Palin—the movie that is.

“The REAL Sarah Palin!” - the latest satirical video clip produced by Barely Political (the team the gave the Web Obama Girl), has generated close to 2 million views on YouTube in just three days since its launch on Sept. 30. Plus, according to officials at Barely Political parent company Next New Networks, The REAL Sarah Palin! hit the magic 1 million views mark in just one day, while the company!s signature I Got a Crush… on Obama video took a whole week to reach that milestone. That video has been viewed 9.8 million times to date.

But unlike I Got a Crush, Next New Networks has been able to immediately cash in on its Palin viral hit. The video carries both a pre-roll and overlay ad for the Oliver Stone movie W.—which “The REAL Sarah Palin!" spoofs. That movie hit theaters on Oct. 17.

Online Exclusives October 2008

By Peter Caranicas OLD MEDIA TO NEW Just as in the early days of cable in the U.S., when many broadcast executives jumped from broadcast television to what was then a new medium, many of today’s TV toppers are migrating to online media.

The most prominent, perhaps, is Michael Eisner, the longtime powerful head of Disney, who stepped down in 2005 and soon thereafter started the investment firm The Tornante Company, which in turn launched the Vuguru “studio” in 2007 as a producer and distributor of video for the Internet, portable media and mobile devices.

Similarly, Herb Scannell, former vice chairman of MTV Networks and president of Nickelodeon, switched to new media when he left that company in early 2006. About a year later, he announced the founding of Next New Networks (NNN), an online media company, of which he is chairman.

Scannell likens today’s environment to the early days of cable. “It feels like 1985 again,” he says. “Back then, there was an opportunity to be creative. The broadcast nets had become closed shops, and it was hard to get a job there.

Cable opened up the doors. I think this is now happening again.”

While creating online content may cost less than producing for television, it still costs something—content still has to be produced, either in-house or via contracted producers.

FremantleMedia produces some material itself, says Hindle, at times taking its existing TV content and changing it to fit the new medium. “For example, we make amusing clips out of the Baywatch content.”

But such self-produced, repackaged and amended content accounts for just 20 percent of what FremantleMedia puts online, Hindle adds. “About 80 percent of what we do now is commissioned from third parties. We sit down, we have pitches from producers coming in, and if we like them, we say, ‘Go ahead and make 20 clips for us.’”

Hindle continues: “At first we expected the pitches to come largely from the people we knew, but there’s this wealth of new creative activity from people who just want to make content for the web.”

Hindle adds that this community does not think like TV producers. “The production costs are dramatically lower, so they’ve got to produce material at a much cheaper level. People who do this have to be of a mindset very far away from TV.” Similarly, Next New Networks constantly seeks new sources of content. Like other Internet entrepreneurs, Scannell strives to connect with “that new generation of talent coming of age. We want to capture them and bring them into the company.”

NNN has had some success doing that with the creators of one of its most popular series, Barely Political.

“There’s talent out there that wasn’t getting a chance. We provide access for them.”

Scannell adds that this new wave of Internet content mavens “has a different tool kit than traditional producers. They know how to write, produce, direct, host and market. We call them five-tool players, and that’s what the Internet requires.”

Practically all Internet video ventures, be they the creation of a small startup or a media conglomerate, follow an economic model based on advertising support and brand integration.

ECONOMIC MODELS “For each show we identify two to four sponsors, then we go out and get them,” says EQAL’s Goodfried.

“Instead of doing generic product placements, we do some pretty cool things, like taking a brand and integrating it through the narrative so it’s generic to the storytelling.”

In addition, EQAL sells “substantial amounts” of advertising on its lonelygirl15.com site and related sites, says Goodfried. “We also syndicate the video files to various partners like imeem, MySpace and YouTube, and advertisers get display advertising on those sites as well.”

Almost everything online is ad-supported, says FME’s Hindle. “We use two buckets. One is run-of-site advertising, which is sold by online distribution portals like YouTube and MySpace, and as the content provider you get a share. At the moment that revenue stream is small, but emerging.”

The larger revenue stream, Hindle continues, comes from “bringing on a specific sponsor around that specific piece of content or channel. We say to advertiser X, ‘Look, we’ve got this great piece of content we’re going to produce, it’s totally targeted to your brand, we’ll integrate your brand, let’s discuss the value of that to you.’ And they’ll buy against that particular piece of content. That’s vastly more profitable, and makes a lot more sense for now.”

Just as it has discovered new talent in the production community, FremantleMedia reaches out to new players in the advertising world—a search that’s not always easy. “Some brands have dedicated digital agencies, but many don’t,” Hindle notes. “It’s confusing. For us, finding out who is the decision-maker on digital ad investment is a critical achievement. A lot of times the agency understands the client’s brands, but a lot of times not, and you have to go directly to the client, the brand itself, to discover what they’re trying to achieve in different media.”

Advertisers, of course, need demographic data on which to base their decisions, and while the Internet has great ways to measure aggregate numbers of users and page views, it falls short when it comes to determining the age and sex of its users.

“We don’t have as much information as we’d like to,” acknowledges Hindle. “From what we’ve seen, the demographics skew male, but less male than you would expect. And young, but not as young as you’d expect.”

Hindle adds that some simple formulas always seem to work on the youthful, male-skewing Internet. “One mantra is that chicks get clicks,” he says. “Literally anything where you put an attractive woman on the thumbnail gets tried out. It’s quite ridiculous.”

Next New Networks, perhaps reflecting Scannell’s days in the U.S broadcast-cable warfare trenches, strives hard to provide accurate information to advertisers.

“New technologies are helping to make accounting better,” he says. Scannell adds that NNN averages between 20 million and 30 million views per month, with the most prominent destination being the satiric Barely Political. “That site can be red hot when there’s something in the culture,” he says. The NNN audience skews male and is aimed at the 12-to-34 group.

Bucking the male trend, audiences of lonelygirl15, which focuses largely on a teenage heroine and youngadult issues and relationships, are 60 to 65 percent female, according to EQAL’s Beckett; the average age is 19. KateModern, which contains more action while still maintaining a strong female lead, is more evenly split between female and male.

FREEWHEELING SPACE While some traditional media executives may long for the old days of a finite number of channels and appointment viewing, theirs is an exercise in pure nostalgia. Today, on the Internet, video files get passed from site to site, with content removed only occasionally after complaints from copyright holders. And even if violations are taken down, they may still reside on countless hard drives and—uncontrolled and unregulated—get passed around via e-mail and social networking.

“It’s a free world out there,” says NNN’s Scannell. “The cat’s out of the bag. People want media their way.

Rather than try to fight it or sue people over it, we should accommodate them, and make it clear what the basic rules are with regard to advertising.”

Such acceptance of new paradigms appears to be a key to success in online video.

“We’ve succeeded because our approach is different,” says Eqal’s Beckett. “We didn’t come from traditional media backgrounds, so there wasn’t any format of formula in our heads for what would work online.” lonelygirl15 broke new ground, blurring the lines between fiction and reality in a way that couldn’t have been done on traditional tele-vision. When the show started, many people thought it was the video diary of a real girl.

“In the early days, because of the unique nature of the Internet, anyone could create a YouTube profile and start uploading videos,” says Goodfried. “You didn’t explicitly come out and say, ‘Hey, this is fictional.’

People had no idea whether this person was real or not, but they immediately got hooked into the story that was unfolding organically. Over time they realized it was too neatly told every couple of days to be real.”

And yet, old media, with its deep pockets, has a way of coopting the new. For example, in May EQAL signed a first-look deal with CBS that puts the network at the head of the line when it comes to developing certain concepts created by EQAL. Per the agreement, EQAL will “work with CBS writers at the script and production level to write, produce and direct online narratives that tie directly into the television series and promote the network telecasts.”

That sounds like a marriage of the old and the new—and perhaps that’s the great synthesis the entertainment industry is looking for.

Tip of the day: Threadbanger.com Posted Sep 18th 2008 at 4:00PM by Boydie Beener Filed under: Style Tip of the Day

If you're a do-it-yourself fashion freak or are just looking for an easy way to save a buck, check ThreadBanger.com. This new networking site is made just for you. There are endless tips on how to, trends, as well as community forums so you can chat with other DIY'ers.

If you do happen to log on and whip something up, you can share your photos online with other custom clothing designers.

Finally! Our sewing machine is totally cool to people other than grandma!

After a three-month search, Web video studio Next New Networks has appointed advertising executive Lance Podell as its CEO, effective Oct. 1. He replaces Herb Scannell, who founded Next New Networks and will remain chairman of the company.

Mr. Podell most recently was CEO of Seevast Corp., which handles search engine marketing and sponsored links for some of the top Web properties and Web ad networks. During his stint at the company, he built it into a $100 million business.

At Next New Networks, Mr. Podell will focus on how to most effectively monetize the programming. “He’s built businesses from the ground up and been in the Web business since its most formative years,” Herb Scannell, chairman of Next New Networks, said in a statement.

The Web studio has already developed a loyal viewer following and also has been growing its advertising stable as it heads toward profitability next year.

Next New Networks launched in 2007 and its Webisodes, including “Indy Mogul,” “Barely Political” and “ZapRoot,” have been viewed more than 190 million times.

“Understanding how to monetize content is something I bring to the table,” Mr. Podell told TelevisionWeek. “I come from the Web business for years and have managed startups and am looking at how you build this within the framework of Web budgets, not TV budgets.”

Mr. Podell also served as the chief marketing officer at Shopping.com and has worked at Chiat Day, Time Inc. and Ogilvy & Mather. “My entire career has been at the intersection of content development and advertising,” he said. “Next New Networks has phenomenal programming and we need to monetize that inventory. I bring the monetization aspect and the ability to innovate ad solutions.”

Broadcast Coverage

 

Broadcast Coverage 11/18/2008 CNN

The Situation Room with Jeanne Moos

11/16/2008 Fox News

Fox & Friends Sunday

11/14/2008 MSNBC

The Rachel Maddow Show

11/14/2008 Fox News

Special Report With Brit

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Good Morning America Radio

11/9/2008

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Glenn Beck CNN Headline News

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8/29/2008

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8/28/2008

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8/27/2008

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8/27/2008

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8/23/2008

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8/22/2008

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8/22/2008

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8/22/2008

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8/20/2008

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8/13/2008

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8/10/2008

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Verdict With Dan Abrams

8/7/2008

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