MoveOn.org Goes to Grassroots for a Pro-Obama Spot
Political activist organization MoveOn.org has begun a search for the perfect Barack Obama video ad, as created by average folks and judged by a Who’s Who of Hollywood’s left-leaning celebrities.
The “Obama in 30 Seconds” contest to find an ad will offer the winning entry a national broadcast slot and a $20,000 gift certificate, to be spent on video and production equipment.
“We’ve already seen an amazing outpouring of creativity for Barack Obama,” Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org’s political action committee, said in a video on the contest’s Web site http://www.Obamain30seconds.com. “We need your grassroots creativity to help put Barack Obama over the top.”
Entrants are being asked to submit ads that are 26 seconds long, to accommodate a 4-second disclaimer. The contest’s online guide says the judges are looking for “positive ads about Obama, not attack ads about others.” The ads should not refer specifically to Hillary Clinton and should only reference President Bush or the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain “in the context of contrasting them with Barack Obama.”
MoveOn.org suggests that entrants look only for public-domain footage or pictures of Obama and offers links to the Barack Obama pages on Flickr. It also specifies that videomakers should blur out or crop any trademarked corporate logos and obtain clearance for any footage, actors or music used in the spots.
The site also points contestants to Obama’s YouTube channel for reference, and to http://www.YouBama.com, a site of user-generated videos about the candidate.
The site will start accepting video submissions today through April 1. Starting April 4, MoveOn members will be able to follow an e-mail link to a site that will let them rate the ads submitted. At the same time, the organization will monitor the public views of each ad on its Web site. The 10 ads that receive the most member votes by April 9 and the five with the greatest number of impressions will become finalists.
On April 10, the expert panel will begin choosing a winner from among those 15 spots. The 24 judges include actors such as Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Steve Buscemi, director Oliver Stone, musicians John Legend, Eddie Vedder and Moby, author Naomi Wolf and political activist Jesse Jackson. Judging will be completed by April 17 and the winner announced shortly after.
The timing and short duration of the contest suggests that MoveOn.org intends to make use of the winning ad in the run-up to the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, to be held on April 22. Pennsylvania is shaping up to be the next state campaign to watch, with a high delegate count than any contests since Super Tuesday: 158 regular delegates and 30 “superdelegates, 14 of which have already pledged for Clinton and four for Obama. Clinton is widely favored to garner most of the Pennsylvania delegates.
In 2004 MoveOn.org ran a similar contest entitled “Bush in 30 Seconds.” That contest resulted in a winning spot, “Child’s Pay,” which showed toddlers working low-wage jobs to pay off the $1 trillion U.S. deficit. Parisi claims it was one of the most viewed political ads of all time.
