Well, they’re not actually competing directly for anything other than our attention, but both Mitt Romney and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have launched campaigns lately to leverage the creative power of their supporters. Romney’s is the most recent — reader Jake Davison just passed along a message from the campaign touting a new create-a-video-ad contest using Yahoo’s Jumpcut service. Romney’s folks provide stills and clips a la the Chevy Tahoe campaign for director-wannabes to use in their own creations, and future ad geniuses can also create their own audio/video clips as long as they don’t break copyright. The chosen ad will be used on the television machine. The choice of Yahoo’s platform is particularly interesting considering that the RNC has recently snagged the former director of that company’s election strategy. My submission will involve lots of robots — the only way to do this particular candidate justice. [Note: also picked up by Jose Antonio Vargas and tPrez today.]
A few days ago, the DSCC also joined the social media wars with a create-a-bumper-sticker contest called “Bump Up Our Majority” (get it?). Voting ends tonight, so you kids better jump right on that. Looking at the four initial examples they provide, let’s hope some better suggestions come in from the unwashed masses. Actually, these contests do provide an excellent example of a good reason to turn to your supporters for creative content — they may not always do better than the professionals, but it’s hard for ALL of them to do worse.
– cpd