Obama Campaign: 20 Videos a Month, 77 Million Views

I read a book today about the success of the Obama campaign, Barack, Inc., Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign by Barry Libert and Rick Faulk (who run Mzinga, a social software company). It says a lot less about the role of social media in the campaign than I was expecting, but it was still worth the 60 minutes it took me to read.

It's sometimes a little complex to explain to my clients why they might not want to use a video creation process that is labor-intensive or costly. Now I have the perfect proof.

My favorite quote:

"Hundreds of videos produced rapidly and cheaply by the Obama staff, were put up on YouTube. Toward the end of the campaign, they were being uploaded at the rate of 20 or more a day. As of October 2008, the videos had been seen 77 million times on YouTube alone."

Of course, these are far better results than almost any other campaign in history - and the stakes were high - but the very idea of creating 20 videos a month is a good concept for people to contemplate.

Most people seem to be happy to be able to publish just one - and that takes a tremendous amount of effort.

One way to succeed is to find easy ways to make videos - which, of course, is what I like to teach my clients - just how to do that very thing!