He asked. YouTubers are more than happy to tell him.

Posted April 13th, 2007 by Kristin

Oh boy! Mitt Romney wants to know what you believe is America’s single greatest challenge in a video he posted on April 11 as part of the YouChoose ’08: Face the candidates on YouTube. So far he’s had almost 111,000 views, 600 comments and 27 video responses.

Let’s take a look at a representative sample of the comments so far:

• I’m terribly sorry that you’re an idiot. Please don’t share it with me.
• America was in NO WAY founded on religion or the bible. Where do you get your history? Many of the founding fathers were NOT Christian.
• Skip the 10 commandments and let’s just go with “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
• Thou shall not kill that includes sending people to another country to do your dirty work all for oil. This country is being run by the mighty dollar and big corporations, and with the religious fanatics as cheer leaders.
• Just Google this guy. He tries and come off like a good guy, but he’s just another shady politician.
• Education. Especially when it comes to religion affecting schools/education/scientific progress.

He’s certainly engaged the community… which is a start. But I doubt these are the responses Romney was hoping for. What might’ve helped? Here are a couple of basics:

1. Lose the white dress shirt and tie. Look like one of “us”.
2. The background is way too staged. Living room couch, flagged by family photos. Ugh. Smarmy.
3. Drop the politician speak. If you’re gonna take a minute of our time, say something. Don’t pussy foot around. Tell us what you think is our single biggest challenge.

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Taxes and Social Media

Posted April 5th, 2007 by Char Lyn

April 17 is fast approaching. Yes, this year you get two extra days to file your taxes since April 15 is a Sunday and April 16 is Emancipation Day in Washington D.C. Here in Boston, the South Station post office stays open until midnight on tax day so you can really procrastinate. Some people used that extra time to upload an original rap to TurboTax’s YouTube contest. The contest is now closed to entries, but you can still vote on your fave.

In honor of tax season, I thought it might be fun to do a little math and estimate the revenue generated by the contest. To do this, we need the following facts and assumptions:

• ≈ 1.5 million views of contest promo videos by rapper Vanilla Ice
• 370 entries submitted by YouTubers
• ≈ 3000 views per entry (assumption based on a range of 800 to 10,000 views per submission, with many in the 2000 range)
• ≈ 5% of viewers will visit TurboTax.com (assumption based on available research of 0.4% to 20% click through rates on video campaigns)
• ≈ 5% of site visits will result in product purchase (shot in the dark assumption)
• standard purchase price is $ 49.95

Now for the math:

If you read through the assumptions, you know that this is very soft math, but with a microsite, they will be able to track the actuals very closely. And, that is the advantage of this type of campaign. Unlike traditional magazine and TV ads, a company can track the success, or failure, of an online video marketing campaign.

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