PR Squared: The YouTube Candidate

Via Gary Goldhammer we learn of Barack Obama's announcement of his (much awaited/hyped) presidential candidacy, which was announced via a video on his website. Gary notes, "The first candidate for the You Tube era has arrived."

This led me to wonder. Obama's already had a lot of buzz; certainly he is appealing and youthful. Do these telegenic qualities translate to popularity on YouTube? More interestingly: How does Obama stack up to his potential competitors in terms of YouTube postings? Would an outsized lead on YouTube translate to an early indication that Obama's got "the Youth Vote" locked up?

I did a quick, non-scientific search on YouTube of the major candidates. In each case I tried to use the single tag that gave the biggest ### of results (e.g., there are 533 "Obama" videos and 374 "Barack" videos; assuming built-in redundancy, I erred on the side of only counting the "Obama" video tags).

There are 553 YouTube videos tagged "Obama."
There are 195 YouTube videos tagged "Hilary Clinton."
There are 613 YouTube videos tagged "John Edwards."
There are 27 YouTube videos tagged "Tom Vilsack."
There are 136 YouTube videos tagged "Romney." (Note: there are over 1000 videos tagged "mitt;" given the word's more common meaning, "Romney" appears to be more appropriate.)
There are 808 YouTube videos tagged "McCain."

BTW I can make no comment as to the relevance of these videos (nor to this exercise, for that matter). I also did not make any effort to gauge tonality (I leave that kind of "share of voice" research to vendors like Cymfony, a client).

These stats are interesting in-and-of-themselves, but before you hand the YouTube Prize to McCain (whose victory leads me to question whether YouTube popularity = "winning the Youth Vote"), please note that the Tonality Question is the big challenge. For example, the Obama videos seem to be largely positive, whereas the McCain videos are more of a mixed bag (they range from policy speeches to "McCain Sings Streisand"). This is not surprising, given the Arizona senator's far longer tenure in national politics: there's simply more fodder for the videophiles to play with.

I guess you could argue, though, that "volume" is almost as important as "tone" --- at least "people are posting," which, in the YouTube age, is the important thing.

Tags: youtube, politics, barack+obama, john+mccain, john+edwards, hilary+clinton, tom+vilsack, mitt+romney, vlog, social+media

Comments

Todd --

Interesting metric, but the "John Edwards" is problematic.

There is a popular "psychic-guy-who-talks-to-dead-people" named "John Edward", but most people mistakenly put an 's' at the end of his name anyway.

More relevant will be when the "teeming millions" do more than just post videos and link, but start digging up more about Obama's record and hints of policy stance.

Posted by: Ike | January 16, 2007 04:12 PM

Todd, this was very interesting! Deinfitely something to follow, especially whether candidates start using YouTube in any formal manner, if we start seeing amateur videos of private campaign events, etc.

Posted by: Gary Goldhammer | January 16, 2007 09:53 PM

Maybe YouTube will/can be for Obama what MTV was for Clinton. I think Clinton's heavy involvement in the Rock the Vote campaign aided him in gaining a larger amount of younger voters and increased younger voter turnout in general. Rock the Vote will always sound much cooler than Vlog the Vote though... :).

Posted by: Jessica Armstrong | January 17, 2007 07:07 PM