Corporations Using "Amateur" Video to Sway Opinions

The Wall Street Journal has an article (unable to link because of their firewall but it's syndicated in numerous papers) about corporations using You Tube and other sources to distribute amateur looking video. These are designed to appear non-professional and are being produced to sway public opinion. Since people assume they're done privately they seem to have greater credibility. It is possible to determine their sources though and that can get embarrassing.

Take this example. It seems this spoof of Al Gore and his global warming documentary was actually produced by people representing Exxon Mobil. Wow. I'll say one thing, internet tracking and tracing software is amazing. I've had to make use of it myself recently. There really is no such thing as anonymity on the internet. If someone wants to track you down they can. In this case the computer which uploaded the video was tracked to a company called DCI Group. DCI represents Exxon.

The article also discusses the increasing use of video for political purposes. This interests me because I was involved in it while working for Chuck Pennacchio. Our internet/communications director was a young hotshot named Tim Tagaris. Tim came in from Ohio and developed a website that incorporated video extensively. He was determined to use video extensively on the website and we did. Every appearance Chuck did was videotaped then Tim gave me the tape and I'd download and burn it to a dvd. Then Tim would edit the tape and upload clips to the website.

If you recall a short segment he took of Rick Santorum's supporters at Drexel shouting "hey, hey, ho ho, Social Security has got to go." That was our first impact use of this strategy. We also took much footage of Chuck discussing the issues and they're still available on the website. We all agreed this was a powerful way to use video and incorporated it into the overall campaign strategy. It was all Tim's idea and he was cutting edge 18 months ago with his advocacy of the idea.

Tim went on to Grow Ohio, writing the DNC blog and is now running Ned Lamont's website and blog in Connecticut. National blogs have been running short video pieces through You Tube about that campaign. Of course they are all disclosed and you know who did them and why. That's a big difference.

The bottom line in all this though is disclosure. We never uploaded video and pretended it was anything other than it was: campaign material. Shooting something and pretending it's an amateur production is cheating the public. Disclosure is important. If DCI Group had a legitimate argument to make about global warming and/or their opposition to Gore's movie they should have identified themselves as the source of the video on You Tube. Not doing so and getting caught is shameful and simply labels the video as industry propaganda.