Ned Lamont and YouTube Setting New Standard

When Ned Lamont's campaign hired Tim Tagaris, the campaign instantly had the best online campaign ever. But the amazing thing about the Lamont campaign is that the blogosphere and netroots integration keeps on getting better -- in fact, they are setting new standards.

Take the distribution of ads online. Until the Lamont campaign, the standard was to release an ad in a windows media and quicktime formats on a campaign website. That was the universal standard. But Lamont's campaign has changed the standard.

On June 26, the Lamont campaign released their Look Who's Talking ad in the traditional formats of WMV and Quicktime on the campaign website and through email. The ad was an instant classic, the National Journal's Hotline On Call blog declared, "If Lamont wins this thing, this ad will become legendary. BTW: the Lamont campaign clearly wants the media to notice this ad and to broadcast it widely in their news stories. Call it a video press release. But it's very provocative."

The ad was amazing and the campaign clearly wanted it to be seen by a wide audience, but the distribution was bottlenecked by bringing people to the campaign's website.

Three days later, the Lamont campaign released another ad online. In addition to the traditional formats for the release, the campaign also linked to the ad where it was playing on YouTube. The campaign showed they were learning, getting better.

On Monday, the Lamont campaign released yet another ad: Ned Lamont has a messy desk. This ad showed that the campaign had refined the new technique of YouTube as a distribution standard. So far, over 125,000 have viewed the ad.

For campaigns interested in internet outreach, monitoring the Lamont campaign is a must. Not only are they showing how to do it, but they are inventing how it will be done.