PAC Effort Blends Celebs and Video to Push Fuel Efficiency Issue

CONTACTS: ClickZ News Matthew G. Nelson

Friday, July 20, 2007 -- 12:00 AM

When circulating a petition just doesn't cut it, some political action committees resort to the universal online currency of amusing online videos.

The most recent example is a campaign for the Center for American Progress Action Fund, called Project Phin, which kicked off this week. The goal of the effort is to put pressure on Congress to advance tougher gas mileage standards and increased flexible fuel availability into an upcoming energy bill. To achieve its aims, and get the public involved, the group has created a series of six online videos to be distributed around the Web, with the tagline "Clean My Ride, Flex My Fuel."

The video series, which is online at CleanMyRide.org , goes beyond your typical "dog on skateboard" films by involving well-known actors and celebrities, and was created by think tank First Tuesdays and media firm MSHC Partners. Along with an "everyman" main character trying to raise awareness of the issue, the films feature Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Sarah Silverman and others.

"What's new about this for us is the nexus of popular culture and politics and entertainment combined," said Brian Komar, director of strategic outreach for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Next to each of the six episodes playing on CleanMyRide.org is a call to action to send a letter to Congress. To make sure more people know of the project, the Center for American Progress Action Fund is pushing the video out to a range of other sites, including Capitol Hill Broadcasting Network, ISupportThisMessage.com, Blip.tv, Twitter and others. The group is also advertising the videos through a number of offline and online means. The campaign has allied itself with Care2.com, an online progressive social networking community, and the main character Phin has MySpace and Facebook profiles. The group has even taken to distributing flyers to Washington D.C. pedestrians in costume. But the largest effort to promote the films is advertising directly in blogs covering political, environmental and entertainment categories.

"We're going to be doing a lot of blog outreach and working with consultants that will be visiting the different social networking communities," said Komar. "We have a six-person blog team and this is all they do."

The group is specifically reaching out to blog sites like Dlisted, Crooks and Liars, TalkingPointsMemo, The Hollywood Gossip, AMERICAblog, Political Wire, Science Blog, EcoGeek and others.

The use of humorous online videos is a natural for political action groups due to its ease of distribution, general popularity, and affordability of production, said Komar.

"For us, this is about audience-centric outreach. Using online video and social networking and online community destinations is about reaching out to an audience via their preferred platforms," he said. "It's about being in tune with what our audience wants. And it's also certainly more affordable."

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