Mitt’s Video Ad Contest

Want to become a Web 2.0 political operative? Here’s your chance. Mitt Romney’s campaign, in association with Jumpcut, part of Yahoo (YHOO), has announced an online video contest. The winning video will become the “campaign’s new official TV advertisement.”

The contest site offers entrants a number of audio and video assets from Romney’s existing media promotions. The contest is also extremely open-ended: “your ad can have practically any theme you choose as long you support the campaign creatively and responsibly.” This seems to be an invitation for the net-savvy saboteurs who brought the Chevy Tahoe’s user-generated ad campaign so much unwanted attention.

This isn’t the first time Yahoo!’s platform has been used to organize and promote various candidates’ campaigns. Kathie Legg, Political Producer for Yahoo! Elections, says “In fact, all the major candidates are using Yahoo!’s social platforms to strengthen their relationships with citizens and to find new supporters. Candidates and their teams are actively posting to Flickr, uploading videos, and participating in Answers.” However, it has been Google-owned (GOOG) YouTube that has housed so much of the online video debate for this election, including Hillary Clinton’s similar announcement of her campaign song search.

The Romney contest comes after Romney commented after the YouTube/CNN Democratic debate that: “I don’t think candidates should have to answer questions from a snowman,” referring to the quirky character one questioner used to ask about global warming. I hope that Billiam the Snowman enters the competition and puts his frosty sense into the ring.

The growing presence of campaign-endorsed user-generated advertising makes me wonder how this might impact campaign finance reform. The Romney campaign will still need to spend its money to purchase the television advertising time, but the potential for a campaign to use a user-generated ads in extremely viral ways for almost no cost could turn campaign spending on its head. We’ll see what the Federal Election Committee has to say about Billiam the Snowman.