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will.i.am - "Yes We Can"

Challenge

After losing the New Hampshire primary, but rallying back with an impassioned speech that echoed Cesar Chavez, along with a surprise victory in South Carolina, Illinois Senator Barack Obama was still in for the political fight of his life with New York Senator Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Pop star will.i.am was one of those inspired Obama’s New Hampshire speech and he teamed with music video director Jesse Dylan to create what would soon become the iconic “Yes, We Can” video. When it was time to deliver this once-in-a-lifetime piece of political pop to the public, SocialRadius was enlisted to lead the outreach for what was the Obama’s campaign first “viral video” campaign.

Solution

Precise targeting of bloggers and online thought leaders who would be able to editorially seed the video in such a way that it would immediately and virally take off.

Absolutely no traditional public relations outreach – mainstream outlets would be coming to us.

In undertaking an unprecedented “blogger first” approach, the campaign epitomized the SocialRadius ethos: when you’ve really got something good, let the blogosphere lead and the mainstream media will gladly follow.

Results
  • The video received one million views in 72 hours and 47 million views within three weeks of being released.
  • Universal coverage from the mainstream political and entertainment media, including CNBC, E! Entertainment, Entertainment Tonight, CNN/Larry King Live, The Today Show and This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
  • Later that year, the “Yes, We Can” viral video campaign won an Emmy, a Global Media Award, a Cannes Golden Lion and a Webby award. In 2010, “Yes, We Can” was named by TIME Magazine as one of the 50 best viral videos of all time.
  • The rest, as they say…well, we’ll give the last word to TIME reporter Adam Sorensen, who wrote in March 2012: "'Yes We Can' captured the kind of vague hope-iness that defined Obama’s pop image at the time. And even though his policies weren’t very different from Hillary Clinton’s, the half-term Senator entered the general election a transformational figure in the eyes of many casual political observers."