As the National Organization for Marriage has likely come to realize, message control on the Internet is close to impossible. The group's recent video against gay marriage has spawned many spoofs mocking the original spot (and criticism from more mainstream sources), one more example of what awaits a political video when it's released into the fray.

Jonah Sachs, co-founder and creative director of Free Range Studios, is well aware of the minefields in the Web media landscape. His production company creates Web ads for numerous advocacy groups, including MoveOn.org. Together they created the "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest in 2004, an early example of successfully incorporating user-generated video into a campaign.

NationalJournal.com caught up with Sachs earlier this month to get his take on issue-based Web video campaigns.

NJ: What trends in advocacy ads have you observed?

Sachs: I think one of the big trends, definitely, is that in the old days I think it had to be fully story-based and fully kind of entertainment-based, and now, since "Inconvenient Truth," people are a little more softened up to the educational, instructional kind of videos as ways of breaking down complex issues and inspiring action around them. It's been kind of interesting that people have been primed for longer-format, more complex ideas.

NJ: At a recent panel discussion, new media consultant Julian Mulvey said that shame is one of the best motivators. Do you agree?

Sachs: You really don't want to shame users into action, but if you're shaming your target, that can be powerful. Especially at a time right now where so many companies are setting social marketing strategies themselves and actually participating in their own Twitter accounts, and looking out for what people are saying about them. I think they're very, very in tune to what buzz is happening on the Internet....

We did something with American Rights At Work called "Friends With Low Wages," which is a Garth Brooks spoof about Walmart. And that was really good because that got a million views and got Walmart to make a response to it, and got them a meeting with Walmart. Walmart definitely stood up and took notice. It had that combination of hitting the issues that would shame Walmart, but also being fun and entertaining enough for the users to feel like it was worth passing on to their friends.

NJ: In the arena of issue-based campaigns, how is a Web video different from a broadcast ad?

Sachs: Web video, a lot of it can be produced really cheap, so you can kind of target demographically different messages for different audiences, really fast and simple. People actually are spending money trying to look quick and dirty. You see that even on TV. Things with an authentic feeling are shot in a day, or cut in a day. You can make 15 of these and put them out to more narrow audiences based on particular issues. Then you can advertise them through demographic slicing through Facebook or something, with quite a bit of information about who you're reaching....

This is kind of a very mini trend, but both us and MoveOn in 2008 did successful video campaigns where the user's name is transmitted through the e-mail and then it's put onto the screen. We did one for AARP where the user's name kept popping up in the video. It's a silly little video, honestly, but it got a huge amount of views just because people were so amazed to see the customized content where they least expected it -- in the video. I think that kind of technology is now going to grow and grow so that people will sort of see themselves in the story in a way, and a single video will be technologically repurposed on the fly.

NJ: Have you seen anything that was a huge failure?

Sachs: A lot of stuff that comes out that's not very good sort of dies a very quiet death, and they don't become case studies of, "Wow, that was a horrible snafu."... There was a huge kind of ability in the early days, and we've been doing this since like 2000, to sort of do these animated political cartoons that... hit right on the issues. And people would spread them because there really wasn't that much entertainment content going on out there.

Now, I think what you have to do to compete with YouTube and compete with all the other video channel stuff people are getting is you really have to package your message... in a full entertainment format; two, bring in some kind of new technological gimmick people haven't seen before; or three, if you're going to simply put a political ad online, something that was meant for TV but you're going to drop it online and hope that that's going to be your campaign, I think that the campaign has to be already front-of-mind for people so people pass it around as part of an ongoing conversation....

Taking a viral strategy with more of a broadcast model approach is continually getting less and less viable, even though it was never a great idea to begin with.

NJ: What are people looking for when they watch video online?

Sachs: They're never looking for advertisements.... The main mistake that so many advocacy groups make is, "Hey, these facts are so shocking and amazing or so self-evident that if we put them up there in a way that people can easily see, they will pass this along and get activated around it." And the truth is, even if it's something that you really resonate with and agree with, it if it feels like an ad.... Somebody talking at you for 30 seconds and making a case, I don't think it'll ever have breakthrough potential.

For more on Web video campaigns by advocacy groups, view this video series.

                                                                                                               -- Theresa Poulson