Over the past few weeks, the White House has been sending its Council of Economic Advisers chair, Austan Goolsbee, out onto the Internet circuit with a series of videos to explain the current economic situation and the talk up president’s economic policies. They’re called “White House White Board” and represent perhaps the best Internet outreach by President Obama’s team since, well, maybe the 2008 presidential campaign.
The first one received more than 47,000 views on YouTube alone. This may not sound like a lot compared to “viral” videos with more than 1 million views, but it does appear to be the most popular video the White House has posted to its YouTube channel in several months. These days, most top out around 1,000 views, and even Obama’s own speeches are hovering around 20,000. Considering that views of 200,000+ was typical for many videos on Obama’s YouTube channel a year ago, here is an example of how President Obama’s online popularity has diminished. Meanwhile, it might well be fair to say that Goolsbee is the White House’s hottest star.
In addition to the 47,000-times seen video, Goolsbee took the same chart to the Colbert Report, where he squared off with Stephen Colbert and repeated his explanation of the president’s preferred tax bill.
The latest video was released just this morning, and it’s much like the last: Goolsbee stands in front of a pre-drawn chart on a white board and explains what it means. Maybe it’s not quite a true “whiteboard” video like American Public Media’s Marketplace Whiteboard or even those famous UPS ads. It only has a few hundred views as yet, but I’ll bet that’s about to change:
What really sells these, of course, is Goolsbee. He’s got great timing and just the right cadence for a video that’s meant to be both primarily informative and at least somewhat entertaining. One of Goolsbee’s quirkier resume items is having belonged to an improv comedy troupe at Yale, and perhaps it’s no surprise that he tried his hand at stand-up comedy earlier this year:
As this comedy blog observes, he doesn’t exactly knock ‘em dead, but he does have the confidence to deliver a much better performance, given stronger material.
In fact, that’s probably the biggest risk for Goolsbee and the White House — whether their material good enough for prime time. With the midterms in just a few weeks, the 2012 campaign will get under way soon. Is that enough time to work out the economy in small clubs web videos?
