K Street Cafe

A few Thursday evenings ago, NBC aired a rerun of last year’s highly anticipated The Office episode that featured Pam and Jim getting married. When I watched the episode again two weeks ago, I could not help thinking about a crucial lesson to be learned for any organization planning their next advocacy campaign.

If you watched Pam and Jim’s wedding, you will recall that the writers heavily borrowed the memorable wedding routine from the extraordinarily popular YouTube video JK Wedding Dance. It’s the one where the wedding party dances down the aisle to Chris Brown’s song, Forever.  The video became so popular (now over 44 million views on YouTube) that the entire group was invited to recreate the routine on The Today Show.

I suppose The Office writers borrowed heavily from this video for two reasons:  First, so many Americans were familiar with the YouTube video that viewers would get the joke. Second, the writers were likely trying to evoke the same kind of emotion that made the video wildly popular in the first place.

When I first watched the episode I was disappointed. It struck me that the writers should have come up with a wedding scene that was not only memorable but completely unique. But I guess in an age of YouTube, asking the writers to produce something original that tops JK Wedding Dance is asking the impossible. How can a small group of professional writers compete with the millions of talented everyday citizens that upload original content to YouTube daily?

And that is the lesson for every advocacy group. Why not include all supporters in coming up with great ideas and in creating content? Organizations that invite supporters in on every stage of an advocacy campaign have a better chance at generating powerful results than if all of the ideas are generated by a few people inside the organization.

Consider the Speak Now For Kids campaign run by the National Association of Children’s Hospitals (N.A.C.H.) to raise awareness about the needs of children in the health care system reform debate last year. Rather than come up with all the ideas internally, N.A.C.H. encouraged supporters to upload video testimonials in their own words. (Disclosure – my firm, Adfero Group, worked with N.A.C.H. last year on the Speak Now For Kids campaign.)

The team at N.A.C.H. thought if they got supporters involved in creating content it would be more effective than any internal messaging they could create on their own. They were right. Have a look at some of the videos: Amy L. from Olney, MD, Kerry E from Union, NJ , and Carolyn H from Clarksville, IN.

(Note: Speak Now For Kids is a finalist for a Webby Award. I hope you will take a moment before voting ends at the end of the day to vote for Speak Now in the association category)