My Dinner With Andre…actually, Barack

Last quarter the Obama campaign went through stories sent in by their grassroots contributors to form a quartet that would sit down with the Senator over dinner to discuss the race and our nation.

I sometimes want to doubt these things – that it may have been part gimmick, part list-building tool, or part fund-raising ploy – and I don’t know how much of Obama’s massive grassroots financing effort came through the Dinner With Barack contest. In the end the intent and the numbers don’t matter, as it made for great online viewing.

It became a unique time all of us got to spend with the Senator.

Before releasing the clip of the actual dinner, the BarackTV team released a series of pieces talking to the dinner guests. We got a chance to meet them, to actually see their lives, to hear their stories, and to get a feel for what draws them to Obama.

Knowing a bit about the guests made the dinner video more effective, featuring the supporters as characters rather than props in the story.

The dinner itself went very well. This experience was quite different from what you usually get from campaign videos. It was quiet, personal, humorous, and conversational.

If there was anything I’d have done differently, it would have been to combine the guest footage with the dinner into a slightly larger piece, and to talk to Obama separately from the dinner, not unlike the talks with the guests. Get his point of view on what it takes to run a campaign from the bottom up.

Maybe a clip like that is still in the pipeline. Who knows?

But, bravo to the BarackTV folks! Bully for you for a cool project.