|
IT was
inevitable. In the Internet age, interest groups seeking
influence in Washington are joining presidential
candidates in discovering a new electronic tool to press
their agenda: YouTube.
“Send
your Underwear to the Undersecretary,” urges the actress
in the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s stinging
66-second antiregulatory video posted on YouTube Inc.,
the free online site that is a subsidiary of Google Inc.
The video blames a 2001 Energy Department rule for an
energy-efficiency standard that it says has made some
newer-model washing machines more expensive, while
getting laundry less clean.
The
underwear spot illustrates what other advocacy groups
are finding out, that YouTube is a cheap, creative way
to get a message to a potentially vast audience. This
slow migration is in addition to more traditional
lobbying approaches, such as direct mail, web sites and
scripted phone calls to federal officials.
“This is
the next step,” said Missi Tessier, a principal with the
Podesta Group, a Washington lobbying firm. She said her
company is working on a YouTube piece pushing for more
federal funding for basic research for one client, the
Science Coalition, a group of research universities. “We
are always trying to find ways to get our message out.”
Concerned Families for ATV Safety, a network of families
that wants to keep children off all-terrain vehicles,
turned to YouTube to lobby for more federal oversight at
the agency and congressional level. One of the parents
produced the video and posted it on May 18.
‘Dangerous machines’
“We
decided to put it on to raise awareness about how
dangerous the machines are,” said Carolyn Anderson, of
Brockton,
Massachusetts,
who lost a son in an ATV accident and is a co-founder of
the group.
Some of
the presidential candidates already have calculated that
YouTube postings will reach the same younger audience
that regularly visits social networking sites such as
Facebook and MySpace.
A few
federal agencies have taken the plunge, too.
Officials at the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy said it expects its YouTube messages to
be ridiculed, laughed at, remade and spoofed. And they
are. Its antidrug message is also reaching the right
demographic.
The
Consumer Product Safety Commission realizes YouTube
would be a great way to broadcast product recall and
safety messages, though it has not produced a video for
it.
“There
are a tremendous amount of people who use that web
site,” said Scott Wolfson, an agency spokesman. “But we
worried about the integrity of the message being changed
by users.”
43
videos
THE
YouTube audience hardly seems like the demographic that
would be interested in washing machine efficiency.
Still, the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise
Institute, which opposes energy-saving fluorescent bulbs
and increasing the gas mileage of cars and trucks, has
43 videos up on the site. Many of them are snippets of
speeches and testimony with few “hits.”
And then
there’s the underwear spot.
“We
figured we would try a very fast, inexpensive campaign
that would go viral,” said Sam Kazman, general counsel
at CEI and head of its Death by Regulation project. The
video went up May 16 and had 1,306 hits in the first
week, a respectable showing, especially considering the
subject matter.
Kazman
said the campaign cost virtually nothing. He wrote the
script, one employee did the acting, and another did the
filming.
Consumer
ratings
THE CEI
web-site links to the video and to a June Consumer
Reports’ magazine article that rated top- and
front-loading washing machines for energy efficiency and
performance. The rule required washing machines
manufactured after the beginning of this year to be
35-percent more efficient. The magazine found the
performance of the new machines varies widely.
“Not so
long ago you could count on most washers to get your
clothes very clean,” said the article. ``Not anymore.
Our latest tests found huge performance differences
among machines. Some left our stain-soaked swatches
nearly as dirty as they were before washing. For best
results, you’ll have to spend $900 or more.”
Kazman,
who said he owns a 21-year-old Whirlpool washing
machine, took this as confirmation that predictions his
group made in 2001, that the rule would wreck a
“low-priced, dependable home appliance,” have come true.
Manufacturers disagree
THE
manufacturers of home appliances, energy-efficiency
groups and regulators who are being mocked in the video
disagree.
Celia
Kuperszmid Lehrman, deputy home editor at Consumer
Reports, said the underwear campaign takes the ratings
out of context. “We support energy standards for washing
machines,” she said. “There are alternatives that will
wash as well as older machines. They cost more to buy,
but not to operate.”
“I think
it’s obnoxious; I don’t think this dog barks,” said
Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance
Standards Awareness Project in Boston, a coalition of
industry, consumer, environmental and state interests.
DeLaski,
who was involved in the negotiations that led to the
2001 rule, said it was expected at the time that prices
would go up, but that consumers would save on utility
bills.
“That’s
a regulation working pretty damn well,” he said, adding
that consumers can expect to save $80 annually on
utility bills with the new models.
Michael
McCabe, a senior engineer at the Energy Department, said
that nine out of 10 models Consumer Reports tested are
in the price range that DOE predicted when it issued the
rule, an extra $250.
On the
underwear front, Kazman said he sent his own (clean)
underwear to the Energy Department. The Department said
the mailbox of Undersecretary Dennis R. Spurgeon is
still empty. Kazman blamed the late delivery on another
government policy, which subjects packages to
irradiation. |
