Mark Putnam

The creator of Barack Obama’s 30-minute ad…Politics: What was the vision for Obama’s 30-minute ad, and how tough was the process of pulling it all together in that timeframe? Putnam: Well, we really didn’t get started on the editing until two and half weeks before the air date. There was just a lot of getting everybody on the same page about what it was going to say and pouring through literally thousands of hours worth of footage and speeches, and then writing the script for Sen. Obama.
We wanted him to really tie it all together with substance. The primary goal was to communicate a plan for the country substantively, but in a way that didn’t drag down into Ross Perot pie charts. And we had the idea of having real stories be a part of that. People look at the half-hour program as an example of just the sheer dominance of the campaign, but really the campaign had the extra resources and they wanted to %uFB01gure out how to best make a closing argument.
This wasn’t going to be Ross Perot with pie charts, or a Hubert Humphrey telethon. It was going to be a chance to marry substance with storytelling, with emotion, with contemporary pacing, and prompts to access the website and text message the campaign. It was really bringing the new media component into the program as well, and marrying a pre-produced portion with a live component. There were a lot of things we brought together into the program that hadn’t been done before, but at its essence it was still a traditional communications device. Politics: Did you look at any of the 30-minute spots that had been done for other campaigns, either the recent ones or even the ones from the 50’s and 60’s? Putnam: No, actually. I didn’t want to be unduly in%uFB02uenced. I wanted to create something really fresh. There was a temptation to look at what Bill Clinton had done in 1992, it was one of the more recent ones, and it was probably closer to what we wanted to do than the Ross Perot approach, but in the end I wanted to have it be tailored to Barack Obama as opposed to trying to emulate something that had been done before.
I have to say, though, that the Obama 30-minute %uFB01lm was really a mountaintop for me, personally. It’s hard to imagine another campaign where a person has a chance to produce something that 33 million people watch and you help elect a transformational %uFB01gure president of the United States. That’s a really amazing thing to be a part of, and I’m grateful to have had that opportunity. Politics: Was the idea always there to have a live portion of the ad? Putnam: Yes. From the start we knew we wanted to have a live component to it. A lot of different ideas where tossed out in the %uFB01rst week of hashing out how the show would progress. I was always a proponent of ending with a large live event. I thought that was the one piece that the rest of the show didn’t have.
The event was a nod to the grassroots aspect of the campaign, the whole movement nature of it. Politics: You’re known for some ads that are a bit outside-the-box. Do you think candidates are trusting their media consultants to be more creative? Putnam: With Gov. Richardson, what was daring about the job interview ads we did was that, up to that point, no major candidate for president had ever used humor in presidential campaign advertising. It just is not done. But we had a unique situation where we had this intersection of a candidate with an incredibly strong resume with a unique personality who could pull off something like that. And a unique stature in the race where he was seen as the underdog despite overwhelming credentials.
But it does come from whether you have built up trust with your candidate, and we had worked with him in his 2006 reelection. In the 2006 campaign we made an ad where we were spoo%uFB01ng a western movie where Richardson was the sheriff. When he %uFB01rst saw the script, he didn’t know what to make of it. And when we were %uFB01lming it, he didn’t know what to make of it. He was just going along to see how it came out. But when it worked, suddenly he knew that we knew what we were doing.
So I think with any campaign you have to build up the trust with the candidate. It’s part of our approach to try to %uFB01gure out the most creative way to get people to pay attention to our television ad. Or, in the world of new media, to create something that’s going to get buzz out there to help drive fundraising and to help drive organizing. Politics: What media strategies did we see in 2008 that were new? Putnam: Well, the fundamentals are still the same when you look at it from just a TV point of view. You want to come up with a strategy and communicate it effectively in a way that engages voters, and that hasn’t changed. I think what has changed is this growing convergence and integration between new media and traditional media, and there are really two dynamics at play there. There is the persuasion versus mobilization aspect of new media and how it interacts with traditional media. And then there is the different dynamic that you have in a presidential campaign versus what you see in down-ballot races.
In terms of mobilization versus persuasion, during the primaries you saw integration being very important in persuading voters. If you became interested in a candidate through TV, you would seek out more information from the Internet. That dynamic doesn’t exist yet in the general election. In the general, it’s less persuasion online and much more mobilization of the people who are already with you. Politics: The type of convergence you’re talking about, what’s the tipping point that brings that to the down-ticket level? Putnam: I think it’s an evolution. People just aren’t as tuned in to who their member of Congress is and who might be running in their district, so it’s going to take some time. It will happen when the two mediums are married together more, and we really aren’t there yet. People are not yet in mass quantities watching TV via the Internet. I think it will get there when people can access TV and the Internet through the same interface. Politics: What is the next big innovation in the political media industry? Putnam: Right now we’re just in the midst of the convergence, it hasn’t happened yet completely. But I think you’re going to see that growth. You will see the two mediums being married much more closely together. I think that’s the direction. There’s an integration of new and traditional media and there’s a convergence going on, it just hasn’t happened yet completely.
And I don’t think they are ever going to be seamlessly intertwined and here is where I may disagree with a lot of people. I think there is an inherent passive nature to television and a participatory nature to the Internet. And we are human beings that sometimes just want to sit in front of a television and watch and sometimes we want to seek out information. I don’t know if we are ever going to be doing those two things simultaneously.