It could’ve been “Crush on Bauer”
I recently spoke with Ben Relles, founder of BarelyPolitical.com, and Melissa Klein, account manager at LaunchSquad, for an upcoming PRWeek Campaigns story about the PR around the site and its now-infamous “” video. It seems Barack Obama wasn’t the first person considered to be the love interest of the song.
“We actually batted around a couple of different ideas on who we could write songs about, and we considered Jack Bauer from 24 for a little while, and we had some of those lyrics written out,” Relles said.
Not that an ode to Bauer, the government anti-terrorism agent made famous by Kiefer Sutherland on 24, wouldn’t have made for an entertaining video, but ultimately, it’s the strategy behind using Obama that has made the clip such a hit.
Relles explained, “One day, it just kind of hit me – this idea of: if we did a video about Barack Obama, this being the [cycle] that a lot of people are calling the YouTube election, we could be one of the first videos that becomes really popular and also proves that an individual can actually become part of the political conversation through a YouTube video.”
