Katrina - Two Years Later
by Michael HoffmanFriday, August 31st, 2007
Continuing with the theme of seeing is believing… Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, President Bush stood in New Orleans and said that we were about to witness “one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.”
Well… about that. For everything that this administration will be remembered for, and we don’t have to go down the list, the response to Hurricane Katrina will surely be near the top of the list.
There is a movement to mobilize people in support of more aggressive federal action to help the people of New Orleans who are still struggling. So a bunch of groups get together and want to get people engaged. OK, quiz time. What’s the best way to do that? Yes, video.
Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films made a 4-minute piece I have pasted below. They put it on YouTube, embedded into this landing page, and then sent emails to all their lists, all at the same time. The idea is to get enough YouTube views to push the video into the Most Viewed, which will put it in front of hundreds of thousands of people who otherwise wouldn’t see it.
Can you imagine that debris hasn’t even been cleared, two years after the hurricane? Can you imagine 80-year-olds needing to sleep in gutted homes because FEMA is starting to charge them to stay in the trailers? It is hard to imagine. But when you see it, you know it’s real.
Please check out the campaign landing page for a nice look at current best practices in microsites like this one. It has the petition right on the home page, a URL that’s easy to remember and fits the content, the video as the center of attention right next to the form, only a few links on the page, clear and concise content, a push to get bloggers like me to host the video to get more views, and a coordinated strategy with multiple organizations.
