YouTube’s unpredictable and quirky short videos have seduced more and more eyeballs these days. You never know what might catch the public’s imagination and create buzz—a new spoof commercial/political hit piece, maybe tomorrow’s new pop star. The question nearly poses itself to labor communicators: How can they make this Siren sing their song?

Apparently one answer they’re testing is the short vid contest.

Take the Writers Guild of America, for example. Their strike, with its motto “Pencils down,” has stalled Hollywood’s dream-making machine. It is, as the wordsmith’s union itself says, a fight for the future. At stake is whether the writers get any share of what the production companies make when they sell movies or TV shows over the internet.

And fittingly, the WGA is using the web and YouTube to publicize its position and build solidarity.

Jeff Berman, a feature film writer and WGA activist, came up with the idea. Before the strike had even started he and other union members set up a website (www.UnitedHollywood.com) to disseminate info on the union’s position to WGA members and the general public.

“We wanted to get our own points across since most media is owned by the conglomerates we were about to strike,” Berman told me.

One way around the media moguls, Berman figured, was using the internet, YouTube, the writers’ high profile and the loyalty of their fans.

“I thought that if we had a viral video campaign where we asked fans to make them about the issues that affected us, we could get them involved and spread the word,” Berman said.

So they started another site, www.fairdeal4writers.com and invited fans to make short vids of four minutes or less focusing on their issues. The call is made with short videos of the three judges (top notch producers/directors/writers) explaining the rules, which are minimal and encourage creativity. The prizes include a strike picket sign autographed by more than 100 WGA and Screen Actor Guild members. The more than two dozen entries already posted are worthy of this imaginative union.

With this technique the WGA is targeting the tech/web savvy population, particularly the young and hip who are major media consumers and customers. These folks are more inclined towards the writers’ position that web delivery of entertainment is its future and that of advertising dollars—and that any denial of that is either laughably low-brow or seriously sinister.

The Communications Workers of America is also holding a YouTube short video contest along with Jobs with Justice and its annual Student-Labor Action Project. It is focused on an issue the union is committed to highlighting: the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bill in Congress that would remove some of the obstacles to union organizing and that passed the House but was blocked in the Senate by a Republican filibuster.

The targeted contenders—and much of the contest’s audience—are even more sharply focused than simply the young digital generation—it’s activist students from high school to grad school and their campus organizations (www.efcavideo.com). Winners will receive cash prizes to fund their activist projects.

“The idea of the contest is two-fold,” CWA Communications Director Jeff Miller told me. “We want to push the issue out to campuses and educate students and progressive activists. And we hope to get some good, creative videos we can viral.”

With celebrity judges yet to be announced, CWA and JwJ will select 10 finalists from the one to two minute entries that will receive $500 awards. Then online voting ala “American Idol” will select the top three winners that will receive additional money.

Miller said leaving the final judging to vox populi was democratic and more.

“It will bring attention to the contest and get more people looking at the videos, which is part of the goal,” he added.
The AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Dept. is also holding a short video contest open to it rank-and-file members as part of its 100th Anniversary celebrations (www.bctd.org). The three-minute entries are supposed to evoke “their own personal thoughts and feelings on what being a member of their union has meant to them personally; to their families; and to their general well-being.”

But its rules for submissions are five pages of legalese! Doesn’t sound like a fun contest or a particularly inventive use of the medium. These regulations seem to have been drafted by a lawyer way too familiar with YouTube’s copyright violation disputes. After reading them, any creativity a member might have brought to the project is bludgeoned in a way that usually takes three years of law school. (A case of misery loves company?) It may be on YouTube, but it seems more like an example of how not to do it than something to be emulated.

Compare this to the CWA-JwJ approach. Its call for entries suggests they can be serious looks at actual campaigns or parodies—“Think Michael Moore” it exhorts. Even the name of the contest—“There ought to be a law”—is playful and suggests humor and satire.

One of my top three rules for communications work in this multi-media saturated world is “Make it fun or die.” As the venerable community organizer Saul Alinsky put it in his Rules for Radicals: “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”