Project Phin: Bizarro but Effective Energy Messaging

Late last week, I got an email from Project Phin, announcing that they would be featured on Jay Leno's Tonight Show in a segment with Matt Damon, who is a supporter. Now, you probably have the same question I did - what the hell is Project Phin? Totally normal reaction.

Turns out I already knew what it was - a flex fuel/CAFE standard campaign from the Center for American Progress Action Fund - but I'd forgotten because the campaign was so confusing and quite frankly bizarre. Ignoring the question of whether or not young people actually watch Jay Leno (or the follow-up question of whether an over 30 audience would find any appeal in the Project Phin campaign), I went back to the site to give it another look.

On second glance, the campaign is interesting. They've got a short mockumentary in 7 parts (2-5 minutes each) about some boob's (Phin Sawyer) quest to create his own Flex Fuel/CAFE standards campaign. The videos are attached to a letter-writing campaign directed at Congress, and there are also FaceBook and MySpace groups advertising the project on SocNets. Sitting through a 25 minute mockumentary (even a relatively good one) is a significant investment of time - and I had to force myself to sit through at least 4 of the videos before I started to warm up to the campaign - but by the time I finished, my skepticism was overcome and I found the campaign to be both amusing and also somewhat inspirational.

So how are they doing? Here's the numbers they are publicizing:

Now onto the Project Phin numbers: You watched the videos more than 200,000 times. Wow! And that doesn't include the people who saw the Damon clip on TV during the Tonight Show. You sent more than 20,000 messages to Congress and hundreds of letters to the editors of newspapers around the country. Nearly 1,500 of you have joined Phin's Facebook profile and group and his MySpace communities so far, and you viewed Phin's MySpace blog over 6,000 times.

It's not clear to me that 200,000 is a total for each video, or needs to be divided by 7, which would be a solid though less impressive 28,500 for each video. Since 20,000 letters were sent, I actually find this to be more likely. Regardless, the numbers are not at all shabby, and clearly the videos are hitting a nerve with some people.

The FaceBook and MySpace campaign, not so much. The number of friends on both communities is small (and composed of a lot of green organizations). The real question in measuring the effectiveness of the campaign on SocNets is "are people moving from MySpace/FaceBook to the letter writing tool?" I don't know that they are in any significant number. I also thought it was strange that there was no Project Phin Cause App or Change.org App. Global warming and energy issue groups do better on those Apps than most any other topic, and can help drive traffic to action items. That might have been a good strategy for Project Phin.

Maybe it's proof that I'm starting to age out of this target demographic that I didn't really get hooked by the campaign when I first heard about it (truth be told, I found their slogan - Flex my Fuel, Clean My Ride - to be a much better hook). But great job to the folks at CAP for trying to think outside the box and putting together what has obviously been a successful summer campaign to raise awareness and generate activism around a cleaner, more progressive energy policy.