PRESS RELEASE from AdYourVoice2012.com

For Immediate Release:

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Contact: Michael Waxman

 
New York, N.Y.—AdYourVoice2012.com launched today with a competition that invites the public to submit 30-60 second videos in support of President Barack Obama’s reelection. Twenty finalists will be selected through public crowdsourcing; the winning video selected by a panel of judges will be made primetime-ready with the support of a top director and prominent actors for wide distribution on TV and online.  The project is designed to amplify the voices of moderate and Democratic voters and offset the influence of the Republicans’ well-funded super PACs.
 
“We launched this contest to help counter the Republican messaging machine,” said Ad Your Voice founders Alexandra Kerry and Amanda Griscom Little. “We can’t out-fundraise Karl Rove and the Koch brothers, but we can out-message them by tapping into the voices, talents, and tech-savvy of millions of Obama supporters.”
 
Users can submit videos at AdYourVoice2012.com between September 17th and October 15th, 2012. Submissions can be viewed on the Ad Your Voice Youtube channel and on AdYourVoice2012.com. Public voting will begin on September 24th using Facebook’s “like” functionality. The finalists will be selected through a combination of this grassroots voting effort and the judgments of a panel of luminaries in media and entertainment who support Barack Obama, including Bill Maher and Scarlett Johansson.  
 
The winner will receive a $10,000 cash prize and the chance to work with well-known actors and directors to make their video ready to air on primetime television in the week before the election.
 
AdYourVoice2012.com is financed through donations to the newly formed SuperPAC We The People.

 

Amanda Griscom Little is the author of Power Trip: The Story of America's Love Affair With Energy (HarperCollins); she teaches new media and investigative journalism and at Vanderbilt University. Little's articles on environment, energy and technology have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Wired, O Magazine, New York, and the Washington Post.  She wrote a syndicated weekly column about green politics on Grist.org and Salon.com, and a monthly column on green innovation for Outside magazine. Little currently writes a blog about the new energy economy for Forbes.com and is the recipient of the Jane Bagley Lehman Award for excellence in environmental journalism. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband and children.

 

Alexandra Kerry is a director, producer and creative director. In 2008, she co-founded the branded content and directing team Fictional Pictures.  Along with her partner Lucy Barzun Donnelly, Alex runs Locomotive Film, which develops and produces film and television and online content. Since 2009, Alex has been a Managing Director at a global consulting firm, where she leads alternative marketing campaigns in a range of media.  She has directed spots for Reebok, Allstate, HSBC, fashion films, TV programs and, and short films, including The Last Full Measure, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival She is producing the television show The Glory of it All, (based on the novel “Oh, The Glory of it All”) by Sean Wilsey and directing the film The Problem with other People. Alex is also the co-producer of several documentaries, including the award-winning HBO documentary Be Like Others.

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Inspired by the wealthy Republicans who Swiftboated her father, Alexandra Kerry launched Ad Your Voice to promote the creation and dissemination of independent campaign ads supporting President Obama’s re-election. 

 

With the support of actress Scarlett Johansson and TV figure Bill Maher, Ad Your Voice encourages users to create and submit their own campaign ads, ranging from the professional to the deeply personal.

 

Through crowd sourcing and with support from a panel of judges, they will choose one ad to receive $10,000 and the possibility of a major TV ad buy, funded by Kerry’s new SuperPAC. Additional original videos supported by Ad Your Voice will roll out in the countdown to the election, and the project has partnered with Funny Or Die and College Humor to aggregate the best pro-Obama political videos on AdYourVoice2012.com.

 

Ad Your Voice was founded by filmmaker Alex Kerry and journalist Amanda Griscom Little.

We The People Inc. has been organized exclusively as a political organization within the meaning of section 527 of the IRS code 1986 to support the operations of AdYourVoice2012.com.