• by Derek Gordon , October 31, 2011

I’m on a Hammer roll.

Last week I wrote about the new search engine promoted by MC Hammer at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco.  Believe it or not, there’s more Hammer news, and it includes search and social royalty.

San Francisco has had an interim mayor, Ed Lee, who was appointed to the role after then-Mayor Gavin Newsom was elected Lieutenant Governor of California. Lee ascended from the city administrator position, which is the non-elected head honcho in San Francisco, and promised not to run for mayor in the coming election.

It turns out the mustachioed bureaucrat is really really good at the job of mayor, and he got pressed into breaking his promise not to run.  He’s now leading a field of more than a dozen candidates.  All the candidates are using social media, content marketing and search marketing to varying degrees of success, but Mayor Ed seems to be leading the pack in this regard, too.

He’s released an endorsement video featuring luminaries including Google’s Marissa Mayer, Twitter’s Biz Stone, the Giant’s Brian “Fear the Beard” Wilson, YouTube’s Hunter Walk, will.i.am and 49ers legend Ronnie Lott, among others.  The best part: Hammer has adapted his seminal classic “2 Legit 2 Quit” into an endorsement song, and the aforementioned list of endorsers can be seen singing and dancing along (below, or if the video below doesn't work, here):

It’s awesome, it’s gone viral, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t help to secure his election.

While it’s a very good video, it clearly lacks the Hollywood-style production values you often seen in slick campaign commercials or videos.  Which makes it a good reminder of how easy it can be to produce content -- especially video -- that enables your brand to show off a sense of humor even as you also tell your brand story.

Increasingly, search results pages are not only about what’s on your website, but  also about the videos and photos you’re producing. And a great way to make some of that content go viral and get lots of traction is to show a little cheek -- appropriate, authentic cheek to be sure -- because a little humor can go a long way.  Mayor Ed’s video succeeds because he’s willing to poke fun at himself and even refers to his controversial (for San Francisco) rise to power in a humorous way.

It enables him to differentiate himself as both effective and affable. After two terms of a glamorous playboy mayor in Newsom, Ed Lee projects himself as the right sort of down-to-earth antidote for these tough economic times.

Try your hand at creative video making and see if you can’t tell your brand story in a way that not only wins a few laughs, but new admirers.  Who knows, maybe even Hammer is available to help you out!

Hey, and Happy Halloween!