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WASHINGTON - A Utah college student is the winner of presidential candidate Mitt Romney's create-your-own-advertisement contest and will be the first amateur to have his work appear as an official television commercial for a presidential campaign, Romney's campaign announced Thursday.
Ryan Whitaker, 23, of Provo, received the most views for his "Ready for Action" video and received nearly half the votes cast among the nine finalists. Whitaker, a junior at Brigham Young University, was stoked to learn he won the contest out of 129 entries.
"I'm just really glad that I could support him this way," Whitaker said in an interview. "As a student, sometimes it's not easy to make monetary contributions, and I feel like this way is just as viable and is just as important but it's something I can produce, that I can contribute."
Romney adviser Alex Castellanos said in a statement that Whitaker's ad may be the first amateur-made official presidential campaign spot, but it "won't be the last."
"This revolutionary use of user-generated content empowers our grassroots supporters and their efforts immeasurably strengthen our campaign," Castellanos said.
Whitaker, a video hobbyist who made his piece online at his Provo rental house, features several still and moving images in his ad and overlays the audio of a speech Romney gave to the spring meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee. The 57-second video includes images of the snow-capped Wasatch Mountain range, a fog-shrouded San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Iwo Jima flag raising and the Olympic torch run and opening ceremonies.
It will air in five Iowa and New Hampshire media markets once a day for a week, according to the campaign, which declined to say how much the ad buy would cost.
The Romney campaign did not choose another video for its finalists list even though at one point it was the most watched on its site. That video, by the editors of Slate, poked fun at a comment Romney made earlier this year in response to whether his sons had served in the military or would join.
Romney responded that his five sons are serving their country by helping him get elected.
In the Slate ad, called "Five Brothers" - in a takeoff on the military series "Band of Brothers" - shows the sacrifices the sons are making on the campaign trail, including hitting golf balls, seeing the world's largest catfish and pulling over to see a field buzzing with lightning bugs.
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney will be in Utah today for a fundraising event at the Salt Palace. He will also speak to a secretive, conservative group called the Council for National Policy.