When you think “IRS,” you don’t think “YouTube.” And when faced with a massive communication challenge, the IRS communicators didn’t think YouTube at first either. But YouTube, as it is wont to do these days, came into play.

In late January with the U.S. economy flagging badly, House leaders and the White House announced an economic stimulus package that would provide “rebates,” as they commonly came to be called, of between $300 and $1,200 per American household.

To IRS chief of communications and liaison Jan Deneroff and Terry Lemons, director of communications, that meant they had a real problem.

Because Americans need to file a tax return to get their rebate, Deneroff, Lemons and national public liaison Candy Cromley needed to reach millions of American who don’t normally pay taxes—namely, social security recipients and retired veterans who don’t make enough money to pay taxes. Some of these people hadn’t filed returns for decades.

“We had to leave no stone unturned,” Lemons says. And since the package was unannounced, they didn’t have much budget money to throw at it, and they had no extra staff.

They started out by doing what they would have done in the same situation a decade ago: They “flooded” their existing channels, sending out news releases and creating a special section at www.irs.gov, they sent out direct-mail letters.

They also reached out to partner groups, like the AARP, military publishers, government agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs and even to state organizations to help get the word out.

A couple of those partners, including the American Payroll Association, had requested some video messages for their Web sites.

And that’s where YouTube came in, albeit serendipitously. There’s a small TV studio at the IRS, where they shoot in-house training videos and the like. A camera crew had a couple hours of downtime. When it occurred to them that the crew might be put into action to make these videos for the APA, IRS communicators scrambled to write up some quick scripts and grabbed a couple of people to read them into the camera.

“We are very quick on our feet,” Lemons says. But they’re not especially hip; and neither were the videos, one of which was read by IRS deputy commissioner Linda Stiff. The videos were about 30 seconds long and super straightforward, one explaining the requirements of getting the rebate, another explaining how to file a tax return if you normally don’t do so, and yet another warning about rebate scams. Later efforts included corresponding messages delivered in American Sign Language, and a detailed three-minute-plus message showing people how to fill out the form.

Not exactly YouTube sex appeal, right? But remember, the videos were only going to the APA. Except, the APA people asked if they could also post the videos on the APA’s YouTube channel.

To which the Lemons said, “Of course.”

And, voila—through this typically-for-social media spontaneous and serendipitous canal was birthed a story the USA Today led this way: “The IRS is taking a cue from aspiring comedians and Barack Obama aficionados this week, making use of YouTube to get its message out.”

And since the videos themselves haven’t received overwhelming numbers of views (11,000 or so was the most watched) that USA Today article and the readers it reached with the IRS’s urgent message about how to get your rebates might have been the main payoff of the experiment. “Buzz is important,” says Lemons.

The article also made IRS partner organizations other than the American Payroll Association more willing to post the IRS videos to their sites, Candy Cromley points out.

Every little bit has the potential to help. Even though they’ve received 55 million page views on their special Stimulus site at irs.gov, IRS communicators know there are millions of people yet to be reached between now and the Oct. 15 deadline for filing for the rebates. They said they hope even this article causes someone to think of a parent or grandparent who might be eligible.

Finally, Deneroff hopes the YouTube videos “made it a little more acceptable” for communicators at the IRS to experiment with social media. Like all other organizations, Deneroff says, the IRS is “gingerly” feeling its way onto the social media frontier. “Maybe we’ll look back and say [the YouTube Rebate video initiative] was the turning point.”