The 2008 presidential campaign had barely cracked its first yawn when a mischievous imp created a sensation with an update of the famous 1984 Apple TV commercial showing a buff, blonde Über-babe shattering a giant screen with a sledgehammer, liberating the slave drones from their indoctrinated trance. Only, in this revised version it was Hillary Clinton hobgoblinized as the looming commandant in the Orwellian nightmare, her bossy specter hectoring the flour faces of the bedraggled inmates.
...Given the editing tools available to even a modest laptop and the ultra-low point of entry into the YouTube marina, de Vellis is no doubt correct when he signs off, "This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last. The game has changed."
Phil de Vellis created the kind of buzz that media consultants dream of when he created the YouTube video depicting Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in a less than flattering light. That stunt also cost him his job with Blue State Digital, a media shop working on Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential bid.
De Vellis wasn't out of work for long. He is now at a different Democratic media consulting firm, Murphy Putnam Media. That firm works on behalf of a different White House hopeful: New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson.
]]>In this new world, the most effective political ad makers may be amateurs like Phil de Vellis, the Internet consultant who recently took it upon himself to make a powerful pro-Obama ad, based on a famous Apple spot from 1984, that portrayed Hillary Clinton as Big Brother. The ad, which de Vellis made on his Mac in a single afternoon, ricocheted around the Web, reaching millions of Democratic voters. It cost nothing.
]]>Phil de Vellis, the man behind the viral mash-up that starred Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as " Big Sister," is back! This time, he has Paul Wolfowitz spliced in as Michael Scott in NBC's "The Office."
]]>Philip de Vellis, the creator of the "1984" YouTube ad attacking Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is ready to strike again. This time his target is Paul Wolfowitz, the embattled World Bank president.
]]>Mrs. Clinton’s campaign “conversations” with the public have not stooped to the level of Mr. McCain’s fictions. But they have been laced with the cautious constructions that make her stabs at spontaneity seem as contrived as her rigidly controlled Web “chats.” This explains why a 74-second parody ad placed on YouTube by a Barack Obama supporter had enough resonance to earn (so far) nearly three million views. Reworking a famous Apple Macintosh commercial from 1984, the spot recasts Mrs. Clinton as an Orwellian Big Brother by making her seemingly innocuous campaign catchphrases (“I intend to keep telling you exactly where I stand on all the issues” and “We all need to be part of the discussion”) sound like the hollow pronouncements of the Wizard of Oz rather than the invitations to honest interchange the words imply.
]]>It may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate -- one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising.
Yet the groundbreaking 74-second pitch for Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, which remixes the classic "1984" ad that introduced Apple computers to the world, is not on cable or network TV, but on the Internet.
...The compelling "Hillary 1984" video recently introduced on YouTube represents "a new era, a new wave of politics ... because it's not about Obama," said Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank on politics and new media. "It's about the end of the broadcast era."
...[Veteran San Francisco ad man Bob] Gardner said the success of "Hillary 1984" means that now "every candidate will have to worry about some guy with a video camera and a Mac being able to do whatever he or she wants."
At the Obama campaign, he added wryly, "they are probably calling their consultant and saying, 'Why couldn't you guys come up with something as brilliant?' "
]]>Sherrod Brown's campaign is doing something cool: they're inviting supporters to post audio recordings explaining why they support his campaign for the U.S. Senate, using a web service called Evoca. It's a smart way to get ordinary people involved in a campaign. And given that we all respond better to unscripted human voices than to scripted pitches, it may be a great way for the campaign to discover new sources of creativity and support.
...Considering how unlikely it is for a political campaign to take risks with new technology, you have to give the Brown tech team major props for getting this done. The idea actual came from a campaign supporter who talked to Brown, who then asked his team to make it happen. The campaign considered using Evoca to have Brown audioblog, or to enable supporter to post debate comments or questions for Brown. Ultimately they chose this approach in part because they believe these grassroots statements of support will help reinforce the view that Brown enjoys the broad support of average Ohioans, not special interests.
LARRY KING: How do you react, Senator, to your opponent's ad?
SEN. MIKE DEWINE: Well, Larry, I couldn't see it, but I will tell you...
LARRY KING: I guess you know it, though.
...
PAUL BEGALA: Well, my test on these things is the Jean Friday test, she's my mother-in-law in Austin. And I think, OK, what would Mom Friday think? And I think if she those ads we showed before in the Harold Ford race, which were personal and nasty, I think she would kind of recall from that.
But I think both of these ads, I think Mom Friday would think, well, those are important issues. Whether someone's voting for or against intelligence funding is a legitimate issue. And whether someone shows up in Intelligent Committee hearings, those are legitimate issues. They have a much higher ground that both Sherrod Brown and Senator DeWine are fighting over in Ohio. I suspect their voters are probably a little more proud of them than some of the others in the other states we've seen.
LARRY KING: KING: Nicely said.
]]>I wrote yesterday about Republican Senator Mike DeWine's lamentable attendance record on the Senate Intelligence Committee -- despite a wealth of campaign posturing on how strong he is on national security -- and the camp of DeWine's Democratic challenger, Congressman Sherrod Brown, has launched a great ad spotlighting exactly that hypocrisy.
]]>