Following on from my post of yesterday about the Julie Roehm – Barack Obama connection in terms of privacy issues, as further news comes out concerning the 1984 Mash-Up, it does raise issues about political advertising in general. And no, I’m not going to get into the ethics or general bad taste of virtually all of it. What I think the “Hillary” spot points out is that you can produce a very professional commercial for peanuts. OK, the guy who did it is an experienced digital artist, but he did it at home on his own time. Not at the company where he worked. When you consider that so-called “Campaign Consultants” and the agencies they either work with, or through, not only charge high fees and production costs, they also often collect substantial media commissions. If some guy working in his bedroom on a laptop can produce a film with the quality of “Hillary 1984” this makes “Consumer Generated Content” look a lot more attractive than “Consultant Generated Content.”
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Money has never been a factor in my political career. You can take that to the bank!
It's interesting territory we've now ventured into. The availability of multi-media software programs that are affordable to the average joe coupled with the access we all have to the tv network of the now/future (the Internet) means anyone can support/sabotage a campaign. In this case, the guy obviously wanted to support Obama, but in a way, he may have done more harm to Obama's campaign even though it was likely done without any knowledge by the Obama team.
Protecting your brand is very challenging these days. Better live up to your brand promises because those who don't will be crushed.
Posted by: Meek Speaks | March 22, 2007 12:22 PM | Permalink to Comment