Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

I have to say that the news of virtually every presidential hopeful jumping on the YouTube bandwagon doesn’t exactly thrill me. Every top candidate unveiled their own YouTube video channels on Thursday, pushing the video-sharing site solidly into the U.S. political mainstream. The rational they give is that it will allow candidates to control how they exchange views with voters. Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson have signed up to have their own channels. So have Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. We are told that they can post a video in which they speak on a given issue while members of the public will be able post a video response or questions for the candidate. And here’s the bitter pill… Politicians have the final say about what appears on their channels. Which means everything will be canned, boiled down to sound bites, and avoid anything remotely controversial or difficult to deal with. In other words it will be just like all the other political BS we’ve lived through for years. Only now it will be called “New Media,” or “Web 2.0” or “Social Networking.” But, it will just be the same old, same old. And we’ve got two more years of it to look forward to!

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And that applies to Donkeys and Elephants!