I gave them a lot of grief today, since I was the one who first noticed their odd little dig at Hot Air’s mysterious video financing. They promptly enjoyed what Michelle called a “bloggy ribbing” so intense they disabled comments……

Look at it this way; this guy proves that millions of dollars no longer need to be spent in producing campaign ads. Just hire a couple of teenagers with a digital camera, an Internet connection, and a Mac. It’s more effective and a lot cheaper.

I can’t believe I [badly overdubbed "TAXED!"] the whole thing!

How did I miss that? And, how does that make any sense?

Now that this guy is no longer tied to Obama, I’d love to see him do a Hillary ad with a Wal-Mart commercial motif.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s the ad itself that’s getting the attention, but the politiking of a campaign that started a full year before the first primary. People are interested in the manuevering of the campaigns.

So far, all the maneuvering is predictable: a nutroot loon claims that its an example of “people powered politics” when he makes an ad he deems will hurt the opponent of the candidate he supports, and as a result the cadidate he supports distances himself from the ad and he (the kid who made the ad) loses his job with Blue State whatever company.

Plus, we’ve sat there and watch the press build up Obama, and I think we are waiting in anticipation that the press will turn on him and tear him down.

Allah sums it up nicely:

I don’t really care about any of this, except that it’ll be fun watching the most conspicuously nice guy in the race explain his association with the nastiest ad of the campaign thus far.

And I reiterate: The ad is very nasty. It of the same mold as Bush=Hitler.

In the grand scheme of things, this really wasn’t a big deal. I thought the person who did this didn’t come forward for awhile because the ad was just dumb and wouldn’t want to admit it on those grounds lol.

In 1984, Apple users thought the original ad was clever. IBM based users were supposed to feel like they were like rats at the feeder bar.

Because Hillary is preaching to the brain dead female, I think the ad would have been more powerful if all the audience members were females.

Don’t worry. I’m not taking this the wrong way. I actually have enjoyed your posts. They are well written and well thought out. But I still don’t share your enthusiasm for this ad.

Let me explain. First I must be clear to assure you that when I say “I think so and so about the ad’s effectiveness on voters,” I am trying to put myself inside certain voter’s heads and making decisions based on what I think that they think. I may be wrong, but my method avoids the logical fallacy you assumed I was committing (applying my reaction to different subsets of voters). Now to be fair, I went back and read my posts about that and I feel I may have given you the wrong impression. I apologize for that.

Having said that, I think that assertion that this ad may appeal to some form of niche target market is dubious for two reasons: 1) It is difficult to tell what market it is appealing to. Since it is a negative ad we can assume that it is trying to depress the vote for Hillary, but finding a target audience within that larger audience is difficult to come by by using YouTube as the vehicle for the add. (Compare to Hebrew National Hot Dogs advertising in Jewish newspapers or communities; it seems more obvious in that case),and 2) if there is a target market that is moved by Orwell, why haven’t we seen them before? Comparing politicians to big brother has been done since that book was published. Yet the most effective ads, and this is not my opinion but the opinion of political and communications strategists of both parties, are ones with children, animals, and the candidates family. Now if you can get a negative ad with children or animals in it, it is advertising gold.

Now to be fair, there might be some internal polling that I’m not privy too that would lead a campaign to pushing this type of advertisement. However it’s also a possibility that this dude really did make it on his own without any input from the campaign strategists. And based on my limited knowledge of campaign advertising (I’m not an expert at all, merely thumbed through academic literature on the subject) and my prejudice about Orwell inspired political thought, I tend to think that this guy is a person who is good on the computer but is unfamiliar with other aspects of campaigning or even political philosophy. Hence the first political book every teenager reads is used as a campaign tool.

You always want to be aware and cautious of what’s know as “belly button” marketing (BBM). That is, assuming people think and feel the way you do about something like a product or service. It can lead you very far astray when you don’t perfectly represent the target market (audience). In this case, by definition almost, you were not the target market of that ad. That doesn’t mean the ad wasn’t very good or effective. It just means you weren’t part of the target audience and you are using its impact on you to determine its value, rather than objective measures like hits, air time, articles, poll results, etc.

There are times when BBM can be a good thing. If you really understand the customer and essentially ARE the customer, it can work for you.

You are confusing Push with Pull. The play this got was mainly PULL. Why? because it resonated with people. Why? because it fit with their view of her.

You’re right. I am confusing the two. But I still stand by my belief that the ads are not effective. People who have such a strong feeling of resentment toward Hillary tend to be the hyperpartisans, who are going to vote anyway and there is no need to remind them of why they hate Hillary.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against negative ads. I’m actually very supportive of them because they depress the vote of the candidate your targeting. I just think that playing the Hitler card or the totalitarian card will in the end insult Americans. Just like the MoveOn.org ad insulted the ADL, which I don’t think they intended to do. I think there are plenty of subjects for negative ads against Hillary in order to depress a Hillary vote, but “1984″ is just silly.

You are confusing Push with Pull. The play this got was mainly PULL. Why? because it resonated with people. Why? because it fit with their view of her.

As opposed to pseudo-intellectuals who don’t have the common sense to realize than an ad produced for peanuts got millions and millions of dollars of totally free play.

BigOldDog,

You’re confusing airplay with effectiveness.

Remember MoveOn.org’s ad comparing Bush to Hitler during the 2004 election? It received quite a bit of airplay from FOX, Talk Radio, and even from CNN. Hell, it even drew the attention of the ADL. And that ad was also produce for pennies by a moron kid on his laptop (If I remember correctly MoveOn.org was having a contest for the best homemade political ad, and it was one of the finalists and was featured on their website).

Now I don’t know what the oracle of “common sense” says. But I think it is reasonable to believe that ads comparing Bush to Hitler and Hillary to the villian of a silly novel about totalitarianism are not effective and are even cut from the same cloth–paranoid rantings of politicos.

As opposed to pseudo-intellectuals who don’t have the common sense to realize than an ad produced for peanuts got millions and millions of dollars of totally free play.

That’s because the only people who take Orwellian analogies seriously are teenagers who haven’t read any other book.

bert169 on March 22, 2007 at 9:56 AM

Exactly. Orwellian concepts are very important to developing minds. The problem is that they are so apropo that many people think those ideas are the end all of enlightened thought. What I find ironic is that the lefties loved to use 451 as an indictment of conservatives but it is obvious that they have become the greatest opponents to any thinking that is diametric to theirs.

I do not think it was stupid, because Hillary’s “Lets talk” slogan has nothing to do with the free exchange of ideas. The people whom react positively to her suggestion that we should talk don’t realize that she never will “talk”. They’re in love with the idea of it. This is designed for the brain dead female types. The types she will have to have in order to get elected. All fluff and emotion and no substance.

The same people by the way, that watch “The View”. Hillary wants these people to sit in front of their TV as brainwashed fools soaking up every bit of her tripe.

This guy would have made a much more powerful statement if everyone in the audience were females.

As a video, um, “hobbyist,” I guess, 99 percent of my admiration for the ad is that the guy took the time to (1) matte out the Hillary video so the drones’ heads appeared in front of the screen, and (2) composite his dumb Obama logo over the chick’s Macintosh T-shirt. Exactly like the guy who did the “rebuttal” video didn’t.

That is all.

/geek

Meet the maker of the “1984″ anti-Hillary ad, a political consultant with Blue State Digital– a consulting firm employed by many clients, including Obama:

Hi. I’m Phil. I did it. And I’m proud of it.
I made the “Vote Different” ad because I….

I tend to think of Orwell as the idiot’s intellectual. That’s because the only people who take Orwellian analogies seriously are teenagers who haven’t read any other book.

I was once in a college class and one of the girls said that living in GWB’s America was like living in Bradbury’s “Farenheit 451.” The girl was obviously as bright as a cave.

So, it’s best to layoff the Hillary is Big Brother analogies. They only expose the people who make the analogies as paranoid fools.

I agree with Maxx Allah.

Kini on March 21, 2007 at 8:40 PM

Before I saw that I’d been duped by a missing comma, I thought, “Maxx Allah! What a great screenname!,” for an infidel, of course.

You’ve already seen the stories about the Obama-linked video consultant who was unmasked as the creator the anti-Hillary Big Sister ad. Here’s his confessional at HuffPo, “I made the ‘Vote Different’ Ad:” Let me be clear: I am a proud……