For those of you who haven't yet seen the anti-Hillary, pro-Obama, 1984 Apple commercial rip-off yet, here you go:
Obama's camp claims they had nothing to do with it. Assuming that's true, its a pretty impressive grassroots effort. Not surprising, given that the man turns out 12,000+ people at rallies a year before the primaries, but nevertheless....
UPDATE: Adam Conner over at MyDD does some detective work to track down the original creator of the ad. First, the creator:
The idea was simple and so was the execution. Make a bold statement about the Democratic primary race by culture jacking a famous commercial and replacing as few images as possible. For some people it doesn't register, but for people familiar with the ad and the race it has obviously struck a chord.
Now Adam Conner's take:
This ad is especially intriguing because it combines some of the strongest elements of technology, politics, and bottom-up empowered political campaigning into one brilliant example. The lowered barrier of technology has created the ability for an "amateur" video editor to create a professional ad that would put most to shame (unless this turns out to be the work of someone like ILM). The viral level distribution from sites like YouTube, which gained so much political notoriety with Senator Allen's Macaca moment, proves its potential for candidate supportive message. And it call came from an independent supporter unaffiliated with the Obama campaign and distributed through the bottom-up grassroots people-powered effort growing around Obama's candidacy. Expect to see more like this in the future.
UPDATE II: You've gotta love this. Stuart Rothenberg, as usual, entirely misses the point about this ad. No one - and I mean that literally - thinks that a viral ad made nearly a year before the first primary, will impact how people vote. Having dispatched that strawman, Rothenberg makes the following claim:
Technology obviously changes campaigns, and one day YouTube, Facebook and the Internet overall may determine who wins and who doesn't. But for the 2008 cycle, it’s still those dreary "old media" that matter, no matter how many people want to get ahead of the curve and how creative and interesting the new technologies of the day.
But something he said in the very same post shreds that conclusion:
Interestingly, more people will see the ad on or hear about it from "traditional" cable or broadcast television networks than will watch it on YouTube. So if the ad had any impact anyway, it would be because of the reach of traditional forms of media, which played the spot repeatedly.
If everyone in the "traditional" media is covering a YouTube video, YouTube has already had an impact. Now just imagine what will happen should an ad this compelling appear in the days and weeks before the election?
This won't be the first time Rothenberg has been spectacularly wrong about the impact of the Internet. Back before the '06 election, Rothenberg belittled the efforts of MyDD's Chris Bowers (and by extension, Howard Dean) to field competitive Democratic candidates in all 50 states. Rothenberg even went so far as to call Bowers "clueless." Until, that is, Bowers' strategy proved correct.
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