Fake Political Ad Getting Serious Buzz

By on March 20th, 2007 In Social Media

The 2004 election brought us the “swift boat” and “527″ issues, where third-party organizations effectively did their own PR for or against the candidates of their choice.

The next step in this evolution may have hit the Internets in a big way this week with the wide circulation of the faux anti Hillary Clinton ad.

We know very little about the genesis of this ad, but we do know stuff like this can influence our elections by positioning candidates whether they like it or not. In a world where a decorated war veteran can be painted as soft on defense and a draft dodger can be promoted as a patriot, I guess anything is possible.

The concern for me, echoed this week on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, is that the viral nature of the Internets give these “commercials” exposure whether they are valid or not. Essentially, now ANYONE can make a political commercial and if it’s interesting enough it could get wide circulation and potentially influence an election.

What are the PR implications of this? Should we create “fake” commercials for our clients and launch them out into cyberspace? Is this unethical or simply taking advantage of new technology?

I think it’s interesting that the Obama campaign came out and denied having anything to do with the ad, but behind the scenes they have to be happy with the results. They got expensive creative and didn’t have to pay for the air time or the production. I suppose they’ll think differently when the first fake anti-Obama ad hits the web!

Comments

Angelo Fernando Says:
March 24th, 2007 at 7:32 am

I am sure this question of creating fake commercials has been asked at hundreds of meetings at ad agencies. There have been instances where viral ads, unofficially created by agencies, have been seeded into the internet (this was in the pre-YouTube days) and embarrassed the client, but at the same time did some great things for the brand. Not that they are ‘fake’ but that they unauthorized. I thing we’ll have to assume that the those in branding and PR will have to find ways to –I hate to say ‘manage’- handle this. Consider too, that most agencies are looking at inviting user-generated content, so you can’t have one without the other.

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