The New Campaign Era of ‘Hillary 1984′

Not since the last presidential election, when a Bush supporter photoshopped John Kerry and Jane Fonda together, has a digital mashup created outside the aegis of an official campaign had a media impact like “Hillary 1984″ (AKA “Vote Different“). It can probably now be considered a watershed moment in campaign media evolution — “Swift Boating 2.0″ if you will. Even more than the official campaign vlogs, user-generated content could prove to be the story of the 2008 campaign.

Earlier this week, the mysterious creator of the spoof on the landmark Superbowl spot for the Apple Macintosh was revealed by a team at the Huffington Post. Turns out it was Phil de Vellis, a now former employee of Blue State Digital (which got its start as the web team for the Howard Dean campaign). Arianna even got Phil to write about the experience in a piece for the Huffington Post. If you’re into reading about how Huffington got the scoop, Jeff Jarvis, who’s covering the online video beat for the campaigns at PrezVid, wrote up the story of how the online sleuths uncovered the truth.