User generated content and its effect on the political hemisphere

I just saw this advertised on Drudge: 'Hillary 1984': Unauthorized Internet Ad for Obama Converts Apple Computer's '84 Super Bowl Spot into a Generational Howl against Clinton's Presidential Bid. See Hillary Ad here on YouTube (link may or may not still be active, but I'm sure it will quickly propagate throughout the internet).

As I previously given my perspective on Clinton's bid announcement, I will keep this focused on what I predict will be a growing trend over the next year and half, and that is user generated video. The potential of this has begun to be exploited (e.g., Doritos' Superbowl ads). I predict its growth will continue on its positive trend for at least for the next year and half before either an exponential acceleration or flatlining occurs.

The Clinton 1984 ad is clever, and probably a flagrant copyright violation (I would lean against finding this as a fair use without need for renumeration). It is presumably the first user generated video promoting a national candidate (for disclosure, it is a negative campaign ad ending with a link to Senator Obama's campaign website). With it, does this herald in a new era of the electorate advertising wars? That is, will ordinary techies now be using their best efforts to come up with clever ads in support (or to the detriment of) their candidate? User generated content in this arena certainly has better potential for humor than the swell of negative campaign ads that run from January to December of a given election year (and particularly in a national election year). See, e.g., the Jib-Jab Bush/Kerry cartoon from a couple of years ago (not quite the same user-generated content I am talking about, but it's along the same lines).

Obviously some legal eagle will complain about equal advertising time and probably raise some copyright issues. Setting these things aside, I continue to believe the ad agencies should be scared of user generated content and should be working to counter its probable effects on their various goals. And, as evidenced by the 8000 views in seven days of the video described here (aka, the power of the Internet), so should any national political candidate. At the very least, I predict there will be some great ads to be created and some outright lame ones (and probably patently offensive ones as well). Hopefully the users who come up with the best non-infringing ones end up copyrighting it, and some lazy advertiser decides to copy it so it create some legal work for me to do. Otherwise, I'm just looking for a cheap (and quick) laugh.

Tags: user generated content, internet advertising