Logging on to Living Room Candidate, a website devoted to American political advertising from the last 50 years, effectively illustrates what many of us take for granted - that political TV ads have maintained a numbingly predictable tone over the past two decades. In these spots - increasingly the domain of strategists rather than ad creatives - themes of change, progress and patriotism are pervasive, rendering the candidates practically interchangeable.

But a new wave of online advertising for the 2008 presidential bid is showing it doesn't have to be that way. This year's race to the White House is being billed as the first YouTube/MySpace presidential contest. Hillary Clinton offered supporters the chance to vote on a campaign song through a series of comedic webfilms, culminating with a spoof of The Sopranos finale that featured a carrot-munching cameo from husband Bill. Democratic contender John Edwards poked fun at those who think him too well-groomed to be president with a pointed video called "Hair", which aired during the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate on July 23. And Midnight Ride Media, the campaign team for Republican hopeful Mitt Romney is offering supporters the chance to create an ad that will air on TV, through a contest on Yahoo! service Jumpcut.com giving users the raw materials to create a :30 or :60 spot. Irreverent creative, user-generated content and interactive exchanges are now within a politician's media arsenal, part of harnessing the potential power of Web 2.0.

"Number one, you don't have to worry about [creating something that's] :30 or :60, which helps," says Jimmy Siegel of A-Political, an issue advocacy and political marketing group founded by ex-BBDO vice chairman Siegel in partnership with Moxie Pictures' Dan Levinson and Robert Fernandez. "And number two, you have a medium in which you can have a little bit more fun and be a little bit more irreverent than if you were putting something on air."

A-Political is part of the team behind the Clinton ad work, including the Sopranos webfilm. The team also includes online director Peter Daou, and consultants Roy Spence (founder of GSD&M) and Mandy Grunwald, who was part of Bill Clinton's media team during his successful runs for office. According to Siegel and Levinson, the Clinton media team wanted to show Net-savvy voters that Ms. Clinton can have a self-deprecating sense of humor. "The demographic of the medium sort of demands that," says Levinson. It worked. The videos and the song contest (which garnered close to 200,000 votes) received tremendous attention, both in the blogosphere and in traditional news outlets, giving it a reach in earned media far beyond the Web.

Of course, much of the Internet's appeal is that it belongs to everyone, and that democratization (no pun intended) is making an impact on the online political ad landscape. User-generated content made its presence felt in the 2004 campaign, with political advocacy organization MoveOn.org sponsoring a "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest, in which the winning user-created ad was to appear on network television. After the group raised the $1.5 million necessary to place the winner, "Child's Pay" from Charlie Fisher, into the Super Bowl that year, CBS controversially refused to air the ad. However, it did run on CNN and numerous news programs.

Thus far, the work generating buzz from outside the '08 campaign camps includes "Vote Different", a riff on the infamous Apple Computer "1984" ad directed by Ridley Scott, replacing Big Brother's face with Hillary Clinton's on the grainy mega-screen indoctrinating its viewers. The piece was made by Phil de Vellis, or YouTube user ParkRidge47, a supporter of Democratic senator Barack Obama. "This ad was not the first citizen ad, and it will not be the last," he wrote in a piece on HuffingtonPost.com. "The game has changed."

Ben Relles agrees. The former Agency.com strategist is now one of the architects behind political humor site BarelyPolitical.com, and its wildly popular "Obama Girl" series of videos, featuring model Amber Lee Ettinger as an Obama supporter whose love for the politician, let's say, veers beyond the ideological. "I Got a Crush on Obama", the first "Obama Girl" video, was shot on a less-than-shoestring budget and has been featured on practically every major news outlet in the US, as well as several international channels.

"It did substantiate what I thought," he says of the response to "Obama Girl" and "Vote Different". "If people do original stuff related to political candidates, it will get talked about a lot because it tends to be more interesting than the :30 spots the candidates produce."

While the democratization of political comment and amateur advertising makes it easier for supporters to wave their flags, it also makes it easier for detractors to fan the flames, as the "Vote Different" clip demonstrates. But it's not something that seems to concern those behind the official campaign messaging. "You can mash up and create any attack or satire that you like, but we won't let that prevent us from allowing our supporters to get engaged with the campaign," says Stephen Smith, director of online communications for former Massachusetts governor Romney. The winning ad in the Romney contest will air during the week of Sept. 20-28, most likely in at least one of the primary states.

It remains to be seen how response to the web work might influence the ads made for broadcast, which will reach saturation point come the new year. But, says Siegel, whatever the media teams do for their candidates, they should keep one thing in mind. "People are not captive audiences anymore, so you have to reward them in that 30 or 90 seconds for watching what you produce."

A-Political http://www.a-political.com
Barely Political http://www.barelypolitical.com
Jumpcut.com http://www.jumpcut.com
Living Room Candidate http://livingroomcandidate.movingimage.us