Big Brother Hillary's video viral

Last Modified: 21 Mar 2007
By: Keme Nzerem

The row over a spoof Hillary Clinton video on YouTube shows how the internet is influencing political debate in the US.

Electoral politics was never like this before. Almost 1.5 million people have logged on to the video-sharing site YouTube to see Hillary Clinton portrayed as an Orwellian Big Brother preaching to a crowd of zombies.

It's a spoof of an infamous Apple Macintosh commercial first aired in the 1980s, and urges voters to support Barack Obama.

He's been forced to deny any involvement. But it's another sign of the internet's growing and often myterious role in the race for the White House.

When virals go bad

Dr Pepper
Cadbury's Schweppes got itself into hot water last month when its online ad campaign led to the closure of one of Boston's historic burial grounds. The company's website held clues to the whereabouts of a number of buried gold coins - unearth one and bag yourself a prize of up to $1m. But it went wrong when officials had to close the city's burial site to prevent treasure hunters desecrating graves.

General Motors
GM's "make your own viral video" ad for the Chevy Tahoe ended in tears when GM failed to check the videos people had made before it uploaded them onto its website. The SUVs proved an easy target for environmentalists and gave GM an important lesson in the unpredictable ways of the web.

Threshers
Last Christmas the off-license chain sent its employees complimentary in-store discounts of 40 per cent. By email attachment. Needless to say, it did the rounds, and Threshers was inundated by punters cashing in on cheap booze. Cynics suggest that, rather than cripple the company, the 'accident' brought a huge amount of custom for a deal that, price-wise, wasn't far off supermarkets' seasonal offers.

Ford Motor Co
In April 2004 Ford got 'upset' when an unauthorised ad for the Sportka Ford whipped around the internet. The ad depicted the decapitation of a computer-animated cat by the Sportka's power moonroof hatch. The ad was 'leaked' and sent by email around the world - massive publicity 'by accident'.