CorpComms Magazine

She may be a formidable politician, a memorable orator and a loyal wife - but Hillary Clinton is one dreadful singer. The former first lady's harmonising is as flat as a squashed squirrel in the fast lane of Washington's Beltway.

That much we know thanks to YouTube, the phenomenally popular video-sharing website, which has a clip of Clinton butchering the US national anthem at a campaign rally in Iowa, seemingly unaware that her microphone is on.

To date, viewers have played it 1.2 mn times. As a viewer under the name of Jagrmeister puts it: 'There are two Americas. One that can sing the national anthem and one that cannot - and should not. Hillary apparently belongs to the latter.' But influential political website Huffington Post says the clip humanises Clinton, who is traditionally regarded as calculating and over-controlled.

Every election for the last decade has been described by a chin-stroking commentator somewhere as the first truly high-tech campaign fought using the internet. But something starkly different is happening this time. Thanks to the popularity of video sharing, social networking and blogging, candidates are no longer able simply to project a controlled message. Their unguarded moments are open to scrutiny and a dialogue is developing with an energy not seen since the days when people actually bothered to attend town square hustings.

You've been framed

A memorable clip caught Democratic candidate John Edwards taking a full two minutes to prep his hairstyle. In another, Republican candidate John McCain is captured singing: 'Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran' to the tune of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann. Each has prompted an avalanche of discussion, analysis and parody.

Savvier candidates have embraced the medium; YouTube has set up a YouChoose section purely for clips about candidates. Posting a 'response' video to an allegation has become routine practice. Some, though, are controversial: a furore broke out when one clip portrayed Hillary Clinton as a 1984-style Big Brother figure in a parody of a classic Apple Macintosh ad; it was disowned by her rivals.

Nevertheless, the spoof demonstrated the importance of social media in this political race: the video was posted on YouTube on March 5, and within three weeks had attracted almost 3 mn viewers.

Almost all the major candidates have MySpace pages that tot up their online 'friends' and several, including Clinton's main Democratic challenger Barack Obama and Edwards, have begun recording their movements on the increasingly influential blogging micro-site Twitter. Steve Harty, chairman of the US division of the advertising agency BBH, says the online world is stripping away the polish from the candidates and allowing them to sink or swim on raw charisma.

'The best politicians, like the best brands, are the ones that make an emotional connection with the public,' Harty notes, citing Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton as the masters of this art, with John Kerry and Al Gore noticeable failures. 'That's where I think new media can help a lot - because online, much of the marketing of candidates is in uncontrollable media. You see the gaffes, you see the lot.'

Making their mark

The official start of the election is not until January 14, but already the candidates have completed innumerable laps of campaigning and their intended positioning is increasingly clear. Given her experience, her unsurpassed cont acts book and her Democrat front-runner status, it is little surprise Clinton is widely judged to have the slickest communications machine. While cleverly playing on the enduring popularity of her husband (who still attracts approval ratings of more than 50 percent), she is emphasising herself as an outspoken, individual spirit.

'Hillary's been quite masterful,' says Richard Levick, president of the award-winning US crisis management consultancy Levick Strategic Communications. 'She's done a very effective job of integrating both traditional and new media. In many ways, she's Clinton 2 - the sequel.'

Clinton still has a 'coldness' problem she is trying to dilute with humour, but this is risky - even oblique quips about her past are leapt upon with vigour by her critics. When challenged by an Iowa voter about how she would deal with the world's 'evil' forces, Clinton jocularly asked herself, out loud: 'What, in my background, equips me to deal with bad and evil men?' The line got a laugh - but at a subsequent press conference, the media pestered her about what she meant; she repeatedly insisted she was merely joking.

New tastes

Obama is branded a little like a new Coke: cool, fizzy and with a refreshingly unexpected flavour. The 46-year-old Illinois senator describes himself as a uniter and he has taken the consensual philosophy much further than most middle-way politicians.

New Yorker journalist Larissa MacFarquhar recently identified Obama's stand-out style. 'He rarely accuses, preferring to talk about problems in the passive voice, as things that are amiss with us rather than wrongs that have been perpetrated by them,' MacFarquhar wrote after following Obama on the campaign trail.

But he has had his hiccups. He chose an icy February day to formally announce his candidature outside Lincoln's one-time stomping ground, the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois. Sharp-eyed observers noted, critically, that a heater hidden next to his lectern kept him warm before the freezing crowd.

Obama has also made important announcements on YouTube, claiming: 'Change happens at the grassroots.' He did not go so far as to announce his campaign online, unlike Clinton who used a video monologue-cum-conversation on her campaign website, but has introduced a video replay on his campaign website.

Defence of the realm

Republican candidates are more diverse. The traditional 'Christian Conservative' message has fallen out of fashion and George Bush's once successful neo-con agenda is deeply unpopular, so positioning for 2008 is a challenge.

When Vietnam veteran McCain ran for president eight years ago, he was viewed as a maverick, non-establishment figure: a plain-speaking war hero from outside the Beltway willing to flout the party line. Eight years on, he is a seasoned senator and a leading defender of the Iraq war to the point of arguing strongly for President Bush's unpopular surge in troops.

In speeches, McCain still por t rays himself as a Washington outsider but his image is confused and his poll ratings have floundered. 'He's an outsider - but he's tied to the surge. He's got a confused brand,' says Levick. Rudy Giuliani has replaced McCain as the pretender to the war-leader mantle. The former New York mayor is the hero of the pack for his leadership in the wake of September 11 and is playing the security card more blatantly than anyone else. If a Democrat wins, Giuliani said recently, 'we will wave the white flag on Iraq. We will cut back on the Patriot Act, electronic surveillance and interrogation, and we will be back to our pre-September 11 attitude of defence'.

But the further Giuliani progresses, the more scrutiny he gets. A 140-page dossier leaked from his campaign team in January warned that 'personal and political baggage' could pose 'insurmountable' difficulties: 'All will come out - in the worst light.'

Critics ask why, for example, Giuliani ignored advice before the World Trade Centre attacks and insisted on situating the Big Apple's emergency control centre in the heart of the financial district? There is also speculation about his estranged son, Andrew, who said he was 'too busy' playing golf to support his father's presidential campaign.

Unlike other candidates, Giuliani has a 'widget' that can be added to any blog, which helps him raise money. His website offers supporters computer code to paste on their own blogs. Readers who click on that widget are directed to Giuliani's JoinRudy2008 site, where officials collect their email addresses.

Encouragingly for the political classes, the 2008 race is energising American discussion. Nobody is dubbing it a big yawn; the race is open and the odds are long. That's partly because the White House's recent difficulties have deepened divisions in public opinion, but also because of engagement with new communication channels.

Colin Byrne, chief executive of Weber Shandwick, says American politicians have understood that genuine online dialogue can be a way to break through apathy - and the figures back him up: 31 percent of Americans (more than 90 mn people) say they go online regularly to discuss the US presidential race.

'What politicians over here haven't yet grasped is that social media aren't just another form of top-down communication, like an electronic form of roadside hoarding,' Byrne points out. 'You can be electronically heckled before quite a large audience.'

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a solid 15 percent of Americans cite cyberspace as their primary source of political information. 'Most people don't actually know what a politician does day to day,' says Byrne. 'Social media can be a way of cutting through that barrier.'

Across the pond

In the UK, David Cameron is catching on: his 'webCameron' project is at least a nod in the direction of digital engagement. In the Labour party, deputy leadership contender Alan Johnson has made much of his use of Twitter to update supporters (although, as CorpComms went to press, he had attracted only a rather modest 56 friends).

Generally speaking, the same rule applies to politics as to supermarket shelves: there is just about room in the public consciousness for three choices of each variety. Among the US Democrats, John Edwards is third on the shelf and has pinned his hopes on an Iowa-centred strategy.

More than any other candidate, he has flooded the rural Midwestern state with his communication resources, devoting relatively little attention to the New Hampshire primary. He was one of the first presidential candidates to use social media features, including a personal blog, podcast and MySpace page, early in his campaign.

Edwards is leading in the Iowa polls and hopes an early win will give him a national bounce to catch Clinton and Obama. He is winning praise for substance: he talks in detail about his healthcare and poverty-reduction plans, partly to offset his image as the 'pretty' half of John Kerry's failed 2004 ticket. But Levick says Edwards' earnestness is struggling to break through: 'He's trying to talk truth but he's not had great success yet.'

Lower leagues

The third-ranked Republican is Mitt Romney, the wealthiest in the race with disclosed personal assets of 'between $190 mn and $250 mn' (£96 mn-£127 mn). The former Massachusetts governor is stoically avoiding mentioning the fact that he used to run the liberal state - Massachusetts is the only state that allows gay marriage - for fear of alienating conservative voters.

Romney launched his campaign in his childhood home of Michigan and has waxed lyrical about his Great Lakes roots. But the question of his Mormon faith repeatedly arises; he recently felt obliged to assert his trenchant opposition to polygamy.

Fourth rank and below is also-ran status. Arguably, many of the lesserknown presidential candidates - Joe Biden, Sam Brownback, Christopher Dodd and Mike Huckabee - are running for secondary prizes such as vice-presidential spots or cabinet posts. The key to winning a presidential election was once, according to Harty, a fairly easy to def ine formula: 'Character, values and an inch deep of policy.' This time around, voters have the tools to look beyond the packaging in assessing that all-important character, and policies, thanks to Bush's divisive legacy, are proving seminal at an unusually early stage.

It's a 20-month race to reach 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue but the thoroughbreds have already nosed ahead of the pack. On a fateful night in November next year, one of them will take charge of a divided nation.

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