CNN, the Clinton News Network is really in love with HIllary Clinton. So much so that they have an article up entitled ‘Hillary Clinton’s sneakily brilliant launch.’ Apparently it doesn’t matter to CNN that this ‘brilliant lunch’ of Hillary Clinton was staged, and the whole road trip thing to Iowa turned out to be a disaster for Granny Clinton.
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| CNN: Hillary Clinton’s campaign launch was brilliant |
This week, Hillary Clinton surprised the world yet again — not with the official launch of her campaign but for the unconventional way she did it. She sure pushed the envelope. With her video, new logo and road trip, she opened a long communications campaign not only to “rebrand” herself but to completely reframe who she is, what she stands for and how she intends to run.
We’ll find out over the next year and a half whether it will work. Many in the press and on late-night television scratched their heads this week; others were scathing.
Ruth Marcus — a columnist for the Washington Post — dismissed her launch video as a “relentlessly, insultingly vapid” effort of “demographic box-checking.” Jon Stewart lampooned it as a “State Farm commercial gone viral” and also “boring as s—.” Since the media will likely be the stand-in primary opponent for Hillary, their belief in her authenticity is a critical factor in whether she can reframe herself in voter’s eyes.
But from a marketing perspective, her launch may have been much more successful than critics think. The YouTube announcement video took on the central strategic challenge for the campaign and candidate: To flip Clinton’s message from self-absorbed “I” to empathetic “we.”