• by Shankar Gupta , March 23, 2007

The creator of a YouTube-hosted anti-Hillary Clinton ad mimicking the famous "1984" Apple spot was outed this week on HuffingtonPost.com, and subsequently resigned from his job at a political interactive consultancy, Blue State Digital.

Phil de Vellis, the creator of the ad, said he made the spot on his own time, with his own equipment, and not at the behest of the Barack Obama campaign, which is plugged at the end of the spot and for whom Blue State Digital works.

"I made the "Vote Different" ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process," he wrote on the HuffingtonPost.com blog after he was named in a previous post. "There are thousands of other people who could have made this ad, and I guarantee that more ads like it--by people of all political persuasions--will follow."

The ad was posted on YouTube on March 5, and has since received over 2 million views and nearly 5,000 comments. It emulated the Apple "1984" spot, which depicts a lone, sledgehammer-wielding rebel destroying a big-screen TV that displays an Orwellian, "Big-Brother"-esque figure.

In de Vellis' spot, the screen shows Hillary Clinton and the Apple logo in the shape of an O. The Obama campaign's Web site URL flashes after the ad runs its course. After the ad was posted, the Obama campaign denied responsibility.

After it was revealed that de Vellis was responsible for the spot, the Obama campaign released a statement that they did not request the ad be made, and that de Vellis had not done any work on the campaign's account for Blue State Digital.

In his post on HuffPo, de Vellis noted that he had resigned from his position with the company, and confirmed that the Obama campaign had no connection to the ad.