Opinion: On second thought

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Political campaigns are all about public involvement. And Hillary Clinton’s internet drive for a campaign song got more than a million folks to watch her on video and attracted more than 25,000 suggested songs and 200,000 votes.

This morning, as detailed by Top of the Ticket, Clinton used a clever Sopranos-like video to announce she’d chosen Celine Dion’s ‘You and I.’ You can hear the song by clicking here. So far, so good.

But now as Howard Mortman points out in his sharp-tongued blog, Extreme Mortman, Celine Dion has a very mixed record in terms of helping advertise products. In fact, one writer termed her 2003 partnership to push Chrysler’s Pacifica van ‘the Celine Dion campaign disaster.’

Chrysler was all excited at the beginning of the campaign, which showed Dion both singing and driving the car. The ad agency, according to a November, 2003 article in Advertising Age, warned Chrysler that the public’s negative feelings toward Dion had risen in recent years and that the average age of her audience was 52, not exactly the peak van-buying population cohort.

The campaign tanked with only 4,828 Pacificas sold in the first three months when 60,000 were expected to go out the door the first year. Meanwhile, Dion’s new album then, ‘One Heart,’ sold two million copies.

Dion was dropped and Chrysler ate the three-year $14 million contract. Good deal for Dion.

One other thing: Being French-Canadian, she can’t even vote.

--Andrew Malcolm