Continuing our Conversation: De Vellis' Deception & BSD

This morning news with De Vellis and "his" Big Sister act has been breaking quicker than toys around my cousin's on the Holidays.

First, Bill Sloat over at the Daily Bellwhether uncovered this gem of an ad:

As Bill puts it:

Blue State Digital where de Vellis worked until his reputed responsibility for the anti-Hillary ad became known, did Lamont's Web work last year. And a Blue State wheel has moved on to Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.... Bob Adams made the Lamont ad last July. When he saw the Hillary version earlier this month he mused about copycats. Another veteran of Ohio Democratic politics, Tim Tagaris, worked for the Lamont campaign in 2006 and pointed out the existence of Adams' work. And there's more from Bob. It looks like Ohio really is the heart of it all.

Yea, it's similar to the Big Sister spot, but what's the big deal? Well, it was made for Lamont by activists who would have had dealings with BSD when they were working for Lamont. Also, all this occurred before Phil even worked at BSD, so it sounds like more folks who were around back then might've been involved facilitating that ad into the current Obama version.

Eric over at Plunderbund follows with a layup and some inside dirt:

Here’s the deal. Phil probably could have done the video work. I hear he is a huge mac fan and runs Final Cut Pro - it’s possible. I also hear he may have even done paid work in video editing at some point. The point isn’t whether or not “he did it”. The point is was he a lone actor and why the hell would a campaign hide from such an admittedly brilliant use of viral web ads?

I didn’t think anyone was going to pick up on all the Blue State Digital connections until I saw Cillizza’s stuff. He is on the right track, but doesn’t really dig enough...

So what've we got at this point? Well, as the minutes tick by, the odds that Phil De Vellis made this ad are slipping down to about the same as the Indians winning the next World Series. Not so bad for the true believers, but everybody else drinking the kool-aid is starting to taste the nutrasweet. My guess is that we'll be hearing more from the papers soon.