Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
Les Otten, a Republican candidate for governor of Maine is (ironically) using an extremely similar website layout created by the Obama creative team for the 2008 election and beyond.
Otten’s website starts with a logo that looks like it was ripped from the Obama campaign style guide. From there the site continues to expand on the un-originality nearly widget-for-widget throughout the entire site.
From the donation button to the favicon and typography, the site is almost page for page mirrored to Obama’s. The content is obviously going to read a lot different, but could that, too, have been scraped from some other site?
The most ironic item featured as a link from the site is Otten’s Twitter page. Certainly no imitation of Obama’s Twitter page – in fact there’s nothing there at all. Some things can’t be imitated – the message or the followers/followees.
Maybe I’m comparing apples to oranges here, but blatant imitation in any arena says a lot about trust, especially when the motto is “Renew Maine”. But maybe this imitation isn’t a bad thing: Otten’s team recognizes that good design might make a difference.
Or, maybe it’s the cynicism: if it worked for Obama, it’ll work for the Republicans too.
