KEY POINTS:
Hillary Clinton is enlisting the help of a marketing guru who temporarily packed in his job to walk across the US and "feel America again" last year.
In his month-long ramble from New Hampshire to Pennsylvania, Roy Spence, 60, filled his blog with anecdotes about small-town cafes and bed and breakfasts and posted snapshots of the people he met.
"He pops up every time there seems to be a problem with imagery," said Matthew Dowd, who has known Spence for 20 years and is a former campaign strategist for George Bush.
Spence has been a family friend for decades and was with Clinton at her Chappaqua, New York, home on Wednesday after she flew in from her New Hampshire victory to develop a campaign strategy for the crucial four weeks of campaigning that lie ahead.
A legend in the advertising world, he was the image-maker for Wal-Mart during Clinton's little-known six years on the company's board of directors. Clinton has airbrushed her Wal-Mart association out of her public profile and rarely discusses it.
Confronted with the wave of enthusiasm among young people for Barack Obama's message of "hope" and "change", the Clinton campaign has been busy reshaping her public message. From saying she was "ready to lead", Clinton now says that she too is "ready for change", and the emphasis is now on her softer side.
Clinton came close to tears on the eve of the New Hampshire polls, it helped dispel the steely image she had been projecting. On the brink of defeat, her advisers who had never thought to advise her to project her more feminine side saw her suddenly connecting with women voters.
Clinton has herself said that the raw emotion she displayed in a cafe last Monday may explain why New Hampshire women turned out for her in such numbers. "Well, I think it could well have been," she told ABC's Good Morning America. "Certainly, people mention it to me."
This weekend millions more viewers will get a chance to see the image makeover when she has an hour-long session on NBC's Meet the Press programme.
Clinton first met Spence while both were working on the failed presidential campaign of George McGovern in the 1972 presidential bid. She called him one of "the best friends I've ever had", in her autobiography, Living History.
Three decades later, Clinton's bid for the White House is facing a surprisingly tough obstacle in the form of an African-American candidate with an inspirational message.
With Spence on her side, her strategy is to adopt a voice that will be gentler than the hectoring tone she had adopted throughout much of the campaign. Meanwhile, her supporters are busy undermining Obama.
Two days after her "crying moment" the website HillaryIs44.com - which has no known link to the official Clinton campaign - posted an item suggesting US prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will soon "destroy" Obama in a "scandal" involving an "indicted slumlord" who is Obama's "friend of 17 years" and with whom Obama has been involved in "shady deals".
In advertising circles, Spence is known an ideas man, although his firm GSD&M has recently run into trouble, laying off 200 people.
That coincided with his decision to start a trek across America in which he chalked up 32km a day. The plan was to become a "better marketer and a better person".
While Clinton has a makeover, the Republicans' most open race for decades is seeing candidates turning to high-risk survival tactics to keep their hopes of winning alive.
Most frontrunners are concentrating resources in states where they hope to score decisive victories, but where defeat could spell the end.
Mitt Romney, the venture capitalist and former Massachusetts governor, has dropped his television advertising from South Carolina, which holds its primary on January 19, and Florida, which polls a week later.
Having come second in Iowa and New Hampshire, despite spending millions and leading polls in both states for months, Romney has been forced to pin his hopes on winning on Tuesday in Michigan, where his late father was governor.
He is lagging third in the South Carolina polls and may skip campaigning there altogether.
Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, is barely campaigning in Michigan or South Carolina, instead focusing on Florida's January 29 vote.
It was reported last night that top staff members in Giuliani's presidential campaign had been asked to work without pay this month, and perhaps longer, so that resources could be focused on Florida. A campaign source told CNN that "things are starting to get tight".
Meanwhile, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee, the winner in Iowa, can only hope for third in Michigan and has been caught up in the South Carolina polls by John McCain over the past two days.
McCain, having won in New Hampshire, is likely to be in the best position of any candidate ahead of February 5, when 22 states hold primaries. He is the only one able to compete in all three votes before the big day.
In a debate in the South Carolina resort of Myrtle Beach on Thursday night, the candidates once again competed to grasp the mantle of Ronald Reagan. Fred Thompson, once a Tennessee senator but better known now for starring in the Law & Order TV series, accused Huckabee of economic and foreign policy liberalism that would endanger Reagan's formula for a strong US.
"Fred is down and he obviously decided to attack other people," said Chip Saltsman, the Huckabee campaign manager. "The party can do better than that."
- INDEPENDENT
