Hillary Clinton's high-tech marketing message

If Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn't run for president, she could always get a job in marketing, particularly around testing messages and evangelizing new technology.

The former Secretary of State and first lady spoke Tuesday at a conference in San Francisco run by Marketo, a company selling software for creating online brand awareness and corporate messages.

During her hour onstage she touched on such hot technology topics as social media, cloud computing and big data, all of which she suggested could contribute to a renewal of the U.S. economy. She also touched on political matters like immigration, education and world affairs. It was a blend of messages both grand and local, in an area of the country likely to prove important if Clinton ever seeks funds to run for office.

She spent considerable time on the increasing gap between the upper and middle classes, which has become a big issue in Silicon Valley because even teachers and policemen in the area find it difficult to find affordable housing.

"Inequality of the kind we are experiencing is bad for individuals, bad for society, bad for democracy," she said. "If you look around the world, this is becoming a bigger issue everywhere." Clinton suggested possible fixes like changes in taxation, compensation and efforts by both government and business to subsidize housing.

"It's particularly important for the trust that holds democracy together," she said of the yawning income gulf, adding that the effect of failing to address it for many Americans meant "you dampen their ambition, you limit consumption, and you undermine trust in our society."

The crowd of 6,000, the first of four groups she will address in a swing through Western states, was enthusiastic to her message. Whether any of these themes will show up in a 2016 presidential campaign by Clinton, however, was deflected with a joke.

In addition to finishing a book related to her time at the State Department, she said, "I'm actually enjoying my life; I'm actually having fun doing ordinary things like seeing my friends and going for long walks and playing with my dog, the things that give joy and meaning to your life."

She added, "I danced around that pretty well, didn't I?"

She told Phil Fernandez, Marketo's chief executive, "I'm here to get some marketing advice" around a possible campaign. But Clinton also offered some pragmatic lessons in what she'd learned about social media.

Clinton said that social media, and Twitter in particular, had played a major role in the toppling of the Mubarak government in Egypt. But she said she was disappointed that many of the people who used social media tools during the uprising then shunned organized politics.

Social media "is not a substitute for real-life action," she said. "The political victory will go to the most organized force," which in Egypt was first the Muslim Brotherhood, and then the military.

"There is no doubt that social media in itself has an enormous effect, but you can't leave it there," she said.

Michael Moeller, a spokesman for Marketo, declined to say how much Clinton was paid for the event, which also included socializing and photo sessions with the company's top customers. Last year she typically made $200,000 for a more generic speech.

Fernandez said he had chosen her in part because 75 percent of the conference attendees, mostly marketing executives, are women.

"In some ways Hillary is a draw," he said, "but I also wanted to think in big terms. Things like Twitter are changing the world, on a trivial layer here, in the world of customers having their say, but I wanted them to think about the bigger impact, too."