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Social Marketing
Social Marketing Artificial Intelligence Augmented Reality Chat & Messaging Influencers & Creators Metaverse Social Media Week Social Pro Daily Young Influentials

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Harris' Bold Marketing Tactics in 2024

Memes, live rally coverage, and an IG for the youths

Kamala Harris with her hand up
@KamalaHQ used social media trends to maximize their reach to target younger audiences and create more shareable content.Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Headshot of Jacquelyn Bugbee
By Jacquelyn Bugbee

 

Regardless of political leaning, any social media strategist, content manager, or content creator can learn from the Harris campaign’s best-in-class social strategy to connect with target audiences and move them toward support. The Harris campaign maintained two separate social media accounts across all platforms and broke the mold of the traditional political campaign strategy. 

If you’re unaware of this approach, you may have only seen the traditional, polished efforts of the @KamalaHarris hero account. Many missed the Harris team’s play to Gen Z and young millennials: @KamalaHQ. These accounts used memes, trending sounds, and captions like “Bro 😶” in a presidential campaign (!!!). Just add it to the list of things happening in politics that our forefathers would never understand—but if you stick with me, you’ll see the genius behind it. 

According to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), 41 million Gen Zers were eligible to vote in this election, and the Harris campaign prioritized engaging them. Primarily, that was done through a self-proclaimed “rapid response platform,” @KamalaHQ, which used social media trends (sounds, memes, and popular turns of phrase) to maximize their reach to target younger audiences and create more shareable content. 


Close-up of Donald Trump wearing a suit, red tie and red hat that reads "Make America Great Again."

Trump’s Bold Marketing Tactics in 2024

These channels, which span Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok, were solely focused on connecting more authentically with Gen Z and younger millennials. Using a mix of memes, trends, partnerships with content creators, and a very distinctive and playful tone for a political campaign, @KamalaHQ was one of the most important tools for building momentum during Harris’ hyper-condensed campaign cycle.

They took over TikTok when Harris was announced as the Democratic candidate with trends like “you think you fell out of a coconut tree,” going lime green to join Charlie XCX’s brat summer, and embracing the femininomenon. The Harris campaign didn’t stop there, inviting more than 200 digital content creators to the Democratic National Convention, providing an opportunity for them to create their own content and amplify the campaign message to their organic audiences. 

Taking it one step further, the campaign asked Arizona-based creator Deja Foxx to speak to the crowd. Foxx summed up the power of this decision beautifully in an interview with NPR by saying, “It signals to young people, a presidency that will listen to them, that will respond to them, and that has young people in the room. … It is a reminder that the future of politics and political figures will look different with Gen Z.” 

Why is this so important? @KamalaHQ showcases that the Harris campaign understands Gen Z and millennial culture. It meets them on their turf and makes users feel like Harris is a candidate who keeps youth culture top of mind. When I first found this account, I called my grammar-loving mom to let her know that the lowercase captions and lack of punctuation were all intentional (Gen Z hates punctuation, if you didn’t know).

This branch of the Harris campaign was smart, snarky, and humorous. Here are some of the receipts. 

Maximizing music and celebrity endorsements

  • hotties for harris 🔥: 2024 is wild—we’ve got a political campaign getting Megan Thee Stallion to open a rally with “Body” when control over women’s bodies is such a major sticking point in this election. This is the post that really caught my attention about how unique and Gen Z-focused this facet of the campaign was going to be.
  • I never trust a narcissist: As a Swiftie, I’d be remiss to not call out what Taylor Swift’s endorsement of this campaign meant. Nope, I’m not talking about the 400,000 she drove to vote.org. I’m talking about the music library that is now available for the Harris campaign to use at their disposal. Much like Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” I’d expect to hear Swift’s “The Man” pop up again.

Knowing how to meme

  • Omfg: Once again, let’s take a minute to laugh that a campaign caption is “Omfg.” Can you imagine this in the 2000 election? Me neither. But @KamalaHQ took a trending sound and popular meme and not only used it to their advantage but turned their opponent into that meme to draw attention to their stance pressing cognitive decline. 
  • just checking in and–: There are many ways for a candidate to poke at their opponent, and the HQ handle did it in the preferred language of Gen Zers and millennials: memes. This meme from Community, aptly called “The Darkest Timeline,” uses humor to call out her opponent’s comments. 
  • Poor Donald: This demonstrates a great understanding of internet culture. While the Community meme did not make the cut for the Facebook audience, “Swole Doge vs. Cheems” did. I want to address why: Demographics on Facebook have changed significantly over the years, and active users tend to skew older, meaning the audience being served these posts may not have as much of an understanding of meme culture. The memes featured on Instagram are a bit more nuanced, and while anyone could figure out the message behind them, jokes are only funny when you get them right away. A buff dog and a crying dog? That’s more straightforward for an untrained audience to understand.

Tailoring to specific platforms

  • 🙄: The day after naming Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate, he joined Harris on the campaign trail, and @KamalaHQ posted this TikTok. Capitalizing on this trending sound earned them 5.6 million likes, 26.2 million views, and spread the word about adding Walz to the ticket quickly.
  • Rally in Superior, WI: This campaign had an incredible live coverage strategy. They livestreamed all rallies, as well as the DNC. They were shot with high-quality cameras, and to meet the optimal video sizing for each platform. Most importantly, though, all lives were cast simultaneously on all platforms with the feature available, and on multiple accounts: @KamalaHarris, @KamalaHQ, @TimWalz, @DougEmhoff, and @JoeBiden. Huge kudos to this team: This is not an easy feat and requires a lot of team member support.
  • Name your favorite quote by a celebrity: This is a great example of how @KamalaHQ used platform-specific features to engage with potential followers: Quote-tweeting a @PopBase post to amplify their own message got this meme onto new timelines. With younger generations growing up with more technology than ever before, lacking an understanding of the internet and internet culture ages you—and more than anything, Gen Z wants a leader who hears and understands them.

Nailing rapid response

  • well yes! The goal of this post was to continue to encourage voters to Google Project 2025 and learn about the dangers of this initiative. Replying in real-time during the DNC to their opponent saying “IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?” with this meme-referencing caption makes the meat and potatoes of the first slide so much more sharable and impactful. 
  • full transcript ➡: This is the one, y’all. This post has no intentional snark. This post has no negative commentary about Donald Trump. This post could be served to Trump supporters based on the algorithm because there is no opinion about him at all—it is simply a clip of an interview and a transcript. 

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Each post on the @KamalaHQ page not only hits the target demographic but is nuanced enough to cater to the most active parts of those demographics on each platform. This facet of the campaign caters each post to demonstrate an understanding of each age group’s version of internet culture and put sharable information in the places where it would pack the most punch.

Social media, much like the products that brands are using it to market, cannot be everything for all people—but your presidential candidate should be something for all people. And this campaign certainly showed that the Harris team has the forethought to recognize that and make an active effort to engage voters of every demographic. 

Headshot of Jacquelyn Bugbee

Jacquelyn Bugbee

Jacquelyn Bugbee is senior social media manager at Luquire.

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