The Harris campaign is betting big on content creators to keep the momentum going after a viral first week.
Between coconut tree memes and viral video edits set to Chappell Roan’s hit “Femininomenon,” Vice President Kamala Harris surging campaign has dominated online political discourse and pop culture since she announced her candidacy. Her social media accounts racked up some 70 million engagements the week after President Joe Biden endorsed her, according to data shared with Forbes by social media tracking firm Newswhip. And with nearly 55 million views on TikTok, that “Femininomenon” video is now the highest performing piece of content in the campaign’s yearlong history.
The Harris campaign has moved quickly to transform the organic excitement and virality of her candidacy into true political momentum. But campaign staffers and political operatives acknowledge that, in a quick-moving media ecosystem, she won’t dominate online discourse forever. With four months to go until Election Day, the campaign is doubling down on its strategy to leverage social media influencers to reach young voters while carefully capitalizing on the groundswell of enthusiasm for Harris.
Its strategy is to acknowledge memes “with a wink and a nod” without embracing them in a way that voters perceive as corny or inauthentic, and it plans to lean on influencers to help Harris reach younger voters, according to campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster.
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One example of this is the neon green stylized “kamala hq” banner that now adorns the campaign’s X account. It’s an allusion to the cover art of the new album from British pop star Charli XCX who blew up social media when she tweeted “kamala IS brat,” a reference to her music’s trashy, carefree aesthetic. The account’s bio describes its mission as “providing context,” a nod to a viral meme the campaign has embraced in which Harris shares an anecdote from her mother about “existing in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”
That Harris is leaning so hard into pop culture trends is largely thanks to to a group of mostly 20-somethings that includes alumni of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who swiftly rebranded the campaign’s accounts to @KamalaHQ, debuting a younger, more online tone.
Schuster said the campaign hadn’t revamped its social media strategy, stating rather that the team is leaning into Harris’ unique strengths as a candidate. Regardless, whatever it’s doing appears to have worked, at least in the short term.
According to data shared exclusively with Forbes by analytics firm Zelf, TikTok discourse about the candidates heavily favors Harris right now, with positive posts about her garnering approximately 49% more engagement than negative posts about her. That’s compared to Donald Trump and Biden, both of whom have negative Net Promoter Scores, meaning negative posts about them receive more engagement than positive ones.
The campaign also launched a personal TikTok account for Harris, @KamalaHarris, on July 25, which garnered more than 100 million combined views on its first five posts and already has nearly four million followers.
Despite the burst in activity and growth in Harris’s social accounts — not entirely surprising for a newly announced presidential candidate, especially given the unusual circ*mstances — conversations about Trump still dominate. While 29,000 TikTok posts in the last week have been hashtagged #harris2024, nearly twice as many, 54,000, have been tagged #trump2024.
Jeremy Thompson, who led social media strategy for Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign, said Harris’ burst of positive social media engagement will eventually fade, and the campaign needs a long-term strategy to retain some of its early momentum.
“The Harris honeymoon on digital will end at some point, and that's going to be a big challenge for the campaign that I'm sure their team is probably thinking about, because they are swinging by the seat of their pants,” he said. “The memes might last a few weeks, but at the end of the day, the American people want to know what she is going to do for them to help the economy and to solve those kitchen table issues they care about.”
For that, the Harris campaign has started turning to the group of more than 550 content creators that Biden’s campaign had already partnered with, but which hadn’t helped it overcome challenges with young voters in the last few months. Several influencers who worked with the Biden campaign in 2020 also chose not to do so this cycle due to criticism of the Biden administration’s stance on the war in Gaza.
But since Harris became the party’s presumptive nominee, the tide has turned. Keith Edwards, a Democratic strategist with over 400,000 followers across his social media accounts, said Harris’ relative distance from the White House’s support for Israel has already made it easier for influencers to get behind her.
“Though most influencers knew the stakes of the election and knew that it was Trump or Biden, it was extremely hard to be pro-Biden in that atmosphere,” he said. “Kamala Harris does not have that same baggage.”
The campaign is also actively engaging with online creators like the group Swifties for Kamala, run by 22-year-old college student Emerald Medrano, who has amassed over 150,000 followers across X, TikTok and Instagram since launching less than two weeks ago. Medrano said the Harris campaign has reached out to cheer on the group’s work and offer help with mobilizing voters.
While Taylor Swift hasn’t yet endorsed Harris (she backed Biden in the 2020 race), many of her young and female fans have joined the group to express their support for the presumptive Democratic nominee. The GOP presidential ticket, meanwhile, has managed to alienate many of Swift’s fans with JD Vance’s remarks about “childless cat ladies,” as the 34-year-old singer, who does not have children, frequently posts about her three cats on social media.
After Medrano’s tweet calling for American Swifties to “mass organize” for Harris went viral, he was inundated with messages from fellow fans enthusiastic about helping the candidate, he said. Hours later, Swifties for Kamala was born.
Medrano said he’s been impressed with how much the Harris campaign has embraced the “positive feminine energy” dominating pop culture right now, from Swift’s The Eras Tour to last summer’s “Barbie” movie. The group frequently retweets posts from the @KamalaHQ X account, playing off of its youthful tone and commenting with Swift lyrics like those from Swift’s 2019 single “You Need to Calm Down,” which was released on Trump’s birthday.
“With the social media strategy being fun, making fun edits to Chappell Roan, like ‘Feminininomenon,’ I feel like that’s how us young voters show our love and our support to Kamala as a candidate,” Medrano said. “We will spend time to make edits of you. We’ll spend time to make jokes, and we’ll laugh at your jokes, and we’ll share with our friends. I think those kinds of movements and the culture of young people are very powerful, because if we’re willing to joke about it and also take you seriously as a human being, that means we really support you.”
Schuster said the campaign will continue working with influencers to boost Harris, adding that their strategy is focused on “meeting voters where they are.”
“Our influencer/creator strategy relies on trusted messengers to transcend online spaces that aren’t traditionally political to help cement the choice in this election for the voters who will decide it,” he said.
Both Thompson and Edwards emphasized that, to continue generating online attention, the campaign must focus on channeling organic support rather than attempting to manufacture it artificially. Thompson said while leaning into viral trends can pay off in the short term, it can be risky in the long run because the conversation on social media shifts so quickly.
“This isn't something you can create—this is something that just happens organically,” Edwards said. “What they’re doing is making sure that it spreads as quickly as possible, and they're doing an excellent job at that.”
