From Memes to Votes: Bridging the Awareness-Action Gap

In my previous analysis of the Kamala Harris femininomenon, I unpacked the incredible impact of memes on the presidential election campaign, particularly in driving awareness, hyper and donations for Kamala Harris in a very short amount of time. Within 24 hours of the viral fan edits, she garnered over 100 million dollars in donations within the first 24-48 hours and officially announced on Friday that the campaign raised $310 million in July, fueled by small-dollar donations. Great, this demonstrates the power of digital engagement and niche communities in political movements – but what now?

While discussing this event with Vicki Liviakis during our conversation for @Kron4News, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel between the election momentum and the typical campaign phases in marketing and advertising. And while articles like this one from Vogue Business about “Gen Z broke the marketing funnel” have been going around, I still believe that we go through some basic sequences in campaigns – although I do agree with the more cyclical vs. tapered approach of the argument.?

Aggregated, niche mass awareness

While the virality of the brat and coconut momentum created overnight mass awareness, the mass was formed differently from your typical marketing audience. In the latter, you’d define a broad group based on a few social demographic markers and interest signallers, in this instance however, we saw diverse niche communities, or pockets come together into one big aggregated mass.

I’m intentionally using the word “niche” because I have to agree with Zoe Scaman , that we need to give it a new definition: “niche used to mean small. Now, it means distinctive. [...] niches no longer equate to small impact.

It has been interesting to see which kind of groups have self-identified themselves in order to rally like-minded people: Black Women for Harris, White Women for Harris, LGBTQ for Harris, Black Men for Harris, White Dudes for Harris, Swifties for Harris, Comedians for Harris, VCs for Kamala, Founders for Harris, Republicans for Harris, Childless Cat Ladies for Harris – and the list goes on. These groups all started organizing independently, organizing their own Zoom, donations and merch and collectively raised a substantial amount of donations.?

I’d even go as far as stating that the final critical mass could be defined as more qualitative and valuable than any other audience of the same size you would have bought for two reasons:

1. The fact that it wasn’t paid for but organic and voluntary
2. The emotional resonance and cohesion of the sub-groups which strengthens the overall group (which pretty much leans into the Social Identity Theory by Henri Tajfel and John Turner)

The challenge of sustaining the grass-root momentum of soft actions

The emotions and hope are high, the memes are meme-ing, the donations are donating, the rallies are rallying, the headlines are headlining, the interviews are interviewing, the merch is merching (!!) … but for how long?

Time is an interesting concept at this time – there are 89 days left until election day as of this writing. Which is a lot and little time at the same time. Marketers will know what I mean: keeping the enthusiasm and momentum going for three months is no easy feat, especially in today’s world of fast-paced, shortened hype and trend cycles and which people – consumers – who have the attention span of goldfishes.?

But first, let’s look at the said grass-root engagement we’ve seen pop up and which would make any marketer turn green with envy. I’ve labeled these actions as “soft actions”, because while they might be very valuable right now, they unfortunately won’t be the truly defining and crucial ones in the end.

We have Swifties rallying to get 13$ donations (again, iykyk), an unquantifiable amount of new fan edits seeing the light of the day every single day (I could dedicate a whole presentation to these alone), tons of gorgeous, funny merch:

Beyond these fan actions, we’ve also seen interesting and borderline surprising political grass-root activities take place: from individuals on TikTok highlighting registration procedures (and calling out some shady things going on in this regard in some states), people going door to door, the usual (very American) political yard signs to “The Villages in Florida hosts golf cart rally for Kamala Harris” (this was a canon event for me since I had never heard of the Villages before, but I just need to commemorate this unexpected and iconic moment with a picture:)

All these are great – but is this enough to win?

Crossing the chasm: from memes and likes to the ultimate hard action (votes!)

I believe that the Democratic presidential candidate is now facing the same hurdle many tech companies have done before: the need to cross the chasm between the early adopters and the early majority.?

The well-known technology adoption lifecycle by Geoffrey Moore describes the process by which new technologies are adopted, emphasizing a significant gap or "chasm" between the early adopters and the early majority. Crossing this chasm involves addressing the needs and concerns of the early majority – which differ from those of the early adopters – to achieve widespread market acceptance.

My assumption is that in the context of political campaigns, this means addressing the specific pain points and concerns of mainstream voters. While initial supporters may be driven by the excitement of a new candidate which reinforces their beliefs and allegiance to said candidate and party, mainstream (and swing) voters may need to be convinced by tangible policies and programming that address their needs specifically.?

In very simplistic terms, I believe that part of this has been achieved by Kamala Harris’ decision to pick Tim Walz as her running mate, as he seems to compliment her more urban (brad) appeal with his rural (midwester princess) profile.

We have also already seen an evolution in the overall campaign messaging, where key program and policy points are being discussed during the rallies which have just begun. In marketing we’d typically call this the “Consideration” phase, in which potential customers evaluate and compare products or services based on features, benefits, and reviews before making a purchase decision. The likeability of each candidate will only go so far – now it’s time to win over the “prospects” with messaging which addresses their pain points (from free lunches over gun control, climate policies to abortion rights and more).?

Beware of the gaps – concrete steps and tactical parallels to pop culture

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt in my past life as comms planning expert is the tendency to overemphasis on the (fun) top of the funnel and awareness efforts, with deflating budgets the lower we went down the funnel. Yet, it is precisely the lower stages—consideration and conversion—that yield the most return on investment and actually drive the business. Granted, generating a lot of awareness is important to reach a critical mass, but this mass is useless if you don’t end up converting it. In this case the stakes are even higher than a CEOs quarterly sales results – we’re just talking about the? four-year term of the presidency of the United States of America. NBD.

Let’s see if we can borrow some inspiration from marketing tactics. The three most obvious recommendations would be to

1. tailor the messaging and content to diverse segments to make? the communication more relevant and impactful, making sure to cover all demographics (and not get blinded by the currently overly enthusiastic and loud digital natives)
2. break down the program and policies into digestible chunks and clear content pillars to ensure voters understand not just who Kamala Harris is, but what she stands for and what her policies aim to achieve
3. bridge the digital and physical world by transitioning from online engagement to in-person actions and invents (the rallies are a first step)

But if I was dealt the same cards as Kamala HQ as a CMO, I’d make sure to leverage and double down on the existing, uniquely engaged grassroot community and fan base (I’m sorry but #KHive is officially a thing and #OperationCoconut has taken on unprecedented dimensions). This kind of playground is any marketer's dream – and something they usually work very, very hard for (because people usually really, really don’t care about your brand or business).?

It has been fascinating to see how the Harris campaign has shown surprising synergies with pop culture from the get-go, pretty much mirroring the playbook of some of the most iconic pop figures of our current times:

1. The soundtrack. Kamala IS brat (and closely linked to Charli XCX’s Apple song), she is using Beyoncé's ‘Freedom’ as her campaign song, she’s also a Femininomenon as Chappell Roan would say and we’re only waiting for an official Taylor Swift sounds (although that might be delayed given the recent Vienna situation). Being strongly associated with not only one, but three iconic songs is .. insane in the best way. Check on this.
2. The symbolism. I’d invite you to close your eyes and to try to remember last summer – what do you see or hear? Personally, all I see is pink, silver, glitter, disco balls and women saying “hi Barbie!” to each other in the streets. What a Cruel Summer, especially for all the Kens who were definitely not Alien Superstars. As we’ve established last time, this summer is Espresso, the pink pony club and bratty lime green. Last summer we had a Barbie Selfie Generator, this summer Charli XCX gave us the Brat Generator to create our own brat art.? I have to admit that I’m still on the fence if I want Kamala HQ to come forward with one strong visual symbol to rally all the sub-movements or if this a unique, powerful case where we might want to let loose and let the people take it and shape it to their liking. It feels like giving the KHive free reign to let their creativity flow, we unconsciously create a powerful creative contest which keeps the momentum going.
3. The toolkit. The devil works hard, but the Swifties work faster. To be fair, they’ve had multiple legs of the Eras Tour to perfect the art of grass root activities (aka. fan projects), but which has only been solidified with Miss Americana’s appreciation and encouragement at every concert. It was only a question of time before we’d see friendship bracelets (Presidential Election’s Version) and rumors are that Swifties are heavily mobilizing to boost voters registrations at upcoming US concerts (because 3, 2, 1 .. let’s vote b*tch!)

Conclusion: From Awareness to Action

Ultimately, we all know that the key is to go beyond just creating awareness, but to get to “hard”, defining actions by mobilizing grassroots efforts and deep community engagement effectively.?

Whenever I sit down to write down a few thoughts, I feel like 100 more appear as this whole situation continuously evolves at an insanely rapid pace. I don’t know which angle I’ll dive into next, but I already know that there are great lessons to be learnt for brands – one of the biggest ones being the opportunity to channel niche groups into a unified, powerful movement.

Stay tuned, there are 88 days to go.