The Harris-Walz Campaign Marketing Itself Towards Gen Z Audiences

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    Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have had minimal time to create a fully-fledged campaign for this upcoming Presidential election, yet they have taken no time to think about the audience they want to gravitate towards. In a world where the media and your personal image can make or break your chances of winning, Harris and Walz had to strategize thoroughly to know if pandering towards younger audiences would be the right fit. It seems to be working in their favor as memes of Harris laughing and having fun have been going viral on social media platforms like X or TikTok for several weeks. 

    The most popular trend of these is in reference to the 2024 album "BRAT" by British singer-songwriter Charli xcx. All Charli tweeted was "kamala IS brat" which was enough to transform Harris's political campaign into one full of trends, calling out republicans for "weird" behavior, and viral moments. Once Charli tweeted that, @KamalaHQ on X changed their header to resemble the album cover for BRAT, and fan-made edits to songs from BRAT were made and are going viral to boost Harris's image and perception to younger voters. 

    Even though it is debatable that Harris and Walz actually listened to the body of work that is BRAT, they knew capitalizing on the memes rather than alienating young voters would help them rather than hurt. According to an article from The Guardian, it deemed to be a success since the memes have "exploded on Twitter, TikTok and beyond, helping the Harris campaign engage younger voters- a critical demographic." 




References
Levine, S. Pilkington, E. Rao, A. Smith, D. (2024) 'Brat, what's that?': Harris's meme fame (sort of) makes its way to  the DNC. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/22/kamala-harris-election-memes 

Comments

  1. Camren HardySeptember 2, 2024 at 11:02 PM

    I found it really interesting to see the Harris campaign try and tap in to the younger generations from the start of her campaign. Before seeing the posts about her on apps like Tiktok it made me realize just how little President Biden's and former President Trump's campaigns were actually trying to appeal to this demographic. I will also add that the Harris campaign does seem to be really tapped in on current trends as well. I saw quite a few edits of Harris to the song Femininomenon by artist Chappell Roan who has exploded in popularity recently. I do feel though that being a much younger candidate than either President Biden or former President Trump that it makes it much easier for her to be appealing to younger demographics already.

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