Inside the Gen-Z operation powering Harris’ online remix

(CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris, quoting her mother, told a group of newly sworn-in commissioners for a White House initiative for Hispanics that their work on education and economic opportunity would be done in the context of their communities.

“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Harris said in May 2023, laughing. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

It went viral. First, as a criticism of Harris on right-wing social media accounts, including @RNCResearch, the rapid response account of the Republican National Committee. But slowly, then all at once — around the time she became the presumptive Democratic nominee — it was co-opted by her supporters, who remixed and reposted the meme and catapulted Harris onto the “for you page” for TikTok users across the country and globe.

For years as vice president, Harris has been quietly laying the digital groundwork behind the scenes — meeting with young voters, social media influencers and several grassroots organizations. Now, with less than 90 days until the November election, the Harris campaign has made subtle shifts to capitalize on the momentum around her candidacy — and translate her growing social media following into votes.

“When we see moments like this go out into this sort of wild, wild west of the internet and be reinterpreted by the people who are there, who are not digital strategists, right, but who are likely teenage girls sitting in their bedrooms creating these fancam edits, making these memes — we see a reinterpretation through their perspective,” said Deja Foxx, a digital strategist, who, at 19, was the youngest member on staff in Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign. It reflects “the power that young people hold not only at the polls, but in defining the narrative,” she added.

Since President Joe Biden stepped aside and endorsed his vice president for the Democratic nomination 20 days ago, the Harris campaign’s digital structure and strategy have largely stayed the same, sources say. But there have been subtle shifts to better reflect the younger nominee at the top of the ticket.

The number of plays Harris’ @KamalaHQ TikTok received for its 65 posts in 20 days is more than double what the @BidenHQ’s 335 posts received in roughly five months.

Harris deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty, who oversees paid digital and fundraising programs, said in an interview with CNN that the digital team’s goal is to convert the organic excitement about her candidacy into volunteers, donors and simply getting more people to post about Harris — from professional content creators to everyday supporters.

“Our job in the campaign is to make the windmill. It is the vice president’s job to make the wind. And the enthusiasm around her is a testament to what she brings to this candidacy. But the team here — the fact that they were able to flip and capture a lot of this energy is a testament to a really good system being in place with a candidate who people are really excited about,” Flaherty said.

Through a combination of posts on social media — using platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, X and Facebook — and engagement with its influencer program, the campaign’s goal is to reach voters, introduce Harris, and, ultimately, turn that interest into votes at the ballot box.

Sohali Vaddula, national director of communications for the College Democrats of America, the youth arm of the Democratic National Committee, told CNN that memes of Harris make her seem more “relatable.”

“It just makes people feel like she's one of us, like we're not too far off from her. And it also just resonates with us better,” Vaddula said. “Politics is difficult. All of these policy issues or things that are going on can be really heavy sometimes, and adding memes to that kind of just makes it a little bit more lighthearted.”

Biden’s campaign built an operation that staffers have long said would be able to reach voters where they were, reflecting the changing ways Americans consume their news, including younger, low-trust voters who are largely tuned out of politics and get much of their information from social media.

The 175 staffers on the team inherited by Harris include a mobilization team, which communicates with grassroots supporters who are sharing or making content, donating money and making calls and sending texts; a digital persuasion operation that encompasses paid media, influencers and content creators; a creative team; and a rapid response team.

The group that runs the @KamalaHQ TikTok is very young. Run by Parker Butler, 24, with Lauren Kapp, 25, the five-person Gen Z team has been given training and ground rules — and then “empowered to cook online.”

The team “consists of a lot of young people who just get the internet instinctually,” Butler said in a Friday interview with CNN.

Each campaign social media account has its own personality, with content and format curated to suit its viewers: The campaign’s X account, for instance, is geared toward “political junkies,” Instagram is “very millennial,” Facebook aimed at “older folks” and TikTok for a “young audience,” said Butler.

And there is a focus, Kapp said, on keeping the content “as specific to the trend and the platform as possible — and that’s through small things, like speaking in Gen Z language, and making sure that we aren’t forcing a trend for the sake of doing it.”

Kapp closely tracks the like-to-view ratio as she measures success on TikTok.

“A like on TikTok is basically seen as an endorsement. You can get 50 million views on Tiktok, but if you only get 5,000 likes, then your video’s low-key seen as a flop,” she said.

Since @BidenHQ became @KamalaHQ, Kapp said, the like-to-view ratio has increased from 10-15% to 15-25%.

The team has to be nimble and respond in real time, communicating largely over Slack with a pitching process in place and an emphasis on minimal approval chains.

This week, when Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance approached Air Force Two in Wisconsin — “to check out my future plane,” as he joked to reporters afterward — Kapp sprung into action. She paired video of Harris greeting a pack of Girl Scouts on the tarmac with video of the nearby Vance plane. She also added trending audio from Abby Lee Miller of “Dance Moms” fame and an eye-rolling emoji caption. The ten-second TikTok got 16.3 million views and 3.7 million likes.

As the Harris team works to grow its tent of followers through a steady output of social posts, the Trump campaign is also on TikTok, where it has posted nine times since it launched on June 1, including posts featuring former President Donald Trump with content creators such as Jake Paul, Logan Paul and Adin Ross. The @realdonaldtrump account has 9.9 million followers. Trump has also asked his followers to join him on his Truth Social platform, where he regularly posts.

There are questions, however, as to whether the team built for Biden is equipped to be the online voice of the Harris campaign. One source said that there have been concerns raised internally about whether digital leadership should change to reflect the switch from an 81-year-old White male to a 59-year-old Black and South Asian woman.

For his part, Flaherty was a vociferous defender of Biden in the aftermath of the president’s dismal CNN debate performance — suggesting in a June 29 email to the campaign’s supporter list that Biden dropping out would be a “highway to losing” and that other candidates, including Harris named in one graphic, “would, according to polls, be less likely to win.”

That, of course, has not happened, with Harris’ turnkey campaign team setting grassroots fundraising records since she entered the race.

Building on her experience as a presidential candidate in 2020, Harris has cultivated her own long-term relationships with a critical group of social media influencers and content creators.

In the 2022 midterm elections, Harris was among the DNC’s top surrogates for influencer collaborations. She participated in over a dozen recorded one-on-one conversations with social media creators and created several videos with them to share on different social media platforms, a DNC aide said.

Throughout her vice presidency, Harris has prioritized a digital presence, said Rachel Palermo, who previously served as deputy communications director and associate counsel to Harris.

“There's something about her that young people and pop culture can really relate to. People get really excited about her, and she knows how to channel that into actually issuing a call to action,” Palermo said.

Harris’ campaign plans to capitalize on those relationships as it prepares for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago beginning August 19. For the first time, the convention has credentialed more than 200 content creators to cover the events in person.

“Bringing creators to our convention will multiply our reach and ensure that everyone can witness democracy in action,” said Cayana Mackey-Nance, director of digital strategy for the convention.

The Harris campaign and the Democratic Party are also working to engage regular people with social media accounts and seeking to train supporters to talk to their friends and post content to their own social networks. And the groundswell of support in the immediate days after Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee brought with it something difficult to purchase or build: a coolness factor.

“It is really cool to talk about Kamala Harris on the internet right now,” Flaherty said. “The volume of folks who are posting, who have lots and lots of followers, gives people who share content with their friends and family more coverage to do it themselves.”

The campaign has also made efforts to shift the tone from the Biden operation to better reflect the new candidate.

“While the chassis and the engine might be the same under the hood, we still have to change the system some ways for the dynamics of the person who's at the top of the ticket,” Flaherty said.

The campaign is measuring its digital success with a variety of metrics: likes and views, fundraising and recurring donors, volunteer signups, volunteer follow-up, and the broader social media conversation.

“There has been a swell of enthusiasm in the program across the board. And people are excited and willing to go and share content, talk to their friends,” Flaherty said.

And as of Friday, more than 230,000 voters had registered to vote through Vote.org since Biden announced July 21 that he would step down. Of that figure, a Vote.org spokesperson said, 18% were 18-year-old voters, and 81% were between 18 and 34 years old – a potential signal that the message is breaking through to critical young voters.

The campaign has helped facilitate 27 Zoom calls organized by supporters that have led to significant engagement and fundraising in recent weeks, including “Black Women for Harris,” “White Dudes for Harris” and “Out for Harris.” Those calls have collectively raked in more than $20 million for the campaign as of last week, a Harris spokesperson said.

More than 44,000 people joined a Zoom call conducted by the collective “Win with Black Women,” including Harris ally Melanie Campbell, the convener of the Black Women's Roundtable and chairwoman of the Power of the Ballot Action Fund.

“We're living through a generational shift,” Campbell said. “We've never seen a presidential candidate step down from power like that. And then in the same breath within minutes, he announced his endorsement of Kamala Harris.”

The call emphasized that everyday voters and Harris supporters can contribute to the campaign in small ways — even just using their phones to repost a video or create a meme on social media to help other voters understand who Harris is and what she will set out to do if elected in November.

“Technology has changed the game,” Campbell said. “You cannot underestimate the power of this moment. It is a transformational moment.”

@BidenHQ, a social account on multiple platforms, was rebranded @KamalaHQ in the hours after Biden passed the torch to Harris.

The account’s following, now at over 3.3 million followers, doubled overnight in the hours after it switched over. The @KamalaHarris TikTok account, her personal handle, gained 2 million followers in the 24 hours after it began posting July 25, and is now up to 4.3 million followers.

“Femininomenon,” a TikTok created by Kapp and posted to the @KamalaHQ account with audio from the eponymous song by Gen Z pop star Chappell Roan, is the account’s highest performing and most-liked post, with 56 million plays and 7.3 million likes.

Some of the enthusiasm is not directly quantifiable — a capturing of popular culture — but the campaign views it as a significant milestone.

“On this question of moving people who are less inclined to pay attention to politics, the bank shot runs through culture,” Flaherty said.

He continued: “The last couple of weeks, some stuff that we have done, some stuff that has happened just truly organically, has sort of led to a cultural permission structure for people to be able to affirmatively say that they're voting for Kamala Harris, to be able to say they are participating in this election, for participating in this election to be a ‘cool thing,’ a thing that people want to do.”

The campaign is banking on converting that energy into votes while holding on to its momentum.

“WHO IS RUNNING THIS ACCOUNT 😭” a TikTok user recently commented on one of the @KamalaHQ posts.

A smiling second gentleman Doug Emhoff posted a selfie-style response: “It’s obviously me.”