Dems overdo it on yet another social trend
They really said copy + paste on that media strategy
Kamala Harris’ new media venture might be taking the “rapid response” part of the job a little too seriously.
Rapid response in political media is both a marathon and a sprint, run at a much faster pace since clipping videos for social feeds became a thing. I would actually know (for once) — The Recount helped pioneer that strategy on Twitter in 2019, during my reign of terror as a Social Media Manager.
If there’s any hope of staying on pace, you can’t stop and acknowledge every single screamer on the sideline. You’ll never finish. And this is how Headquarters, which you can find at @Headquarters_67 @Headquarters68_ @HQNewsNow (but only on X; it’s @headquartersnewsroom on IG, and finally just @headquarters on TikTok) tripped coming out the gate.
People made fun of the reference to meme-in-hospice “6-7.” Then, I can only assume, the HQ team confuses generic online ridicule for an orchestrated pressure campaign. Twice. Controlling the narrative is the entire purpose of an account like this. Letting the narrative control them? Kamala Harris might be a little too For The People.
Two hiccups aside, I wanted to see how they introduced the brand to the world. The links in bio lead to the Headquarters Substack, which features one article written by Harris herself and one written by an unnamed contributor. There are no listed contributors on their “About” page, which features nothing more than the pre-written text Substack offers to anyone who makes an account. This is odd, to say the least.
And the thing is, this endeavor doesn’t exist in whatever the opposite of a vacuum is (Merriam-Webster lists “abundance” as an antonym, quelle coincidence). If I hadn’t spent the last six years in the political content mines, I’d have a hard time using the info above to get a sense of what this project is. Fortunately for you, I didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.
You’re looking at a beautiful, professional artist’s rendering of the media galaxy overseen by the Democratic Party itself. Their hope is that these accounts start to chip away at the communication domination the right wing got a 10-year head start on. The DNC directly operates a majority of these brands.
The external operations — like the very viral Governor Newsom Press Office — have gotten explicit endorsement and amplification from the party. There’s a big recycling operation between these accounts: share the same content, provide reciprocal engagement, even hire the same people.
Luminary Strategies launched and ran Kamala HQ during the campaign, launched FactPost for The Democrats after the loss, and now relaunched Kamala HQ as Headquarters. All the same people. All the same messaging. All the same viewpoints. Their playbook has been widely adopted in this ever-expanding universe. Let me show you how you can tell.
RECESSIVE TRAITS
Spinoffs: These social accounts will never come from a person themselves — the handles meant to engagement farm will almost always adopt one of these three naming conventions:
Grace Weinstein Press Office1
Team Weinstein
Grace HQ
Ex: Governor Hochul Press Office, Team Talarico, Kamala HQ (duh)
Visual cues: Heavy AI usage to generate images for clapbacks, constant meme posting, frequent pop culture references, replicating current graphic or social trends
Verbal cues: Lowercase letters in all posts, cursing even if the politician would never, using a lot of acronyms, attempting to dunk or ratio
ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL PROBLEM
I’m not confident this is gonna work at scale. But, I like to perform what medical experts call a “gut check” with people smarter than I am to see if their thoughts/feelings/concerns align.
For paying subscribers: you’ll get my three hangups, plus insight from experts like Sawyer Hackett and my favorite mind of all time, making his Who Broke It commentary debut, Steve Morris.
ME — I think the problem is three-fold.
