This isn’t a joke: Based on a job itemizing, President Joe Biden’s reelection marketing campaign wants somebody to handle memes. The “Accomplice Supervisor, Content material and Meme Pages” rent will “provoke and handle day-to-day operations in participating the web’s high content material and meme pages.” The job pays as much as $85,000.
Sure, it’s absurd to be an expert meme supervisor. However on this age, digital organizing is simply as helpful as canvassing IRL at a farmers market. If a candidate is attempting to fulfill voters the place they’re, then they must be on-line, the place going viral can imply connecting with hundreds of thousands of individuals. That’s why Biden’s marketing campaign has a TikTok account, regardless that the president signed a invoice that would successfully ban the app.
“I do assume that we are able to and may infuse related, fashionable and enjoyable moments into how we’re speaking, particularly on digital platforms,” Annie Wu Henry, a creator and digital communications strategist, instructed TechCrunch in February. “However whereas we’re doing that, we have to proceed to be strategic and intentional and aware, even when it’s a meme.”
Even earlier than making this rent, the Biden marketing campaign has already relied on memes to attraction to voters. The Darkish Brandon meme, which stems from alt-right conspiracy theories concerning the president, has been so ubiquitous on Biden’s marketing campaign accounts that it feels stale. However the folks appear to like it: Final August, Darkish Brandon merch accounted for 54% of the marketing campaign retailer’s whole income, in keeping with Axios.
Former president Donald Trump has additionally embraced memes as he campaigns for his return to the White Home. When Trump’s mugshot predictably went viral, his marketing campaign instantly began promoting T-shirts, mugs and beer koozies with the picture, accompanied by textual content that claims “By no means Give up.”
Biden is way from the primary candidate to note that what occurs on-line can sway an election. For so long as social media has existed, it’s been a helpful instrument for political organizers, however the pandemic accelerated campaigns’ embrace of digital techniques. When Ed Markey (D-MA) ran for reelection to the Senate in 2020, Gen Z posters across the nation concocted “the Markeyverse,” an natural on-line motion to ensure a climate-friendly senator stored his seat. In the meantime, the nameless on-line character Organizer Memes has been internet hosting meme trainings for political organizations such because the South Carolina Younger Democrats. In these trainings, members collaboratively make memes, talk about what makes an excellent meme, and discover ways to use current meme templates to react in actual time to breaking political information.
Given the Biden administration’s potential to ban TikTok, younger folks might even see by means of the marketing campaign’s try to woo them with memes. But when nothing else, embracing social media is proof {that a} marketing campaign is at the least attempting to have interaction a youthful demographic.
