Project Coconut is a go
The Biden to Harris campaign reset takes the internet by storm
This goes without saying: It’s been an insane, historic, unprecedented, wild, exciting, energizing few weeks in American politics. Since last Friday’s newsletter, President Joe Biden stepped aside as his party’s nominee and the Democratic Party rapidly coalesced around Vice President Harris to lead their presidential ticket.
The switcheroo for the ages was a complicated reset for the Biden (now Harris) campaign that tactically consisted of a quick cascade of online communications, fundraising, and marketing efforts that were executed flawlessly.
Within moments of the President’s decision to step down, language on the campaign’s ActBlue donation page was reset to say “Donate to Elect Kamala Harris” and “I just gave to Harris for President.” The initial fundraising wave started and never really stopped: within 24 hours, the campaign raised $100,000,000 in donations, the most any such political effort has ever raised in 24 hours in American history. By Tuesday evening, they had exceeded $126 million. Nearly 900,000 of those donations came from people who had not yet donated this election cycle.
The massive display of grassroots enthusiasm generated by Biden’s move, which was always seen as an uncertain possibility, exceeded even the wildest expectations of most strategists. The newly minted Harris campaign digital staffers were well prepared to take advantage. Soon after the news broke, the campaign rebranded its “BidenHQ” social accounts to “KamalaHQ” and capitalized on a key cultural meme of the moment by making a connection to Charli XCX’s viral “Brat” album branding. (The bio, “Providing context,” of course comes from Vice President Harris’s now-iconic coconut tree speech.)
And as of yesterday, the Vice President now has a personal account on TikTok, @KamalaHarris, which has already gained 1.4+ million followers and 2.1+ million likes at the time of writing. The DNC is also getting in on the online momentum and doing some brat-branding on new fundraising ads as well.
Overall, the Harris campaign’s social accounts have gained a huge influx of followers – for example, data from InsTrack shows the Instagram account @KamalaHQ gaining 48,000+ since President Biden stepped aside last Sunday. Pro-Harris content also flooded TikTok. Politically attuned users across Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok began using the coconut emoji en masse, a reference to the most viral meme about the VP. “PROJECT COCONUT IS A GO,” commented one excited TikTok user. “WE RIDE AT DAWN, COCONUTS!” remarked another.
Analysis from CAP Action also found that progressive posts (on all socials except X/Twitter) mentioning Vice President Harris after President Biden endorsed her last Sunday through this Tuesday generated 233 million views – for comparison, progressive content about President Biden generated only 57 million views over the same time period the previous week. And this week, for the first time in 2024, there were more views on posts about the Democratic presidential ticket from political social media pages than the Republican ticket.
The campaign’s paid media operation also jumped into action following the news on Sunday and immediately began running Harris-specific Facebook and Google ads (the ads appear to use past footage of the VP and we’ll be on the lookout for updated ones), perhaps aiming to reach more normie supporters who won’t necessarily understand some of the unhinged meme content on TikTok or X.
And across the Internet, Democrats and lefties and other friendlies are reporting that they are now “hope-scrolling.” There’s no doubt that Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee has infused a whole new energy in this election cycle.
Digital ad spending, by the numbers:
NOTE: For the next two or so weeks, we will be denoting the Democratic presidential campaign as the Biden/Harris campaign while the transition continues – after that point, we plan to label it as the Harris campaign.
FWIW, political advertisers spent just over $16.2 million on Facebook and Instagram ads last week. These were the top ten spenders nationwide:
As new research came out that most Americans now know about Project 2025 and hate it, the Republican Party has started pushing what they’re calling “Agenda 47.” It’s pretty much the same thing… but the RNC has started running ads on it in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia.
Notably, after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, the Internet was flooded with people trying to hawk Trump merch. And that’s reflected in Facebook ads as well: some of the top Republican ad spenders this past week weren’t issue advocacy groups or even campaigns – they were scammy GOP merch companies like Red First, I Love My Freedom, and Republican State.
Meanwhile, political campaigns spent $8.5 million on Google and YouTube ads last week. Here were the top ten spenders nationwide:
The Trump campaign is running fundraising ads with a whole bunch of surrogates asking voters to open their wallets for Trump, including Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, newly-minted VP pick J.D. Vance, and even Eric Trump, Trump’s less public son who may be getting in the game.
On Snapchat, political advertisers in the U.S. have spent $3.7 million on ads year to date. Here are the top spenders:
Future Forward USA, the PAC supporting the Biden/Harris campaign, entered the top 10 spenders on Snapchat ads in 2024 this past week and is currently running ads on topics like Project 2025 and abortion access.
…and on X (formerly Twitter), political advertisers have spent over $6.6 million on the platform in 2024. Here are the top spending accounts:
Your 2024 digital dispatch
FWIW, here’s how weekly digital ad spending (Facebook/Instagram, Google/YouTube) compares between the Trump and Biden/Harris campaigns year-to-date:
As of this past week, the Biden/Harris campaign has spent $61.3 million in total in 2024 on digital ads, whereas the Trump campaign has spent $13.9 million in total.
As we noted above, the transition from President Biden to Vice President Harris (who will be able to access the campaign’s resources) is still underway in Wilmington. When it comes to the registered advertiser names that the campaign is using, the transition from “Biden Victory Fund” to “Harris Victory Fund” is underway, and we are keeping an eye out for the move from “Biden for President” to “Harris for President.”
More from around the internet:
If you have people in your life who are like Jake Tapper – i.e. not a chronically online young person – chances are they are very confused about what’s going on with VP Harris and the Charli XCX album, Brat. The Cut is out with a pretty helpful timeline and explainer.
Here’s a breakdown of creators and content that young right-wingers between the ages of 18-30 are paying attention to.
Donald Trump is reallyyyyy leaning into his brand and guest-starred on a YouTube show with professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau.
Social media platforms may be taking a much more hands-off approach to politics this cycle… but they have gotten much better at identifying AI-generated deep fakes, which seems to have fended off the AI-pocalypse for now.
That’s it for FWIW this week. This email was sent to 22,635 readers. If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, would you mind sharing it on Twitter or Threads? Have a tip, idea, or feedback? Reply directly to this email.
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