By Antoinette Siu • November 25, 2024 •
Ivy Liu
Creators and influencers played a significantly larger role in this year’s U.S. election compared to years past — from involvement at the White House creators conference to the battle of the candidates on the biggest podcasts.
This political cycle, election campaigns increasingly leveraged influencer strategies, particularly through long-form podcasts on YouTube and Spotify and short-form content on TikTok. Even as candidates and creators debate the ongoing challenges and risks associated with using influencer marketing for political campaigns, there is no denying that creators are now entrenched in political culture and strategy.
“Creators, particularly these podcasters… are the closest thing we have to mass audiences in a way,” said Natalie Silverstein, chief innovation officer of influencer agency Collectively. “Whereby we used to have broadcast media really dominate and kind of reach every kind of person — that’s just not the case anymore.”
Here are some of the ways creators and influencers could reshape politics:
The impact of social media continues to grow, given that around one in five Americans now say they regularly get news from influencers on social media — with a much higher share of adults under age 30 (37%) doing so, per Pew Research Center. (Pew defined news influencers as “individuals who regularly post about current events and civic issues on social media and have at least 100,000 followers on any of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.”)
This list does include journalists (thankfully), but the study found 77% of news influencers don’t have past or present affiliation with a news organization, and slightly more news influencers identify as Republican, conservative or pro-Donald Trump (27%) than Democratic, liberal or pro-Kamala Harris (21%). A majority of news influencers are men (63%).
Podcasts and YouTube will become bigger campaign investments
Both presidential candidates leveraged creators in their campaigns — President-elect Donald Trump appeared on Spotify’s podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience,” currently ranked No. 1 in the U.S., while Vice President Kamala Harris joined “Call Her Daddy,” hosted by Alex Cooper and ranked 35, per Spotify. Both shows reportedly boast millions of listeners, per Spotify rankings.
Both sides seemed to differ in how they approached these appearances, with Republicans leaning heavily on long-form podcast content and Democrats utilizing short-form, trend-driven content on TikTok, explained Alyssa Stevens, global director of PR, social media and influencer marketing at agency Connelly Partners, which doesn’t have a political affiliation.
“I think Trump had a bit of a head start on Harris with fostering these relationships with the podcasters or with the YouTubers,” Stevens told Digiday. “So that strategy extended throughout a longer period of time than when Harris got the bid and began her efforts on the creator front.”
Trump’s nearly three-hour interview with Rogan was broadcast to his 15 million followers on Spotify — and the episode gained more than 51 million views on YouTube, where he has more than 18 million subscribers. While exact Spotify figures are not available, Cooper’s interview with Harris included a clip on YouTube totaling 895,647 views on Call Her Daddy’s channel, which has 1 million subscribers currently.
The unscripted long-form content also gave candidates direct access to some key demographics: For example, Rogan’s podcast resonated with a younger, male demographic, with 54% of his weekly listeners leaning toward Trump and 26% preferring Harris, according to Edison Research. Cooper’s listeners was considered by Spotify at one point the top podcast among women, covering career to relationship topics.
It’s unclear whether short or long-form content will win out
Campaigns also adapted their strategies to leverage both long-form and short-form creator content — and both yielded different payouts.
For instance, the Harris campaign played into British singer Charli XCX posts on X, “Kamala IS brat” — referring to a lifestyle and her album of the same name. The artist elaborated on brats via TikTok.
“On the Harris side, they really tried to tune in on the Gen Z audience, the brat summer, the colors, the fun TikTok content, super buzzy, super exciting — talking to that audience in the way that their peers would,” Stevens said. “Whereas on the Trump side, it was more of those longer-form pieces of content, podcasts, YouTube — there was more messaging that was able to be conveyed about what that party stood for in the election and policies.”
The length of messages struck people differently. “When people were consuming the content on the Democratic side, it certainly was in your face and exciting,” noted Stevens. “But it may not have been able to communicate their point of view in the same way or the most effective way because it was so quick and hitting and really specific to those platforms that they were going on.”
Influencers can make an impact in unexpected ways
Campaigns that build close, authentic relationships with influencers see unexpected results than those that treat influencer marketing as a buzzword, said Josh Cook, president of progressive political creator network Good Influence. Cook noted the campaign of Dan Osborn, an independent candidate for Senate in Nebraska, who was able to raise significant money and awareness by engaging with influencers.
Even though Osborn lose the race against Sen. Deb Fischer, Cook found the results impressive: “They [raised] almost a half million dollars in just, like, 72 hours.” (He raised $3.2 million from July through September, according to The Nebraska Independent and FEC.)
Lessons learned from the tumultuous 2024 election demonstrated the undeniable influence of creators in shaping political discourse. But it also showed the need to understand its nuances, ethical complexities and potential impact on voter behavior in future politics. And it won’t be long before the next political cycle cranks up for the 2026 mid-term elections.
https://digiday.com/?p=561191