Can These Weird Instagram Memes Help Michael Bloomberg Unseat Trump?

Topline: Michael Bloomberg’s presidential campaign has partnered with Instagram’s biggest meme accounts in its latest advertising campaign, in a bid to compete with President Donald Trump’s presence on Facebook, the New York Times reports.

• The Bloomberg 2020 campaign is working with Meme 2020, a company created by some of the biggest names behind Instagram’s most-followed meme accounts, including @tank.sinatra and Jerry Media, a social media marketing firm prominent across the Facebook-owned app.
• The adverts look like bizarre direct messages from Bloomberg’s Instagram account, shared by some of the platform’s biggest meme accounts, i.e., the ones whose jokes and content are popular and consistently go viral.
• The DMs from the 77-year-old billionaire appear mixed in a stream of jokes, rehashed content and and inspiring photos, and are captioned with something along the lines of “This is sponsored by Bloomberg’s campaign.”
• “Hello Jerry. My granddaughter showed me this account. Your memes are very humorous,” reads one advert. “Can you post a meme that lets everyone know I’m the coolest candidate?” Here’s are some of the weirdest ones:

• Bloomberg’s campaign has previously experimented with memes to attract the oft-splintered attention of the young. In January, the campaign’s main Twitter account appeared as if it had been hacked after a series of jokes and memes were posted, including one asking users to “Spot the meatball that looks like Mike.” It turns out that the campaign’s digital manager, Eric Kuhn, was behind the memes.

• Bloomberg’s campaign said in a statement, reported by the New York Times: “While a meme strategy may be new to presidential politics, we’re betting it will be an effective component to reach people where they are and compete with President Trump’s powerful digital operation.”

Big number: Some 60 million accounts follow the accounts collaborating with the Meme 2020 campaign, according to the NYT’s Taylor Lorenz.

Chief critics: The campaign has received mixed reviews, with some users praising the campaign, while others are unimpressed. “This is so so gross and indicative of what the f*ck is wrong with the system. You👏can’t👏buy👏my👏vote👏,” one user fumed.

However you see it, the tactic is a fairly effective—if odd—way to present the 77-year-old billionaire to a much younger generation, one that is less familiar with his political record.

Key background: After the bungled Iowa caucus, the Democratic candidate ramped up his advertising spend and pooled his resources into attracting voters participating in the Super Tuesday primaries on March 3, 2020. Bloomberg has spent more than $8 million over the past week on Facebook adverts, according to Facebook data. This is around ten times more than Trump’s campaign has spent in the same period on the platform. His recent Facebook adverts have featured Trump in some way, most frequently in sentences like “Trump is rattled, find out why” alongside polling information. 

Facebook has been widely credited as one of the Trump campaign’s most powerful tools. In 2016, he employed sophisticated microtargeting techniques to attract very small groups of potential voters with tailored adverts. 

Forbes estimates Bloomberg to be worth $62 billion. He is the founder and CEO of media and financial information firm Bloomberg LP and served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013.

Tangent: Political advertising is the latest unlikely pivot for Elliot Tebele, who earned millions of followers reposting popular memes and the scorn of comedians and creatives. Tebele is the founder of F*ckJerry, the main account under social media marketing firm Jerry Media, which he also founded—and which became famous for promoting the failed Fyre festival and later producing the Netflix documentary on it.

Further reading: Fyre-Proof: The Sudden Fall And Swift Reemergence Of F*ckJerry’s Elliot Tebele (Alexandra Sternlicht)