Tim Walz’s momentum surged on social media after being announced as Kamala Harris’s running mate on 6 August.
After following Harris’s successful media strategy, Walz has quickly become a viral sensation – re-energising youth voters across the United States.
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) embraced a new era of media output, credentialing 200+ influencers and content creators for the first time.
Walz’s speech at the DNC emphasised his role as the small-town, football coach – solidifying the marcomms strategy around Coach Walz.
Will it be a touchdown for the Harris-Walz ticket?
Tim Walz’s momentum is growing.
In a move that elevated the stakes of an already electric campaign, Kamala Harris announced the Minnesota governor as her running mate on 6 August.
The internet fell in love with “Coach Walz” almost immediately and his trajectory will be studied for years to come. However, the Nebraskan former teacher was virtually unknown before he joined the Democratic ticket at the start of August.
Before Walz was selected, almost 9 in 10 US adults did not know enough to have an opinion about him, and now he is not just a household name, he is “everyone’s dad”.
This election cycle has seen many firsts driven by the power of social media.
Influencers have been granted access to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) for the first time, both Harris and Walz have their own personal TikTok accounts and the campaign has the largest digital ad campaign spend in US political history.
At 59 and 60 years of age, Harris and Walz aren’t exactly the usual suspects for online content creators. And yet, their approach to social media is consumed by millions of people online. Walz's debut TikTok featuring him and his dog, Scout, humorously renaming the app ‘TimTok’ went viral, amassing 6.8 million views and 1.4 million likes.
So who is Tim Walz? How has social media helped skyrocket him into the public eye? And will the Democratic campaign’s masterclass in comms, social and vibes pay off when the US goes to the polls in November?
Big Dad Energy: Who is Tim Walz?
Walz is a “Dad, husband, teacher, coach, veteran Governor of Minnesota,” according to his Twitter bio.
Born and raised in small-town Nebraska, Walz started his career as a teacher, coach on the high school football team and faculty adviser for the school’s first gay-straight alliance chapter in 1999 (at a time when LGBTQ+ rights were still underrepresented in sport).
He first ran for office in 2006, where he stayed until becoming governor in 2018. Now he stands as potentially the next vice president of the United States.
In choosing Walz, Harris has elevated a Midwestern governor, veteran and former union member who codified the right to abortion in Minnesota, provided free school meals for those in need and committed the state to 100% clean energy by 2040.
His life path is a PR dream… a family man, with a history of steadfast morals and teddy-bear energy. The campaign has leaned heavily into Walz being a mid-western dad and the internet has LOVED it.
A video of Walz telling his vegetarian daughter that turkey isn’t meat in Minnesota… “turkey special” also went viral, and for good reason. These clips of Walz with his daughter – who is most definitely teaching him how to ‘do the internet’ – are marketing GOLD. They feed into the narrative that he is down-to-earth, approachable and great in front of the camera.
The Harris-Walz campaign is almost a dictionary definition of balancing the ticket. His humble background, small-town coach speak and white-male presence make him appealing to voters who are hard to secure when Donald Trump is on the ballot. Not only could Walz help the campaign’s standing across the upper Midwest, but his style complements and elevates Harris as the liberal, urban, serious nominee to lead the Democrats to the White House.
Walz: a masterclass in comms
If internet users didn’t have a soft spot in their hearts for Walz before his vice-presidential acceptance speech at the DNC, then many most certainly do now.
Just two weeks before the event, Walz had yet to deliver a speech using an autocue machine. Rather than shy away from his inexperience, the comms team played into it. Walz opened with “You might not know it, but I haven’t given a lot of big speeches like this”, adding “I have given a lot of pep talks.”
From the crowd chanting “Coach!” to his son in floods of awe-inspired tears, it’s clear that the positioning of Walz’s role as a dad, teacher and football coach went down a storm with Democratic delegates.
Every word, pitch and metaphor was carefully crafted to set Walz as the local candidate who genuinely cares about you and your family. He used the words ‘neighbour’ seven times, ‘school’ eight times and ‘freedom’ nine times – the latter being no surprise given that Beyonce’s song “Freedom” was the anthem of the convention.
The DNC: embracing a new era of media output
In a major first, this year’s DNC offered credentials to more than 200 influencers and content creators. These individuals represent a direct line to younger voters who are active on dominant digital platforms, like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, and who don’t necessarily engage with traditional media platforms.
Pew Research data from 2023 found that 83% of US adults use YouTube, 47% use Instagram, and 33% use TikTok – and many of these users increasingly look to social platforms as reputable news sources.
The decision to open the DNC to influencers is symbolic of a huge shift in the relationship between social media and political campaigning. It has also unearthed some pretty big questions about trust, perception and multi-channel media sources.
At this point, influencers are more trusted by their audiences than traditional journalists are by theirs. Creators, by their very nature, are partisan and opinionated. Whereas there is a heavier expectation on journalists to be impartial and unbiased – but in a world yearning for authenticity this increasingly misses the mark.
So far, Harris has not given a mainstream media interview since becoming her party’s nominee for president – but did sit down for three interviews with content creators at the DNC. Is the Democratic campaign’s choice to take all of its traditional media eggs and lay them in social media’s basket the right one to make?
The Democratic campaign approach is heavily targeted towards the younger generations. Having decisively won the youth vote in 2020, Biden then lost favour with the key demographic as a result of his climate policies, approach to foreign aid and glaring age gap.
The Harris-Walz ticket has offered a fresh reset opportunity and their campaign has committed to re-energising and re-mobilising these disaffected youth voters. Social platforms are increasingly political battlegrounds, canvassing opportunities and vote-influencing spaces – and if you look at the comment sections on Harris and Walz’s social posts, their approach really does seem to be working.
Impact of TikTok on the democratic ticket
The Harris campaign tore up the rulebook for political presence on social. We saw a glimpse of this during the UK general election, with the Labour TikTok account harnessing the power of memes, but it’s a whole other story for KamalaHQ.
Charli XCX’s tweet saying ‘Kamala is brat’ changed the game for the campaign’s marketing strategy. This endorsement and the interest it helped spark among a generation that had increasingly ruled out Joe Biden, has been the subject of tens of thousands of ‘hot takes’.
How did Kamala and her team turn this into a masterclass in brand and marketing?
🏃 Quick action: within moments of Charli XCX tweeting ‘Kamala is brat’, they changed their whole branding on X
👐 Embrace UGC: The budget it would take on traditional platforms to pull metrics like this is insane. Millions of videos are being created for free for the campaign.
🎢 Lean into trends (and quickly): The campaign jumped onto the music edits being created in the community – for example, KamalaHQ posting a carousel to Chappell Roan’s Femininomenon or jumping on the symphony dolphin meme.
⚠️ Take risks: To be honest, the Democratic presidential nominee calling herself ‘brat’ and making TikToks with drag queens is (at the very least) a risk in itself… but the content, the embracing of a new era of campaigning is a risk that is working – and one that Walz is following suit on.
Humour is the currency of the internet, and the Harris-Walz campaign is currently seeing some pretty intense ROI. As 5 November fast approaches, will they be able to ride the TikTok wave all the way to the White House?
Author: Meg Jones
