A Look at the Harris Campaign's Highly Targeted Earned Media Plan
The Harris/Walz campaign has largely avoid the "mainstream media" and instead focused on highly targeted earned media opportunities that offer a higher ROI.
With the high profile campaign events like debates and conventions behind us, both campaigns will spend the final month before election day communicating with voters primarily through both paid and earned media. Paid media is exactly what it sounds like– voter communications that are paid for by the campaign or outside groups like television, radio and digital ads. Earned media is communications that are “earned” through events or strategies like press conferences, rallies, interviews or policy plan announcements. In the last few weeks the Harris campaign has used both Harris and Walz in fun, yet strategic, ways to maximize the candidates’ time while directly reaching the voters they need to be talking to the most in the final month.
Since Harris entered the race in late July the national media has criticized her relentlessly for not sitting down for interviews or holding press conferences. They have accused her of dodging questions and hiding from reporters. The truth is she is doing interviews and she is answering questions. Just not from the traditional media outlets complaining. The Harris campaign has been executing a highly targeted, highly strategic earned media plan that seeks to talk directly with the groups of voters she needs to win over in the final month. If you haven’t seen some of the campaign’s recent earned media then you likely weren’t an intended target (or you don’t spend hours of your life on Twitter, which is a great life decision!).
The traditional media– broadcast news, cable news, legacy newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post– have suffered decreased viewership and readership as Americans increasingly turn to social media, streaming platforms and podcasts for their news and entertainment. The Harris campaign has responded in-kind by spending less time communicating through the national media than campaigns have in previous years. This has allowed the Harris campaign the ability to target voters who may be largely apolitical or may not be tuned into the upcoming election. If Harris’s earned media strategy centered around laborious sit-downs with the same “mainstream media” complaining about her absence she'd be talking to voters that are largely familiar with her and are already likely to vote for her. The New York Times and Washington Post, for example, have readerships that are overwhelmingly young, educated, white and financially well off– a subset of electorate Harris is already performing well with.
The other trend that has caused campaigns to rely less on traditional news media is that most Americans do not follow the news closely— or as closely as they once did. According to a study by Pew Research only 38% of Americans reported following the news closely which is down sharply from 51% in 2016. That makes finding other non-news outlets imperative if you’re going to get your message out. It also means that the work that goes into press conferences and sit down interviews with the traditional media may not be worth the squeeze it used to be worth. I’m not suggesting that the traditional news media should be ignored and avoided all the time. I’m just saying that in today’s fractured media environment it’s best to diversify.
Harris’s recent interviews have all served to directly benefit her in areas of potential weakness. Earlier this week, Harris appeared on the popular sports podcast All The Smoke, which is not the place you’d normally expect to find a presidential candidate. But that’s exactly the point. The 45 minute interview was a disarming opportunity to speak with a subset of voters who may not otherwise hear from her on everything from her background to her policy agenda to her love of Oakland sports. And it doesn’t hurt that All The Smoke is popular with men, specifically young men of color– both groups where Harris needs to make gains in the final five weeks.
The Harris campaign has also been selective and savvy about not just the audience that Harris is talking to but also the format of the interview. Take, for example, a recent “interview” she did with Wired Magazine. As I’ve mentioned countlessly in previous posts, one of Harris’s biggest challenges in the short time she’s had in this race is to introduce herself to voters who still say they need to hear more from her. The polls continue to show that the more voters hear from her the more they like her. The Autocomplete Interview series from Wired was the perfect opportunity for Harris to showcase her personality, talk about her bio and speak to an audience that is disproportionately male (are we sensing a pattern here?). And not for nothing, Wired has over 11.5 million subscribers on Youtube and the interview Harris did has received just under 2 million views in the last 11 days. That is a much higher ROI than the Harris campaign would ever get from most traditional outlets.
Harris has also done a handful of targeted interviews with local swing state reporters in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. This isn’t necessarily novel– Obama did this to great effect in 2008 and 2012– but it’s another example how her campaign is taking a surgical and disciplined approach to earned media that maximizes the candidates time and ensures she’s talking to voters who may not be active news consumers or tuned into the upcoming election.
The campaign has also featured Tim Walz in some smart, high targeted social media collaborations. This week Tim Walz and his dog Scout (also the name of my dog!) joined the popular X account We Rate Dogs, which has over 9.2 million followers and almost 97,000 Youtube subscribers, to talk about, well, dogs! Consider the contrast of Walz talking about the joys of owning a dog while Trump and Vance talk about Haitians “eating the dogs.” Walz also appeared on the popular TikTok channel Subway Takes back in July. While the brief appearance largely centered around gutter maintenance (you read that right) it was a fun way to showcase Walz’s “everyman” personality and reach younger and apolitical voters.
This strategy has also extended to surrogates, as well. Following her economic speech in Pittsburgh last week Mark Cuban did a number of media interviews for the campaign including a stop on the popular podcast This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von. Theo Von has a large following of—you guessed it!— young men. Cuban was a great choice of messenger for that audience, as well.
Voters are getting harder to reach with both paid and earned media. The media environment is extremely fractured and voters have more options for consuming information than ever. The old earned media playbook of playing to the traditional big name media outlets doesn’t work the way it used to. Harris has been smart to ignore their criticisms and meet the voters she needs where they are.