Do Joe Biden and Kamala Harris read the Bernetblog from the Swiss ECCO Agency? Hardly. Impressive nonetheless: the KHive community caught our eye in the blog post of July 16th. Shortly afterwards, the Harris campaign rocket took off. Today, it is ideally positioned to defeat Trump on November 5th.
We pulled together an overview And once again we can learn a lot from the Americans. This overview shows our view on how the Harris campaign team has positioned itself online and how Trump stands next to it.
(download the PDF with clickable links here)
The official Kamala Harris website is the central hub for online communication. The Harris team focuses entirely on activating new contacts (events ‘meet Kamala/Tim’) and donations (large merch shop and donation platform). Interestingly, you will search in vain for political content, election programs or news content. The Trump team takes a different approach here. Content, news and political slogans are much more prominent at the center of their site. This is where the Harris team can still improve and expand. It would certainly have something to say.
The highly frequent Harris Walz newsletter is clearly effective, efficient and lucrative in terms of crowdfunding and community activation. It is not very driven by specific content. The call-to-action is always at the center. So there is something to learn about frequency, especially for companies and organizations in Switzerland.
On Facebook, Kamala Harris could probably reach the broadest demographic community (as our figures show), but only has 5.4 million followers. She regularly shares updates on political issues and personal everyday insights. With a little more live interaction such as Q&A sessions directly with supporters, she could strengthen the feeling of closeness. Trump has significantly more fans here (34 million) with a lot of engagement, despite shallow content without grip nand meaningfulness.
Despite all the prophecies of doom, Twitter/X remains a platform for fast news and direct communication. Trump was and is known to be omnipresent here. However, Kamala Harris does not cede the space to him completely and provides a counterbalance with important topics and strong community activation. However, she still communicates here as @VP Vice President. It is possible that this still influences content and positioning.
On Instagram, Kamala Harris cultivates her brand using multimedia and finds the ideal place for personal and emotional storytelling that speaks directly to and activates her supporters. Trump obviously has less to offer here. With even more user-generated content and #hashtag power, Harris’ growing, active community could make itself even more visible and tangible.
I confess that I only discovered Rumble during the course of this research. The platform has gained in popularity in recent years – especially in certain political communities, probably more in favor of Trump. Here, Harris is reaching a new audience with a few of the few swing voters, despite the small niche, perhaps with content that she does not yet cover on other platforms.
The involvement of influencers can, is and will be crucial for Harris’ reach and credibility across the US with very specific communities. For example, there is a WhatsApp group for the large Latino diaspora. Once again – as was once the case with Barack – they will play a major role in the decision-making process. The integration of influencers/celebrities for younger voters is just as skilful. Both Harris and Trump are also present on Tiktok.
It is not the usually somewhat erratic and difficult-to-measure figures (see chart) that show a strong, potential winner. Compared to Donald Trump, who pursued an extremely aggressive and actually always controversial social media tactic during his presidency, Kamala Harris has an integrative but all the more activating approach. Trump aims for polarizing content in order to attract attention and mobilize his supporters. Harris, on the other hand, focuses on positive messages, loyalty, respect and tangibility in a very direct exchange with her community. She has ignited a fire that still has the potential to spread and have a widespread impact by November 5th.
We will stay tuned and wish everyone lots of inspiration as they watch and learn: about the power of the right moment, about storytelling and about authenticity, e.g.. credibility – especially in the large online universe.
By the way: We don’t advise Kamala or Donald directly – perhaps their teams are reading this? However, we are happy to plan, build and support effective, well-organised communication hubs (aka newsrooms) for organizations of all sizes.
Image: official kamalaharris.com
Access to the ECCO Global Communications Network is simple. Contact information for a specific geography is available on the agency overview pages accessed here or contact the ECCO Global Communications office in London at +44 7899941744 or via email
