Harris inherited Biden's campaign staff, war chest, and brand guide
Plus: These are the calmest pro-Trump ads you've ever seen
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
Harris inherited Biden's campaign staff, war chest, and brand guide
These are the calmest pro-Trump ads you’ve ever seen
There’s nothing new about Harris’ coconut tree memes. The first Democrats did it too.
Scroll to the end to see: the new kamalaharris dot com 💻
Harris inherited Biden's campaign staff, war chest, and brand guide
In less than 24 hours, Vice President Kamala Harris went from running mate to presidential candidate, with a new campaign logo to match.
The Biden-Harris campaign’s design team created the new “Harris for President” logo in short order. Rather than reaching back to Harris’ 2020 campaign logo and its unconventional (for politics) purple, red, and yellow color palette, the logo was designed to match the preexisting Biden-Harris campaign identity.
Harris’ logo uses a red, white, and creme color palette. And the sans-serif typeface in Harris’ new logo, Decimal, has been used by Biden since his campaign rebranded for the general election in 2020, a month before he named Harris as his running mate.
The result is a logo that’s safe and familiar. It communicates continuity—a hallmark of visual design for vice presidential running mates who later run for the top job. That continuity isn’t just for the branding either. Harris is inheriting the Biden-Harris campaign’s staff, headquarters, and bank account.
The official new Harris brand came together quickly over the course of the day, with the new logo making its debut online Sunday night, just hours after she became a candidate. After Biden endorsed Harris for the nomination, his former online campaign shop moved all of its preexisting Harris merch—items like Kamala signature shirts, sticker packs, mugs and sweatshirts—to the top of the site. Harris’ social media banner images were eventually updated from a graphic of her and Biden and the slogan, “Together we can finish the job!” to a new slogan, “Let’s WIN this!”
It might not last long, though. Should Harris indeed become the Democratic nominee, she still has a running mate of her own to pick, and with that, she’ll once again need a new logo.
These are the calmest pro-Trump ads you’ve ever seen
Former President Donald Trump’s time in office is remembered by his detractors and critics for chaos, from late-night tweets and controversies to high staff turnover and perpetual protests. One pro-Trump super PAC remembers things differently.
Make America Great Again Inc., launched a new campaign this week inspired by YouTube TV’s “Enjoy the Zen” ad breaks, the calm placeholder bumpers that show serene shots, like a bee enjoying a flower or swimming dolphins. Instead of nature scenes, though, it’s b-roll of a fluttering American flag and an oil rig at sundown, and rather than a nonpartisan message to “enjoy the zen,” it’s a political message: “Vote Donald Trump.”
One ad titled “Border Zen” shows a Border Patrol SUV driving alongside a quiet U.S.-Mexico border wall for 15 seconds while foreign policy-themed ads show either a warship gliding peacefully through the water or a fighter jet cruising in the clouds that say “A return to peace through strength. Vote Donald Trump.”
It’s a clever concept and it represents a departure for the super PAC, which most recently aired typical attack-style ads against Biden. It’s also an attempt at softening Trump’s image.
The message is that Trump will make the U.S. safer, more affordable, and in a twist, more boring, which was a message Biden ran on in 2020. As MAGA Inc. communications director Alex Pfeiffer told Axios, which first reported the ads, the Democratic Party "is unraveling, chaos is consuming our nation, and war continues to ravage the globe. It doesn't have to be like this."
MAGA Inc. started running 17 different versions of these “zen” ads beginning Monday, Google’s ad library shows. Many of them are about the economy, like the flag one, called “American Made,” or others showing either families at the beach that say “Memories made affordable again” or people enjoying a meal or BBQ together that say “Quality time made affordable again.” Two ads show new home owners posing in front of home for sale signs.
These purposefully short, peaceful spots push back against the image Trump’s own campaign has pushed for itself with mugshot merch and an all-black “Never Surrender” logo. They’re geared towards a different audience too. These ads aren’t for Trump supporters currently trying to figure out what to do with their now-out-of-date “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts, they’re for swing voters who wouldn’t necessarily put a Trump bumper sticker on their car but still might vote for him.
There’s nothing new about Harris’ coconut tree memes. The first Democrats did it too.
When the first Democrats rallied in support of the first Democratic President Andrew Jackson, they adopted a tree as a campaign symbol.
Jackson was nicknamed “Old Hickory” by his troops when serving in the War of 1812, and during the 1828 presidential campaign, his supporters organized themselves into “Hickory Clubs” to play off the reference. They wore hickory sprigs in place of more traditional campaign ribbons, and they planted hickory saplings on Independence Day and the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, which Jackson was famous for winning over the British, according to “Tippecanoe and Trickets Too” by Roger A. Fischer, a book about political ephemera. The hickory tree was a meme.
Nearly 200 years later, supporters of the woman who hopes to be elected the newest Democratic president in U.S. history have adopted another tree as a campaign symbol.
Harris’ recollection of an aphorism shared by her mother — “‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’ You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.” — has turned into a meme taken in and out of context and mashed up with memes for brat, the new album by Charli XCX.
Online, Harris supporters are using the coconut and palm tree emojis to signal their support 🥥🌴 and members of Congress are even getting in on the action. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) posted a photo of himself climbing a coconut tree and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) told a reporter he was “staying hydrated” when spotted drinking out of a coconut with a straw. That, along with campaign’s acknowledgement of the brat memes, shows that the Harris campaign is able and willing to engage in youth and online culture.
Interestingly, some of these memes were popularized first not by liberal Charli XCX fans, but by Republican rapid response accounts. The RNC Research X account published footage of Harris talking about coconut trees and context last year, and the Trump campaign account Trump War Room even put together a supercut of Harris saying “what can be unburdened by what has been” for four minutes so you don’t have to. It hits like Gaga saying “there can be 100 people in a room…” over and over again.
Campaign signifiers have come from political opponents before. There is of course Trump’s “deplorables,” cribbed from a comment from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and before that, the Whigs turned a taunt about log cabin and hard cider into marketing opportunities. They’re all memes.
What the Harris campaign is doing with pop culture is contemporary, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s new.
Have you seen this?
From candidate buttons to soap babies: How Smithsonian curators scavenge political conventions. “We try to document, through material culture, Americans’ relationship with their democracy, with their government, how they are affected by it, how they affect it, and how they interact with it. Material culture is all of the ephemera and the products that people make and use to express their opinions about politics.” [Fast Company]
Harris’ candidacy reshapes strategies for key House and Senate races. Republicans are overhauling their approach after betting on tying opponents to Biden, while Democrats are trying to harness newfound enthusiasm. [NBC News]
Here’s the new kamalaharris dot com. Click through for the 404 page, which says “this page exists in the context of all that came before it.”
Here’s what the signs at the RNC said. If you want to know the main talking points of the Republican National Convention, read the signs. [Yello]
History of political design
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Log cabin made from horn (1840). This model log cabin, created in support of the first Whig President William Henry Harrison’s campaign, was made from translucent horn and bound with twine, and it features a hinged roof that can be opened to hold calling cards, according to Stevens S. Powers, an art dealer.
A portion of this newsletter was first published in Fast Company.
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