There's a lot that's required to win a campaign to be a successful candidate,
but it certainly doesn't hurt to have an awesome social media campaign going on and
I don't think anyone was more successful on that front in this last
midterm election than John Fetterman.
And so we're very lucky to be joined by someone involved in that effort.
We're joined now on the show by social media and digital expert for
progressive causes and campaigns.
Annie Wu Henry, welcome to The Damage Report.
>> Hi, good to be here.
>> Very glad to have you.
Thank you so much for joining us.
We had a lot of fun covering the Fetterman campaign during this cycle.
We really enjoyed the digs Dr. Oz and so I'm excited to jump into your work there.
But before we talked specifically about the Fetterman campaign,
tell me a little bit about getting involved in this sort of work.
>> Yeah, so I don't have the most traditional background, but
at the same time, I've always been interested in politics.
And I grew up, I'm a millennial, I'm in between kind of the millennial gen Z,
I grew up with social media being a part of like middle school, high school,
especially college and as I was getting more involved in things that
I cared about, learning what I wanted to be doing in the world as well as
the social media platforms, adapting, I always kind of included that.
And so I studied journalism, communications, and political science in
school, but took a less traditional political type of role outside of college,
worked in some government affairs, worked in some social media type of work.
And then when 2020 hit as everyone found a lot more time on their hands,
it being an important cycle as well as a lot of things happening in the world.
I started trying to use social as as the tool that I think that it is and it can be
in addition to what I was already posting about the things that I cared about and
trying to help people take action.
And so when I started doing that and started kind of growing
a personal platform that I wasn't really trying to do.
I wanted to shift that into doing some of the work including electoral work,
organizational work that I think is really important.
So I did a primary campaign in PA.
Then I started working in some grassroots organizations in Pennsylvania.
And then obviously knew that the midterm was something I really wanted to delve
deep into.
I grew up and spent most of my life in Pennsylvania actually in
a very conservative rural part of it.
And so I know how important a race like this is but that is winnable.
And so the Fetterman campaign just really felt right in a lot of ways and
obviously it was nice to come out with a win.
But more so for the state and the state of the world,
it was really needed and happy to be just a small part of it.
>> I'm happy both to look forward to having him in office and
also not having Dr. Oz almost an equal measure.
I appreciate both of those things.
It is interesting that you started getting involved in this work in 2020,
I think a lot of candidates and
organizations all of a sudden needed to get much better in this area.
They couldn't campaign in a lot of the traditional ways that they would have
because of social distancing and fears of the virus and all that.
So let's talk now about getting involved with the federal campaign.
How did that come about?
And how would you describe your influence on their efforts in terms of
digital outreach?
>> Yeah, so like I said, I kind of started this nontraditional path online and
because of that, I had written to contribute, I had said memes,
I had been been a contributor and content for a lot of these not electoral,
not organizational platforms, I'd say online.
Whether it's infographics account, whether it's meme accounts, whether it's people
through their Twitter platforms or TikTok or whatever it might be.
And so I had a lot of these personal connections and
kind of thought that if something with that type of work as well as understanding
the landscape of what's happening online.
If that was able to talk to some of this electoral work a little bit better.
I think there's a lot of power there and so
I had reached out to the Fetterman campaign just because I was interested,
I had some additional time as well as I knew again the importance of it and said,
I'm around, I'm in Pennsylvania, I wanna help, I wanna do whatever I can.
And as we continue to talk and some of the needs that they kind
of saw they said, why don't you come on full time and
it really wasn't how I expected to get involved.
I thought I'd kind of be social media consulting or maybe contributing or
doing some work, but full time efforts was at the end of the day,
I think the best decision I could have made.
And I really tried to bring that nontraditional background in
because I think again, there's a lot of power there and
if you're able to utilize it in concentrated and strategic ways,
I think that you can make a difference and an impact.
>> So I'm curious about the actual work and the impact that was made,
were there any like operational core principles in the team for
when you set out, what are you going to be trying to communicate via social media,
what are your overall goals?
Are there any things that you're worried about?
Because obviously like he had a non traditional social media presence,
there's always the risk that you potentially could go too far.
You could have something that doesn't land right.
What were some of the principles that you and
others working on the team used to try to create the most effective digital side?
>> Yeah, so I think John Fetterman and
everything about his race, it was about authenticity.
And showing that John is authentic, he is from the state, he is a guy.
I think Obama's quote was, he's a dude.
He's one of you and I think keeping true to that in everything that was done,
including social media and that really paired well with what we were
doing with defining the opponent of Oz is that he's not authentic.
He's a fraud, he has a bunch of houses and he's not one of you, he doesn't get it.
He's not from the state.
And he has kind of just like cashed out whenever he could,
despite what happens to the people that he's impacting.
And so I think keeping true to all of that as well as keeping true to John's
principles of, he's not gonna play dirty in the same sense of how we saw
our opponents, when we thought they couldn't go lower, they did.
And even though we were making digs, it was in a way that still
didn't go against who John is and that is a good person.
And so we're not going to be doing things like attacking things about
him in the same sense that they attacked John, it's going to be things
like pointing out how many houses he has and that he doesn't even know.
Because normal people know how many houses they have.
And honestly for most young people, it's none.
And so, I think it was very intentional.
I will also say that we had such an extraordinary team.
It was obviously not just myself and so many just incredible minds.
And I think people that really understood it in so many different levels of,
they were also really online.
They were also really from the state and
understanding how Pennsylvanias are going to think about things and
what things are going to resonate, people who are funny, people who are also maybe
not traditional that weren't thinking that we had to play by a certain playbook.
And so I think all of that coupled together really produced, obviously,
I think some really special moments that clearly resonated with Pennsylvania.
>> Clearly and he did very well, particularly in the youth vote,
which certainly helped.
I mean, it was still at the end of the day, a fairly close election.
And so any number of these different things could have been responsible for
putting him over the edge.
Going forward though, one last question for you.
I know a lot of candidates,
a lot of incumbents would love to have a successful social media campaign like
this that produces these viral moments and everything.
I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of efforts to duplicate what you and
your team put together.
How easy do you think this is going to be to duplicate for other people?
Does it really come down to as you've stressed having people with this non
traditional like introduction to politics,
because we know that establishment politicians can produce a lot of really
cringeworthy social media content when they try to be hip or whatever.
Do you think that other candidates are going to be successful in
reproducing this?
Or was there some sort of special magic to either your team or
Fetterman as a candidate or Oz as an opponent?
How do you see that shaking out?
>> I mean, every race is different.
Like you said, we can't say every candidate is going to be John Fetterman,
every opponent's gonna be Dr. Oz, there were a lot of special pieces to this.
However, I also don't think that people can't learn from what we did.
And there was an article or
an opinion in the New York Times that said John Fetterman 2.0 type of thing.
And I don't think it's necessarily that in a copy paste format, but
I do think that their overarching principles in communication and
what is authentic that can be shown.
John Fetterman he was authentic in XYZ ways, he like sheets,
he is gonna wear hoodies, whatever, we're not gonna address.
I'll pick someone just very, we're not gonna do that same exact thing to someone
like Pete Buttigieg who is obviously if he came out wearing a hoodie and
talking about she thought like that doesn't make sense.
But there are things about other politicians where they can be authentic to
themselves and also use these platforms in ways that are authentic
as well as relevant with the trends and understanding to who they are.
And I think there's overarching ways and ways of thinking it's something that can
be replicated and it's something that can be strategically done and
I don't think you don't necessarily need this a nontraditional pathway.
However, I think, part of bringing myself in I would assume is that I
understood the landscape and I give the analogy of like just like you don't
want a senator that's not from the state they're representing,
you want someone doing a job that they understand that space.
And so I think bringing people in who have these backgrounds and
if it's young people who understand some of these newer platforms in ways
that maybe people who have been more established around longer, but
don't don't get how they work or don't get the humor there,
don't get how things get shared on those different mediums, bringing people in that
are from those areas of expertise, I think is very important.
And so I think that's something that can be very intentionally done
when setting up whether it's a campaign team or an administration or
whatever it might be in the future in politics.
>> I think some good lessons to learn there.
Well, Annie, appreciate the work that you did for the campaign.
Very important going forward, that he won.
So thank you for contributing to that and for joining us on the show today.
We really do appreciate it.
>> Yeah, thank you so much.
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