Harris Campaign/Dems No Longer Ignoring WhatsApp
One of the most refreshing things about the Harris/Walz campaign is that they seem to be actually listening to the smart folks working for them. I have advised clients and candidates to engage with WhatsApp for years now, especially when engaging with Spanish speaking/Latino audiences is mission critical. And I’m not alone. Lots of social comms folks have ben making the same cases for the same reasons for quite some. The Harris campaign is finally doing the damn thing.
As the Democratic National Convention kicks off Monday in Chicago, the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has created a bilingual WhatsApp channel targeting Latino voters.
Campaign officials say the channel is the first-of-its-kind in a presidential election.
It officially launched early Monday with a selfie-style video message from Julie Chavez Rodríguez, manager of the Harris campaign, welcoming new followers to the channel.
Chavez Rodríguez said the channel is a place where users a "can go to get behind-the-scenes" information about the campaign and what it's doing to help Latino families.
The channel is operated by members of the "Latinos con Harris-Walz" organizing program, according to a news release from the Harris campaign. They will be tasked with creating and posting "culturally competent content that reflects the Latino community that already exists on the platform."
I will admit that I didn’t get it when Facebook snapped up WhatsApp for nearly $20 billion a decade ago. WhatsApp is enormous and it is a prime means of communication between immigrants and their families across borders and around the world. Over HALF of all Hispanic Americans use the app according to Pew. That’s…a lot of folks, far too many to continue to ignore.
I came around when I was working for Resilience Force and we were trying to engage with a mostly immigrant labor force that was dispersed at climate disaster sites across the country.
And while it may be true that this effort may be a first for a presidential campaign, it’s not like others in the political comms sphere haven’t been taking reaching Latinos via WhatsApp for years, often to spew straight propaganda to an audience that is largely underserved by legacy media in the US.
At the same time, Latinos’ greater reliance on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp have disproportionately exposed them to misinformation in both English and Spanish, since there are few effective tools to crack down on the large volume of false information shared bilingually across encrypted private group chats, according to a 2021 Nielsen report.
Harris campaign officials see the new WhatsApp channel as "another tool" to combat election misinformation aimed at Latinos voters, specially among those living in consequential battleground states.
This what happens when you trust your team. This is what happens when you unleash smart people who know what they are doing. Setting out a shingle on WhatsApp is long overdue for Dems Inc. The challenge now is engage authentically and sincerely. I have legitimately high hopes.