Scroll on TikTok for long enough and you’ll likely encounter a video from Kamala HQ, the social media page behind the presidential hopeful’s increasingly iconic online presence.
Since ascending as the Democratic Party’s nominee, Kamala Harris has hugely benefited from her team’s social media savvy, quickly jumping on the hottest online trends to cater to a younger demographic.
Kamala HQ even made the news when it rode on the coattails of the ever-buzzy Charli XCX album brat, and this kind of finger on the pulse makes total sense for the originator of the “coconut tree” meme that overran our algorithm earlier this year.
The Kamala HQ TikTok page boasts a whopping 4.6 million followers, with videos that tap into a chronically online vernacular you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a presidential candidate. Oh, Kamala HQ is also hellbent on roasting Harris’ opponent Donald Trump, so it’s worth checking out for that reason alone.
Now, some of the people behind Kamala HQ have delivered some juicy details about how they’ve operated the potential president’s social media presence. Taking to X, both Paulina Mangubat and Parker Butler — who co-run the viral Harris accounts — spilled some political lore around the branding of Kamala HQ, and it’s every bit as nonchalant as you’d expect from a Gen Z employee.
In his original post, Parker reshared a snippet of Charli XCX reacting to Kamala HQ’s use of the brat branding, with the musician saying she presumed the account was run by a “young gay man” (she was right). Parker agreed with the pop star’s assessment in his X caption, and shared screenshots of his and Mangubat’s text exchanges while brainstorming the logo and vibe of Kamala HQ.
One text sees Mangubat sharing two versions of the logo followed casually by “idk”, before Parker delivers the lightbulb moment with “oh brat green.” In another screenshot, we see the pair questioning whether the brat-themed Kamala HQ branding is “trying too hard.”
These screenshots are dated right before the Harris campaign underwent the brat rebrand, and the way it took off so rapidly online means Parker and Mangubat had little to worry about.
For her part, Mangubat also took to X to deliver “some more lore” around the Kamala HQ rebrand. She said the mock-ups “came together in like 30 minutes”, and that they “weren’t necessarily planning on it becoming the permanent branding but i am glad it did.”
As if the brat influences weren’t Gen Z enough, Mangubat also revealed that the logo for Kamala HQ was inspired by the hugely popular social media pages Deuxmoi and Pop Crave. The former is a celebrity gossip page that boasts over two million Instagram followers and the latter is an X page that posts regular celebrity updates.
A presidential campaign being inspired by both a buzzy pop album and a celebrity gossip account was not on my 2024 bingo card, but the results have certainly paid off.
The Washington Post reports that Harris’ social media team is comprised entirely of people under the age of 25, some of whom are working their first jobs for the vice president. As we all know, Trump’s approach to social media once got him banned from X and now sees him using Truth Social, a platform he created that probably no one else visits.
