On 24 June, while in New York City amidst a sweltering heatwave, I witnessed a political earthquake, which tells us a lot about communicating in the new age of viral attention.
Hitherto obscure State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani beat a nine-person field to win the Democratic nomination for Mayor of New York. The prohibitive favourite to win, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, boasted universal name recognition augmented by a $25m war chest, finished a very distant second.
There is a lot to absorb from this result so far (the general election is only in November). Cuomo, with a hefty résumé and the backing of the Democratic establishment, was weighed down by both scandal (he had been forced to resign the Governorship of New York State in 2021 due to sexual harassment allegations and Covid death cover-ups) and deep ‘unlikability’ ratings. However, in the deficit column, Zohran also carried perceived negatives: a self-proclaimed ‘Democratic Socialist’ in the capital city of wealthy capitalism; a militant anti-Israel stance post-Gaza in the most Jewish city in the world outside of Israel; and an agenda of giveaways, from wealth taxes to rent freezes, to free bus rides and city-owned grocery stores, which suggested utopian idealism at odds with New York traditions.
But his runaway win not only upset the odds but also rocked the establishment: it tells us a lot about new theories and practices of communicating which go far beyond this election and politics itself.
On primary day, I channel-surfed between various New York television stations and within one hour had been bombarded with at least seven Cuomo attack adverts slating Mamdani for the full laundry list of negatives cited above. I never saw a single Zohran Mamdani advert in the same cycle.
But had I been on TikTok or Instagram, I would have seen plenty about Zohran and nothing at all from Andrew Cuomo. The surge of young voters who uncharacteristically flocked to the polls in the Mayoral primary told its own story.
A few days after the shock result, New York Times maven Ezra Klein reflected on the starkly different campaigns and their messaging.
“Mamdani had a very different theory of attention. He had a theory of viral attention: a campaign built on those vertical videos (very popular on mobile video apps, especially Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram).”
Attention, he advises, “works differently today.” Cuomo, who dominated “old-style media” (TV ads, print pamphlets, etc.), got flattened. Obviously, the message also helped. New York is unaffordable for many, and shaking “the magic money tree”, however uncosted, clearly resonated.
Zohran went around the city with his phone (actually, an ace digital media team) and recorded New Yorkers expressing their needs and anxieties.
As MSNBC anchor Chris Haynes, author of a new book on attention in politics entitled “The Sirens’ Call”, explained:
“Zohran turned the act of listening into a form of broadcasting. He’s the first politician I’ve seen who feels truly native to social media. There are lots of politicians – Donald Trump especially – who were dominant on Twitter (X) and Facebook mostly during the text-based, social-sharing era of media.”
But, he reckons, Zohran is what comes the old social media gives way to the new. “It’s much more about using newer platforms such as TikTok to push algorithms – and it’s much easier to come out of nowhere using visual, vertical videos that aren’t primarily text-based.”
One of the most visually effective videos Zohran Mamdani posted was when he jumped fully clothed into the freezing Atlantic Ocean to illustrate his proposal on freezing rents. It duly went viral. In sum, the more he posted, the more people posted about his posts.
Of course, come November, this might have a different outcome. Donald Trump has already asserted on his own social media platform that Zohran is “a Communist lunatic.” And plenty of powerful New York interest groups are massing to prevent him from winning the general election.
But whatever the final result, this primary election and its improbable winner tells us a great deal about what works and what doesn’t in a rapidly changing media landscape, and how to engage attention in the age of inattentiveness.
– Tony Leon
Executive Chairman