Kamala's Fortnite Campaign

A story about why political campaigns make unusual advertising choices near election day.

"It starts from the position of having more money than they know what to do with and there being an unusual scarcity issue for political marketers. You have one day by which all your sales have to be completed - I don't think there's another industry like it, except maybe seasonal industries.

All the TV is bought up in the 7 battleground states, the TV markets are saturated. There's a point where you can no longer send out new direct mail. If you wanted more volunteers knocking on doors, you needed to start building offices and having staff to train them months ago.

So at the end of the campaign, you start to see campaigns making decisions driven less by efficiency and more by basically 'where can we very quickly park some money?' That's when you start to see things like sound trucks and Fortnite maps, because there's just nowhere else to put it."