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Kamala Harris: Fighting for your vote and your short attention span

With the US elections coming up in three weeks time, Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is taking a bold, unconventional approach by experimenting with “overstimulation” content. 

These are videos that mix her speeches with eye-catching gameplay footage or ASMR visuals. This content format, as explained by know your meme, popularized on TikTok and is known as “sludge content” or “ADHD videos”. These videos are designed to capture short attention spans in the fast-paced digital environment. Harris’s team has been testing these ads across platforms like YouTube and Meta, and gaining thousands of views.

This strategy is reflective of the broader trends in how media is consumed today, particularly by younger audiences. The rise of these split-screen fast-moving content forms parallels the growing cultural attention on neurodivergence, especially ADHD. The internet has played a massive role in amplifying conversations about neurodivergence, and on “how neurodivergence became a subculture”

For Harris’s campaign, this tactic is a savvy way to capture the attention of niche online audiences and engage them in ways traditional political advertising may not. By tapping into the overstimulating media that appeals to viewers used to TikTok’s rapid content flow, the campaign not only embraces current digital trends but also demonstrates an understanding of how fragmented attention has shaped modern media consumption. This move could prove effective, especially in capturing younger, digital-native voters, who are otherwise hard to reach through conventional advertising methods.

In an era where attention is a rare commodity, Harris’s experiment with overstimulation ads could be a signal of how political marketing can evolve, using innovative tactics to connect with audiences in the digital age. It remains to be seen how this will impact her campaign’s success, but it clearly highlights the importance of adapting to the way people consume content today.

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Mina Baginova

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Kim Pillen

Consultant

Before Kim Pillen started as a trend consultant at TrendsActive, she worked for four years as a creative strategist at Dept. For brands such as Philips, bol.com, Beiersdorf, JBL, and the Consumers’ Association, she built (online) campaign, brand, and social media strategies. After four years, she decided that she wanted to better understand people and society in order to advise brands more effectively. That’s how she ended up at TrendsActive. Here, she can do what she loves most: digging into people’s needs and then working with brands to see how and where they can be relevant and meaningful.

Douwe Knijff

Researcher

Douwe is fascinated by how people work. With a background in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (Bachelor) and Psychology (Master) and an analytical mind he tries figure out how societal shifts manifest themselves through social culture and human behaviour.

Aljan De Boer

Keynote speaker

Aljan has been widely recognized as an inspiring professional speaker on the critical trends that will shape society in the decades to come. He works as the Head of Inspiration at TrendsActive, a trend consultancy from the Netherlands using social science to human-proof business decision for brands like

  • Disney
  • Vodafone
  • Hugo Boss
  • ASR
  • Rabobank

Next to his role at TrendsActive he is the Community Director at the Institute for Real Growth where he inspires and connects a global community of +400 CMOs.  

He has been on the board of the Dutch Platform of Innovative Marketing for almost a decade. Regular speaker and moderator for the Dutch Marketing Awards and 3 times winner of the best of MIE. 

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist

Kees his purpose is to help ambitious leaders and brands to human-proof their business. In 2003 he founded TrendsActive, a trend consultancy enabling brands to become more human centric.

Kees consults global brands like

  • Disney
  • The Coca-Cola Company
  • Asics
  • Discovery Channel
  • Swiss Life
  • Vodafone

and many more.

Next to being the founder of TrendsActive, he is also initiator of the first academic trend master for executives at the University of Utrecht and is initiator of various trend studies and white papers on subjects like trust, meaning, visual culture & generations.

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist

Kees Elands

Founder & Strategist