How did a former hip-hop "artist" and backbench state assemblyman beat Democrat stalwart Andrew Cuomo and his $25 million super PAC? The answer, according to one marketing expert, is TikTok memes. Yeah, really. 

Joe Lazer, author of "The Storytelling Edge," calls the ranked-choice mayoral race the "perfect modern marketing case study. It was old school vs. new school. TV vs. TikTok. Memes vs. money." He characterizes the differences in the campaigns of Zohran Mamdani and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo as "buying attention vs. earning it." 

Mamdani, who faced a significant spending disadvantage in the race, utilized social media — particularly TikTok — to propel him over the finish line in the heavily contested race. 

Lazer claims Mamdani's "rizz" — a Gen Z term that's short for charisma — helped earn him what his campaign couldn't afford to buy. That, and cracking TikTok's algorithm.

Lazer said the number of followers an account has is essentially irrelevant. You can have "zero followers and get millions of views if the content is good and you have rizz, which is precisely what happened with Mamdani." 

He said that too many marketing executives rely on "shoving ads into search and social ad platforms. It rarely works anymore, and you’re lucky to get back $0.50 on the dollar. If you want to grow, you need great content. There’s no other choice." 

He gave two examples of TikTok content that resonated with voters. First up, Mamdani jumping into freezing water to highlight his plan to freeze rent in NYC. 

Here's another example where Mamdani explains how he plans to tax the rich (out of existence) to fund free childcare for all. 

Heck, by the end, I almost fell for it. The concise soundbites transform complex policy proposals into straightforward messages. His plan to bring socialism to the Big Apple will never work, but that's not the point. Mamdani made voters believe it could work. After all, who doesn't want free childcare and to stick it to the rich? 

"We’ve entered a new political era in which if you want to be a successful politician, you need to be an influencer," Lazer says. "This is the secret to Trump’s power — his ability to command massive attention at any moment and inspire an army of influencer-disciples to wage the attention battle on your behalf. Trump spoke the language of Twitter; Mamdani is the first politician to do it through TikTok. If you want to stand out, you need to win the war for organic attention." 

This is the world we live in now. Nobody under the age of 60 is watching network TV, and everyone under the age of 60 has the attention span of a fruit fly. Trump was able to leverage those short attention spans and revolutionized the way campaigns are run. He went over the heads of the mainstream media and upset the traditional campaign model. His outside-the-box tweets continue to endear him to his followers, who feel like they know him personally and therefore would walk over broken glass to help him. Mamdani did the same thing, only on TikTok. 

According to Lazer, "Mamdani’s genius was his ability to meme-ify his message. I was a dedicated Kamala supporter this past fall, but I'd have struggled to rattle her top three campaign messages off if you asked me her top three campaign messages. With Mamdani? It’s easy." 

It'll be interesting to see whether Republicans try to leverage TikTok—owned by the ChiComs, who relentlessly mine our data and, according to many, pose a major national security threat—in upcoming elections. Former presidential hopeful and current candidate for Ohio governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, is one Republican who is not waiting to see if Trump bans the controversial app. Ramaswamy, who has nearly as many followers as Mamdani, said in a recent TikTok video: 

But you can't guess the two things they hit me the hardest for when I ran for U.S. president in the Republican primary. Number one joining this app, TikTok as a Republican. Well, now look at how things have changed. Most Republican politicians show up on TikTok to be able to communicate with younger voters on what they actually believe. They thought Republicans were supposed to boycott this app instead of showing up and expressing our opinions

(The other was speaking at a Bitcoin conference.) 

I'm not a fan of TikTok, and I don't use it except when I'm reporting on the app; however, many Gen Z users are using it almost exclusively. Most estimates indicate that there are more than 30 million U.S. TikTok users, and the vast majority are under the age of 30. That's a massive audience, and it's easy to see why politicians like Mamdani and Ramaswamy are utilizing it. 

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