Zohran Mamdani’s Hollywood Ad Appeal
Whether Zohran Mamdani’s campaign ends up as a road map for the Democratic Party is an open question. Where, however, the 32-year-old New York City mayoral candidate seems to have provided some (at the very least) clever instruction to his party is in his messaging. Twice now, the Mamdani campaign has rolled out television spots…
Whether Zohran Mamdani’s campaign ends up as a road map for the Democratic Party is an open question. Where, however, the 32-year-old New York City mayoral candidate seems to have provided some (at the very least) clever instruction to his party is in his messaging. Twice now, the Mamdani campaign has rolled out television spots aimed at co-opting and spoofing huge entertainment industry franchises — ABC’s The Bachelor and CBS’ Survivor.
“Our industry — messaging and making advertisement on the democratic side — has failed in recent years. Democrats got lazy and we were making cookie cutter ads and that’s a fail,” says Eric Stern, a democratic strategist and a founder of the left-leaning messaging firm Fight Agency which devised the two Mamdani ads, the first of which aired on October 1 during the airing of The Bachelor.
In that 30-second spot, against the backdrop of soft lighting and a familiar score, Mamdani makes his campaign pitch to viewers with a kicker of him offering them a rose. Two weeks later, a second ad aired during Survivor featuring actual former contestants who spoke about affordable housing and childcare — central tenets of Mamdani’s campaign — before voting former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo off the island of Manhattan. Both ads were campy, cute and according to the campaign, very effective.
“We knew that these were two shows that people would be talking about with their friends and we know that a lot of people that watch those shows aren’t very political,” says Stern who noted that both The Bachelor and Survivor have loyal fan bases that evince qualities that make them valuable targets politically speaking.
“People who watch CNN and MSNBC frankly we know who they’re voting for. It’s easy to talk to them. What’s harder is finding folks that are disengaged from the process; people who either don’t know or don’t care about politics which is most people,” he says. “So, we thought really hard about which platforms have really dedicated viewers who are loyal and would be watching.”
It was the Survivor spoof, however, that addressed a key issue plaguing the entertainment industry — affordability for the industry’s creative community. Indeed, Mamdani’s promise to focus on affordability seems to have resonated with the rank-and file industry workers at a time of sparse job opportunities and skyrocketing cost of living.
The first union to endorse the mayoral candidate even in advance of the Democratic primary was IATSE Local 161, a group representing behind-the-scenes workers like script supervisors, production coordinators and production accountants. “Affordability is a key issue to our members as the entertainment industry continues to recover from the significant slowdown of the past years and due to the general instability of the freelance nature of the film industry,” explains the union’s political committee in a statement.
Mamdani’s camp has also been savvy in courting industry unions including Broadway labor group Actors’ Equity and musicians’ union American Federation of Musicians Local 802, which leapt at the opportunity to foster a relationship with a politician that they believe will be friendly to the arts. After meeting with the campaign, both groups endorsed the candidate in July.
Still, the campaign hasn’t just targeted the industry’s behind-the-scenes workers. Mamdani, which currently holds a commanding double-digit lead over Cuomo, has also been supported by stars including actors Cynthia Nixon, Morgan Spector and Kal Penn and comedian Atsuko Okatsuka. In September, Spector appeared in a Mamdani ad channeling his robber baron character from HBO’s The Gilded Age to perform a dramatic reading of a New York Times story about how the rich in the Hamptons are reacting to the Democratic nominee.
But overall Mamdani’s platform seems to speak especially to Hollywood’s working class. AFM Local 802 was attracted to “[Mamdani’s] understanding of what it’s like to be a freelancer and working-class person to try and work what are in many ways odd jobs to string together a career,” says the union’s recording vice president Dan Point, who notes that the average annual wages of his members is well below the $100,000 mark.
Many, he says, live in rent-stabilized apartments and struggle with childcare, which has made Mamdani’s promise of rent freezes and free childcare especially enticing. “We’ve seen a good deal of enthusiasm around his candidacy” from members, he adds.
This story appeared in the Oct. 22 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.Click here to subscribe.
