Write off Bloomberg’s meme army at your own peril

Michael Bloomberg is everywhere. If you watch a YouTube video, there’s a Bloomberg 2020 ad. If you live in any Super Tuesday state, he’s on your television. And now he’s all over your Instagram. Michael Bloomberg is hiring New York media savvy image firms and viral influencers to Poochie his way into the White House. Right now, it’s largely being written off by media and pundits as a weird internet gimmick and not a serious political strategy. But the thing is, it just might work.

Political pundits are thinking like outdated campaign flacks from yesteryear, when Reddit groups and 4Chan memes couldn’t carry a serious candidate to the White House. Except that’s exactly what happened in 2016. Under the memes of Donald Trump’s glowing head on Bioshock’s body or animated gifs of Trump smiling as he built a brick wall belonged a rabid and then suddenly activated fanbase. Legacy media thought social media somehow belonged to them, (and still does), so they never saw it coming.