Some of the most amusing online content comes from parody or spoof accounts on Twitter and other social media platforms. Many of them are political. But, can political parody actually play a role in political campaigns? If so, what are the best practices, and how can you have the most impact on a race? As someone who has led digital campaigns for various political offices, including for the House of Representatives, and with over 11 years of experience leading brands and agencies to success in social media, I believed that online humor could be a powerful weapon for politicians running for office.  To prove that, I spent most of the 2018 midterms discovering just how powerful humor can be in a Congressional campaign.

It’s true that some political parodies, such as @walterowensgrpa are so on-point that they are frequently mistaken for the real thing (search on the hashtag #Waltered). However, they shouldn’t be equated with the fraudulent fake accounts which often pose as real voices on social media.

Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms require that parody accounts clearly disclose that they’re, in fact, not the people they are imitating. That’s an important difference, and the right to parody is protected free speech. Still, this is an area where consultants should tread carefully while exploring.

This past cycle, I was inspired by the success of accounts such as @RoyMooresHorse and @nexttokimdavis, the brainchildren of comedian Dave Colan. So in July of 2018, I decided to lead a negative social media campaign targeting New Jersey Assemblyman Jay Webber, the Republican then running for a hotly contested open House seat in NJ-11, which happens to be my own Congressional district.

Here’s what I learned from that experience:

Early polls showed that she was narrowly favored. Against that early optimism, though, it was worth remembering that the seat had been in Republican hands for more than 30 years. Everyone expected the race to be very close. I began focusing on reaching the most people possible via purely organic impressions, no sponsored posts. This allowed the effort to operate without the need to get certified as a political advertiser on Twitter of Facebook.

My goal was to take many of the things Webber was using to present himself in a positive light, and flip them upside-down. He ran as a moderate family man, focused on bringing the benefits of Trump’s rising economy back to New Jersey. He’s a conservative Catholic and father of seven, married to a stay-at-home wife, who like him is also a Harvard Law graduate. Using that background and his voting record in the state Assembly, I launched Trad Jay Webber.

The goal was to satirically tie Jay Webber to President Trump as well as some of the most troubling aspects of online culture in the age of Trump, the rise of white-nationalism. Webber’s character fit closely with the “Trad Life” subculture that one can find by searching for the hashtags: #Trad, #TradLife, #TradWife, #TradRevolution, #WhiteCulture, and #whitegenocide. Being “trad” has become one of the core values of the alt-right and white nationalists. It means living by traditional values, abstinence before marriage, having as many white children as possible, and stay-at-home wives who take care of the family while the husband works.

Not surprisingly, those managing the Twitter account of the candidate who is being parodied were not amused. My first version of the Trad Jay Webber Twitter account was reported for impersonation and suspended by Twitter after five days, even though it clearly said “PARODY” in its bio.

When I respawned the account that same day with the new handle @NotJayWebber, I made it even more obvious that it was a parody of @JayWebberNJ. Then I began blocking any accounts that belonged to Webber’s campaign staffers, and anyone who was an obvious passionate supporter who frequently responded to his posts.

They would never be dissuaded from voting for Jay Webber anyway. Besides, the real Jay Webber had become notorious in the New Jersey for blocking hundreds of his potential constituents on social media (myself included), even during the NJ-11 Republican primary. To this day, Jay Webber has still not blocked @NotJayWebber on Twitter.

From July 20th through Election Day 2018, some 2,250 tweets were posted by my parody Twitter accounts. In order to maximize the number of impressions for each @NotJayWebber tweet, it was essential to be able to respond quickly to all of candidate Webber’s posts. At first, I was cautious to not @ the candidate’s account directly.

But, as it became clear that Webber’s team was actually not seeing my updates (because they were blocked), I soon transitioned to responding directly to each @JayWebberNJ post. Most tweets also used the #NJ11 hashtag, so that anyone searching for tweets related to the race would be certain to see Trad Jay Webber content. It was also important to use any hashtags that Webber’s account promoted in his own tweets, such and #WebberForCongress and the regrettable #MontclairMikie (which he apparently coined because Mikie Sherrill is from the liberal Montclair portion of the district), and to use the #TradLife hashtag to help the audience understand what Trad Jay Webber was all about.

Use a lot of memes.

Amusing memes are the lifeblood of social media and are essential for driving engagement with content. Nearly all of the memes created for Trad Jay Webber were put together rapidly using free iPhone applications such as Phonto, OKJUX, Catwang, VaporGlitch, R4VE, and Eraser (for creating PNG’s with transparent backgrounds). They all included the Trad Jay Webber for Congress logo for branding purposes.

Trad Jay Webber responded in real-time to many tweets of prominent individuals, publications, and journalists who were discussing the NJ-11 race, including NJ 11th for Change, and Democratic candidate Mike Sherrill herself. The key to driving impressions and engagement was doing things that the actual candidate could not or would not do. Trad Jay Webber inserted himself into every relevant trending topic possible.

During the final month of the campaign, Trad Jay Webber launched a Facebook page and an Instagram account. This expanding of the platform allowed for increased engagement beyond the Twitter account, in part, because I was then able to respond directly in the comments section of articles related to the race. As a bonus, I could also troll Facebook users that posted negative comments on Sherrill’s Facebook page. Trad also satirically endorse several other local Republican candidates on their own Facebook pages, which caused quite a stir.

Overall, Trad Jay Webber was able to deliver nearly half a million organic impressions on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram during the 2018 midterms, with a very high Twitter engagement rate of 2.5 percent. While the account didn’t garner a significant number of followers, it still received more than 21,000 profile views, and videos posted online were viewed some 1,100 times.

The Trad Jay Webber social media campaign was recently named a finalist in the prestigious Campaigns & Elections 2019 Reed Awards, which will be held in Austin, TX on February 21st, 2019