- Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaign recently deployed ads in the form of memes all across Instagram, The New York Times reported.
- The memes feature screenshots of messages from the Bloomberg campaign account poking fun at Bloomberg’s public persona.
- We compiled a list of the memes below.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
The presidential campaign for Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and former mayor of New York City, has deployed self-deprecating memes all across Instagram, The New York Times’ Taylor Lorenz reported.
The campaign teamed up with Jerry Media, the successful but controversial media company behind the influencer marketing for the botched Fyre Festival, to post the ads across Instagram, according to the report.
Jerry Media CEO Mick Purzycki is leading a collective of popular meme accounts called Meme 2020, which has coordinated the meme postings on a variety of meme accounts, The Times reported.
The memes paid for by the campaign feature screenshots of conversations with the Bloomberg campaign account, a parody of Bloomberg’s public persona.
While the Bloomberg memes are self-deprecating and an attempt at humor, one popular meme-account owner criticized Bloomberg and his campaign. Josh Ostrovsky, whose Instagram account @thefatjewish has 11 million followers, commented on one of the memes that he was also approached by the Bloomberg campaign to post but declined because of Bloomberg's past positions and policies on stop and frisk and drug enforcement for marijuana possession.
A Bloomberg campaign aide told The New York Times that the campaign was trying to match President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign strategy and that they were "trying to break the mold in how the Democratic Party works with marketing, communication and advertising, and do it in a way that's extremely internet and social native."
Bloomberg, whose net worth is over $61 billion, is not accepting political donations to his campaign. He has spent over $200 million in ads as of February. In comparison, Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign spent over $9 million.
Here's a list of the memes the campaign has paid to post on Instagram:
@kalesalad, 3.5 million followers
@tank.sinatra, 2.3 million followers
@f---jerry, 14.9 million followers
http://instagr.am/p/B8fQad9BhoT
@s---headsteve, 5.3 million followers
@grapejuiceboys, 2.7 million followers
@sonny5ideup, 1.3 million followers
@neatdad, 1.3 million followers
@f---advertisements, 1.4 million followers
@doyouevenlift, 495,000 followers
@middleclassfancy, 1.8 million followers
@drgrayfang, 2 million followers
http://instagr.am/p/B8fKw5jBXJ4
@trashcanpaul, 1.8 million followers
@gamersdoingthings, 1.3 million followers
@neatmom, 915,000 followers
@golfersdoingthings, 572,000 followers
@fourtwenty, 3.8 million followers
@moistbuddha, 2.2 million followers
http://instagr.am/p/B8fSG39Fyde
@mrsdowjones, 116,000 followers
