No more shaking hands and kissing babies.
New York City has a new mayor, and he won by being online - properly online.
The kind of online that knows when to meme and when to log off. Zohran Mamdani's campaign is more than a victory for progressive politics; it’s been a masterclass in how digital fluency, cultural awareness, and actual authenticity can move mountains.
When a Muslim man is elected as Mayor for the first time in history, it emphasises the sheer power that social media wields in an age where attention is the most valuable political currency.
From the jump, Mamdani’s campaign completely outclassed his opponents.
While other candidates were still posting grainy podium shots with “#VoteForChange” captions, his team was dropping cinematic, high-production videos that felt like a reimagined version of Harold and Kumar by a24. They were emotional, stylish, comedic and perfectly timed for the algorithm. This wasn’t your average political comms that are practically begging and pleading to be shared—it deserved to be shared.
But beyond aesthetics, the content was smart. Mamdani’s videos didn’t preach policy from a podium; they told stories of real New Yorkers. The subway driver. The street vendor. The renter hanging on by a thread. The result was a campaign that felt genuinely community-driven, multilingual, and inclusive, and not in the checkbox way politicians usually use those words.
It was the first campaign in a long time that looked and sounded like the city it aimed to represent.
Mamdani’s team understood something most political marketers still don’t: online audiences can taste inauthenticity faster than you can say “paid partnership.”
Every awkward selfie-video or “how do you do, fellow kids” TikTok from a politician is proof of that. Instead of trying to mimic youth culture, Mamdani leaned into what actually made him human: his background, his humour, his principles, his honesty. Then he trusted that people would connect with it.
He didn’t overexplain his progressivism; he embodied it. He didn’t pretend to “get” memes; his supporters made them for him. And he didn’t try to out-AI his competitors with slick, uncanny-valley campaign content.
He let the fun swirl around him, staying composed with the utmost professionalism, while the internet did what it does best: remix, reframe, and rally.
That restraint, the choice not to chase every trend or distastefully attack his opponents, might’ve been the most strategic move of all.
In a time when many political campaigns are turning into chaotic content farms powered by interns and ChatGPT prompts, Mamdani’s feed felt considered. It was bold, but not performative. Informative, but not condescending. Viral, but not at all cringe.
Here’s the bigger shift Mamdani represents: politics is now a media brand game.
Yes, we have reached that era.
The one where every candidate is a content creator, every campaign is a cultural product, and every voter is both the audience and the algorithm.
In that context, Mamdani’s win is symbolic of this new era, where digital storytelling defines legitimacy. His campaign showed that good policy isn’t enough; it has to be seen, shared, and basically memed into existence. The old model of big donors, TV ads, door knocking still matters. But it can’t compete with the power of a narrative that lives natively online.
Of course, there’s a danger here. When attention becomes the ultimate political goal, governance risks turning into performance. Viral moments can win elections, but they don’t build infrastructure or balance budgets. Mamdani might be the rare case where a candidate’s charisma and competence align. But the broader trend of politics as influencer culture is worth watching with cautious optimism…
If nothing else, Mamdani’s win tells us that voters are tired of being talked at.
We want to be in on the conversation, to feel like politics isn’t just happening somewhere above us, but with us. It’s about us after all.
Social media, for all its chaos, has flattened that relationship. It’s turned politicians into public figures who have to show up online as real people, not just press releases in suits that feel one million miles away.
It’s also exposed who can handle that pressure. The internet is a brutal equaliser. You can’t fake charisma, empathy, or cultural literacy. And Mamdani’s success was never about dominating the discourse, but instead, understanding it.
There’s a marketing takeaway in here too (of course.)
Mamdani’s campaign proves what the best communicators already know:
Be where your audience is, not where it’s comfortable. His team didn’t treat social as an afterthought. They built for it.
Authenticity isn’t a tactic; it’s the whole damn strategy. If you fake it, the algorithm (and the audience) will most likely know.
Content has to live in culture. People share things that reflect their identity, not your agenda.
Substance still matters. All the good vibes in the world can’t replace credible ideas or consistent action.
Zohran Mamdani may have just cracked the code for politics in the attention age.
His campaign was no fluke. His campaign reflects what communication looks like when it’s designed for the world we actually live in: fast, fragmented, and fiercely online.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
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