Influencer experiments and dark money

Photo by Jacob Padilla on Unsplash

I’m slightly late to this on account of I just moved and I am very tired, but the WIRED article on Chorus and Democratic influencer outreach extremely caught my attention. If you (somehow???) missed this, it’s a very dramatically framed write up of a Dem-leaning nonprofit (Chorus) paying influencers.

Meta-note: I am playing fast and loose with the distinctions between “Democrats” and “liberal nonprofits” here. Legally, Chorus is nonpartisan, as is 1630. I am saying “Democrats” a lot because I am interested in the implications of this sort of work for Democrats, not because the orgs themselves would say they are Democratic. Not a lawyer, etc.

I do think it’s very funny that “a Democratic dark money group” is used as part of the lead here. When you’re talking about stuff done by the larger liberal universe, your options for “who funds this” are 1. The DNC/party org directly (in which case people get mad) 2. A PAC directly (in which case people get mad) 3. One of the blob of nonprofits (likely mad, tbd) 4. An overarching group like 1630 (SO mad) 5. A rich person directly (quantum-mad. Probably mad)

I do not have access to Chorus’ internals, at all. They appear to be a 501(c)(4), and a project of the 1630 fund, which means they won’t have their own FEC filing. This is not unusual, I have worked at multiple orgs like this. Housing a program in a larger nonprofit, as a fiscal sponsorship or something else, can be great for small organizations who don’t want to spend time and energy running their own HR, payroll, benefits, etc.

One of my favorite sections from the WIRED piece is:

“Steven Buckley, a digital media sociologist at City St. George’s, University of London, says that these sorts of programs have been “happening in the right wing for ages.” But Heider said that the structure of The Sixteen Thirty Fund deal raises the question, “Is it ethical to match the tactics of your opponents?”

To which I would say: Yes. Obviously. This isn’t even something that’s illegal! I would bet you 100 bucks this whole situation has been approved by more lawyers than you could fit into my kitchen. I am of mixed feelings about if it’s effective, or a bad look, but that’s separate.

Anyways, I think the freakout about the organizational structure is silly, and I am much more interested in the substance of what they’re actually trying to do.

The WIRED piece notes that they reviewed a contract, but doesn’t actually post it, so I can’t use that. We know they’re reaching out to creators, and that on signing a contract with them, you get paid to do something. The exact nature of that thing is left uncertain by the article.

Chorus’ website FAQ says the following:

Will I be paid to create content?

Nope. Chorus is a creator-led nonpartisan nonprofit with a really different model in the creator space. We don’t pay creators to produce content—we just give you space to learn more about how to communicate effectively and grow your platforms. In other words, creators are free to post what they want, when they want. This includes their affiliation with Chorus. Please note that we do ask Incubator participants to submit some pieces of content for growth analysis and retain the right to share our analysis of overall performance.

I did check the Wayback machine, and this page was present when the article went live (although as a subset of the “join” page, not its own thing). You can’t expand the dropdown, but if you check Page Source, the above text is clearly there on the page.

Here’s what that text looked like:

“Nope. Chorus is a creator-led nonpartisan nonprofit with a really different model in the creator space. We don’t pay creators to produce content – we just give you space to learn more about how to communicate effectively and grow your platforms. Please note that we do ask Incubator participants to submit some pieces of content for growth analysis and retain the right to share our analysis of overall performance.”

There’s a difference between that text and the current text, namely that they’ve added “In other words, creators are free to post what they want, when they want. This includes their affiliation with Chorus.”

As far as I can tell, Chorus is hosting events where creators learn things about their issues, work on creating content, or otherwise listen to trainings. It’s a little bit like the free vacation that sells you a time share- you get something of value in exchange for listening to a pitch. Or I guess the more apt comparison here is the influencer brand trip! Free stuff, no explicit requirement to post, but a strong assumption that you will in fact post. Presumably the hope is that whatever is talked about/worked on at these events then gets incorporated into the content these creators put out. It also sounds like Chorus is bringing these creators to events with politicians, likely with the same goals.

Per the article:

“The creators who joined the incubator are expected to attend regular advocacy trainings and daily messaging check-ins. Those messaging check-ins are led by Cohen on “rapid response days.” The creators also have to attend at least two Chorus “newsroom” events per month, which are events Chorus plans, often with lawmakers.”

It sounds like being paid a decent chunk of change to go to liberal messaging school and read memos. I read messaging memos for free, but it makes sense you’d have to pay a normal person to do this because oh my god boring much?

Much has been made about pieces of the contract (which again, I have not seen) that restrict creator’s interactions with electeds and officials. There’s two bits that address this:

“according to copies of the contract viewed by WIRED, creators in the program must funnel all bookings with lawmakers and political leaders through Chorus. Creators also have to loop Chorus in on any independently organized engagements with government officials or political leaders.”

“Creators in the program are not allowed to use any funds or resources that they receive as part of the program to make content that supports or opposes any political candidate or campaign without express authorization from Chorus in advance and in writing, per the contract.”

The second piece here seems extremely normal from a campaign finance perspective. You can‘t use 501(c)(4) primary purpose dollars to do direct ads for or against a candidate. Paying creators money that they then use to make ads for campaigns would be illegal under this finance status. Sorry! I know this is boring! Unfortunately not knowing these things will make you see weird conspiracies everywhere when what’s actually happening is tax compliance.

The first is maaaaybe also a finance thing, but certainly weirder. It’s hard to tell from the outside, and this could either be a legal CYA thing of trying to avoid passing material support from a 501(c)(4) to an elected, or a legit attempt to restrict who creators talk to. I am inclined to think the former, but you may be more paranoid than me.

There are three theories of how influencer marketing might work for Democrats that I have heard. The first treats influencers as another media channel, like digital or TV, that can spread specific messages and talking points. The second treats influencers more like endorsers, figures who can swing votes by talking up a candidate or issue, but who shouldn’t produce notably political content most of the time. The third focuses on influencers as drivers of culture. This is the “Rogan of the left” idea, that popular figures can bend culture to the left without even talking about politics.

Of these options, (3) is clearly the most powerful, but also the most squishy and difficult. How do you make people more liberal? You make famous people they listen to more liberal. How do you make *those* people more liberal? Uhhhhhhhhhhh. If we knew that, we wouldn’t be having this problem. I am not really on board with the great man theory of culture, and so I’m just not sure this actually works. Of course I would like big cultural touchstones to be huge Democrats, but I’m not clear that produces votes.

Achieving (1) is right in line with a standard ad-based program trying to drive Democratic ideals and issues. My general feeling is that this works just about as well as you might expect for a standard message based program, which is to say, “fine”. I don’t hate expanding messaging into short form video if that’s where the eyeballs are. Honestly, I kind of wish more Dem-adjacent orgs were leaning in to just straight doing sponsored content and paying people to do an ad read. We all love authenticity, but if it works for mascara, it probably works for this.

Where I do think (1) can work well is in cases where it matches an influencer to a message that actually resonates. A mommy blogger talking about the price of groceries, a young person talking about finding health insurance for the first time, etc. Influencers have the opportunity to make these kinds of core Dem issues less boring than the 1000th tweet going “anyways prices are going up”. This is (theoretically) what separates influencer marketing from your bog standard ad: human connection. If you manage to pull this off, I expect the returns to be higher than your average ad.

It isn’t clear to me which model Chorus is pursuing, and they could be doing all 3 at once. Plenty of vague money spending efforts have been labeled “cultivating talent”. They do seem to be walking creators through specific talking points, and they don’t seem to be doing direct endorsements. So, (1) with aspirational (3)? Maybe?

A lot of the discourse has circled on the idea that it’s somehow unfair to incentivize people to be liberal. Between posts accusing the DNC of paying creators to say nice things about Democrats (not the DNC, also not what seems to be happening) and posts saying it’s sad that Dems have to resort to this, there’s been a lot. I know I spend more time thinking about tactics than average, and probably have an overly cynical view of how politics works, but if I could in fact pay people to be liberal (legally), of course I would do that? That seems like a slam dunk! I also don’t think it’s a bad indicator that Dems are trying this. Expanding your range of tactics is good.

There’s meta-concerns about having content that seems inauthentic, or being perceived as shady or corrupt, obviously. There’s a reason I spent the whole first chunk of this piece trying to explain the financials here. Being seen as shady is bad. However, people are constantly perceiving politicians and Democrats as shady. This isn’t gonna be the last straw, especially while we are 100% certain Republicans are doing this and worse. You also cannot reasonably be down on Democrats for not having a strong engagement with influencers and the online ecosystem and then get mad when people try to have that engagement. I know this is probably just the usual online bullshit but like, come on.

My boring take is that this is like, fine. I don’t think this is going to magically fix Democratic problems with the online ecosystem, and I also don’t think it’s some kind of evil attempt to control people. It’s fine. It seems like an okay attempt to figure out how to do the right wing thing of letting folks get paid for years while they hone their brand and technique. If it leads to more influencers talking about prices and healthcare, I’m for it.

I just really, really hope they’re running some RCTs.