Zohran Mamdani’s Hollywood Ad Appeal

Whether Zohran Mamdani’s campaign ends up as a road map for the Democratic Party is an open question. Where, however, the 32-year-old New York City mayoral candidate seems to have provided some (at the very least) clever instruction to his party is in his messaging. Twice now, the Mamdani campaign has rolled out television spots aimed at co-opting and spoofing huge entertainment industry franchises — ABC’s The Bachelor and CBS’ Survivor.

“Our industry — messaging and making advertisement on the democratic side — has failed in recent years. Democrats got lazy and we were making cookie cutter ads and that’s a fail,” says Eric Stern, a democratic strategist and a founder of the left-leaning messaging firm Fight Agency which devised the two Mamdani ads, the first of which aired on October 1 during the airing of The Bachelor.

In that 30-second spot, against the backdrop of soft lighting and a familiar score,…