From Dolphin Costumes to Deepfakes: What 20 Years of Campaigning in the Digital Age Tells Us About the Next 20

In 2004, I was building a microsite called FlipperCam from a folding chair in a back room of Madison Square Garden. The mission: Upload videos of interns dressed in dolphin costumes chasing John Kerry around, branding him a “flip-flopper.” The tools: HTML, Windows Movie Maker and a $30,000-a-month streaming server. We weren’t sure if it would work. But it did. Reporters bit, the site went viral (for the time) and a silly idea helped shape the public narrative of a presidential candidate.

Two decades later, the costumes are gone but the incentives remain the same: Grab attention, shape perception and win the story before someone else does. The difference now is that  powerful social media platforms are turning into artificial intelligence companies, the stakes are higher than ever and the tools available to campaigns are both dazzling and potentially dangerous.

When I started out in 2003, “eCampaigning” was still an experiment. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter didn’t exist. Most digital teams were small, scrappy and barely taken seriously by the rest of the campaign.

But slowly, things shifted. In 2008, the Obama campaign redefined what digital organizing could be. Political microtargeting went mainstream. Suddenly, you weren’t just running TV spots — you were running Facebook ads tailored to suburban moms in Ohio who were worried about gas prices. The internet became not just a channel, but the battleground.

I saw this transformation from multiple vantage points — first inside the Republican Party, then during a decade at Facebook helping politicians use the platform to connect with voters. We preached the gospel of reaching people directly. No more middlemen. No more filters. But we underestimated the tradeoffs.

As social media platforms scaled, so did the velocity (and volatility) of political communication. We didn’t just open up the system. We blew it wide open. The same tools that gave underdogs a fighting chance also enabled harassment, disinformation and division. Algorithms rewarded engagement, not truth. And we began to realize that virality has a cost.

The pendulum has swung hard. Trust in institutions is low. Tech companies are both scapegoats and lifelines. Campaigns still chase clicks, but now they also worry about whether their ads will even run, whether their content will be fact-checked, or whether AI-generated spoofs will upend their messaging strategy.

Everyone agrees there’s a problem. Few agree on what the problem actually is. And even fewer agree on what to do about it.

In this messy middle, the incentives are misaligned. Politicians optimize for outrage, platforms optimize for attention, regulators point fingers and many voters feel exhausted and confused.

The next era of campaigning will be defined by even more rapid change. AI is already transforming how political content is created and targeted. Generative video, synthetic audio and hyper-personalized messaging are not just hypotheticals. They’re here.

At the same time, some of the big platforms are pulling back from politics. Content moderation budgets are shrinking, public civic initiatives are being quietly sunsetted and the internet is fragmenting. In 2004, you wanted to be on CNN. In 2012, it was Facebook. Today, your voter might be on Instagram, YouTube, a group chat, a niche podcast, TikTok or all (or none) of the above.

We can’t navigate this future by applying old rules to new realities. We need a reset, not just in our tools but in our approach, too. Here’s what I believe will matter most:

• Incentives > censorship: Regulating content is hard. Real change comes when we change what behavior gets rewarded.
  
• Transparency > assumptions: Voters deserve to understand who’s trying to influence them and how. Sunlight is still the best disinfectant.
  
• Collaboration > blame: No one sector — government, tech, campaigns, media — can solve this alone. The blame game gets us nowhere.

I founded my company to help build bridges between technologists and policymakers, campaigners and platforms. We need new playbooks for a new age. But we also need to stay grounded in the fundamentals: ethical leadership, clarity of purpose and the humility to admit when we got it wrong.

I’ve seen the highs and lows of political tech. I’ve helped launch groundbreaking programs — and I’ve been in the rooms where hard decisions kept me up at night. If there’s one truth I’ve learned, it’s this: Adaptability isn’t just a skill. It’s a value.

The campaigns that’ll succeed in the years to come won’t just be the ones with the best creative or the biggest ad budgets. They’ll be the ones that can evolve quickly, stay grounded in their principles and build trust in an environment that’s constantly shifting.

The tools will change. The platforms will change. But the goal remains: Reach people. Move them. Earn their trust.

Katie Harbath is the founder and CEO of Anchor Change, a technology consulting firm, and the Chief Global Affairs Officer at Duco Experts.

This piece appears in the commemorative 45th Anniversary print edition of Campaigns & Elections magazine.