- Allan Maman, a 21-year-old who didn’t go to college, is the brainchild behind many of the memes used by the presidential campaigns of Andrew Yang and Mike Bloomberg.
- Maman’s work included an ‘AirPod’ meme for Yang and a Democratic debate meme for Bloomberg.
- In an interview with Business Insider, Maman revealed his career in meme-making, and how it started with cold emails.
- Maman also got an assist from contacts dating to his days as a fidget-spinner entrepreneur, he says.
- Allan Maman, a 21-year-old who didn’t go to college, is the brainchild behind many of the memes used by the presidential campaigns of Andrew Yang and Mike Bloomberg.
- Maman’s work included an ‘AirPod’ meme for Yang and a Democratic debate meme for Bloomberg.
- In an interview with Business Insider, Maman revealed his career in meme-making, and how it started with cold emails.
- Maman also got an assist from contacts dating to his days as a fidget-spinner entrepreneur, he says.
Years ago, Allan Maman used to be known for co-inventing the fidget spinner. But that was before the now 21-year-old took the digital reins of first Andrew Yang and then Mike Bloomberg’s presidential campaigns.
It’s been quite a journey for the young man from Westchester County, New York. But strangely enough, the first business led quite directly to the second, totally different one.
“The connections I got from the fidget spinner business, I was able to utilize into actually making it easier to buy ads on meme pages for politicians,” Maman told Business Insider.
Basically, Maman explains, when he had first launched his fidget spinner business, he would buy what were, at the time, “cheap” ads on Instagram meme pages to market his product to the masses. This was in 2017, when, for example, he would spend about $40 for an influencer ad post on a certain Instagram page dedicated to memes, estimating this would bring in about $2,000 in sales.
Years later, Maman brought this strategy — and those meme accounts — to politics. It began when he realized in September 2018 that Andrew Yang was going to run for president. Maman said he was inspired as an Asian American that another might actually have a chance at getting elected, and sent cold emails to Yang’s presidential team, offering to help with the campaign’s social strategy.
After Yang’s team agreed, Maman showed up at the campaign offices in New York City not even three hours after sending the initial email.
“I wasn’t even really looking to make money from it. It was more, ‘Hey, how can I help you,'” Maman said. “Yang’s team was a startup. And they were like, ‘Allan, we need help blowing up online. You have to figure out how to do that.'”
Maman helped to grow Yang’s social media presence by buying ads on Instagram meme pages
Maman’s first task was simple: Get enough traction so Yang would qualify for the debates.
For his Instagram strategy, Maman said he went back to the business connections he made during his fidget spinner heyday to help advertise Yang on the social platform. But he said a few things had changed since he first started buying ads on the platform in 2017.
For starters, the same brands that had once charged $40 to post on pages were now charging thousands of dollars. Today, a page that has about 14 million followers could charge about $2,500 for a 24-hour advertisement, and a page with 10 million followers would charge anywhere from $1,000 to $40,000 for a permanent post, he said.
Maman said he and the Yang campaign spent almost $600,000 in Facebook ads that led to about $2 million in campaign donations.
