I need to talk about the mittens.
You know the ones. Bernie Sanders, bundled up at the Biden inauguration like a man who had somewhere better to be, legs crossed, expression somewhere between "I asked for single-payer" and "this folding chair is cold." Within hours, that image became the most versatile meme template since the distracted boyfriend.
Within days, it became a merchandise empire.
The original mittens were made by a Vermont teacher, Jen Ellis, from repurposed wool sweaters. After the meme exploded, she was flooded with requests. Burton Snowboards offered to produce them at scale. The chair meme appeared on mugs, shirts, stickers, prayer candles, crocheted dolls, and at least one tattoo I saw on Instagram that I hope was temporary.
Sanders himself put the image on a crewneck sweatshirt on his campaign store and raised $1.8 million for Vermont charities in five days.
Let me repeat that. A single organic meme generated nearly two million dollars in charitable revenue in under a week. No ad spend. No influencer seeding. No agency of record.
As a strategist who has watched brands spend six figures trying to manufacture viral moments, this should make all of us deeply humble.
Here is what I think is actually happening beneath the meme. We are watching the merch economy detach from traditional brand logic. Merch used to be downstream of fandom. You liked the band, so you bought the shirt. Now, merch IS the fandom. The purchase is the participation. Buying the Bernie mittens mug is not about supporting Bernie's policies. It is about signaling that you were there, you got the joke, you are part of the moment.
This is the same mechanic driving the entire creator economy. When MrBeast sells chocolate bars or Emma Chamberlain sells coffee, the product is not really the product. The cultural moment is the product. The physical item is just the receipt.
For brands, the lesson is uncomfortable: you cannot manufacture this. But you can be ready for it. The campaigns that break through in 2021 will be the ones that create enough genuine cultural surface area that memes can happen TO them. That means being interesting. Being weird. Being specific enough that people want to remix you.
For brands, the lesson is uncomfortable: you cannot manufacture this.
Bernie did not plan to become a meme. But his authenticity created the conditions for one. He was undeniably, specifically himself. The mittens. The posture. The energy. You cannot fake that, and consumers know it.
Now if you will excuse me, I need to go check if someone has put that meme on a cat bed yet. For research purposes.