Communicative strategies to the (de) construction of public image: image politics in the context of electoral campaigns

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study the role played by politicalelectoral marketing in the construction of the visibility and the public image of a political actor in the context of the electoral dispute. We argue that the image construction of public personalities requires the organization of communicative strategies capable to manage and to control messages, and, overall, to establish relations between the politicians and the different publics responsible for the public opinion construction. We are interested to show how the strategies planning of a politicalelectoral campaign depend on the co-ordinated work among marketing professionals and also on the politicians’ ability in skirting partisan disagreements in the scope of image politics. In order to disclose how political images spread out by printed press can amplify such disagreements, discrediting a candidate’s public image, we investigate the crisis that marked Geraldo Alckmin’s campaign for the São Paulo City Hall of São Paulo, in 2008.