TikTok Helped Reshape Colombia’s Presidential Race, Strategist Says
The social media campaign that propelled a 77-year-old construction magnate into Colombia’s presidential runoff deliberately cultivated his image as an anti-politician to tap voter anger against the political class, according to the strategist who helped devise it.
Rodolfo Hernandez, who is now refusing to take part in debates and has shunned election rallies, used popular social media posts to overcome a series of controversies and at least one potentially career-destroying gaffe, said Victor Lopez, founder of Kayros Group, a political strategy firm that worked on the campaign.
“His message has been clear: he’s not a traditional politician and has always presented himself as the anti-politician, an outsider, independent of Colombia’s traditional political class,” Lopez said in an video interview from Madrid. “His top three weapons when we studied his campaign were his authenticity, his humor and his charisma, so we worked with that.”
The first round catapulted Hernandez from little-known onetime mayor of a provincial city into the favorite for the June 19 runoff. He turned the tables on presidential rival Gustavo Petro, 62, a senator and former mayor of Bogota who had been tipped to become Colombia’s first leftist leader.
Lopez, 37, has worked with candidates throughout Latin America including El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and said that he had to rebrand Hernandez’s struggling campaign last year and design a strategy to boost his name recognition. His team had to fend off scandals such as Hernandez slapping a local politician and his comments calling Adolf Hitler a great German thinker -- “the biggest mistake I’ve seen in a political career,” Lopez said.
Kayros Group worked on the campaign from October through late
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