João Campos, mayor of Recife, ‘snows’ his hair, becomes a hit on the web and denies marketing ploy

On Instagram and Tik Tok, João Campos, mayor of Recife (PSB-PE), is a hit among internet users, not only in Pernambuco, but throughout Brazil. During Carnival, he bleached his hair, responding to his followers’ requests for it to “snow” and appeared on news portals dancing to “cheesy funk” songs at shows in the city center. On social networks, he is called “my mayor” by many followers.

To the F5, João Campos said that he decided to “snow” his hair as a Carnival game, after so many requests: “they asked me every day: ‘so, thanks for the work, but will it snow or not?'”. When the transformation process began, he made a video call with his girlfriend, state deputy Tábata Amaral (PSDB / SP).

“At first, she looked a little scared, right? There’s a funny thing, you think it’s strange at first. So, it had a big impact, but she told me she liked it.”

Campos also says that another aspect made him fall head over heels — literally — in the request of internet users: “Bleaching your hair emerged very much as a peripheral culture. So, when I became clear about this, that it is a movement to make it very clear that it does not fit prejudice, there is no room for any kind of crossed vision from people from such a creative, strong area of ​​the city and with immense cultural strength”.

The homage to peripheral culture, however, did not last long: the mayor’s “snowy” hair disappeared shortly after Carnival. On Ash Wednesday, they returned to their usual light brown color.

At 30, Campos enters the fourth year of his term. A member of the Campos-Arraes family, which has played a leading role in Pernambuco politics since 1940, it was no surprise when, at 25, he was elected federal deputy, and became mayor in 2021, at 27. Even Ivete Sangalo was impressed by the age of the youngest mayor from the country. Therefore, it is easy for him to see the importance of social networks for the political image, in addition to using them as an instrument of transparency and management monitoring.

“Politics has to understand that transparency must happen, not just with the big transparency portals. Being transparent means being truthful and, nowadays, it means presenting your routine, your decisions. So I use the social network a lot because I think it’s important for voters to know what’s going on”, says the mayor, currently with 2.3 million followers on Instagram, 433 thousand on TikTok and just over 460 thousand on X (formerly Twitter).

According to Sheet, in October last year, the mayor boosted his communication and, in addition to the initial budget, allocated R$27.5 million to this area, even before the start of the election year. “If public services and city halls, in short, governments, don’t understand that they have to get closer and closer to the population, have the capacity to listen, carry out effective social participation through networks, I think it will become increasingly difficult” , he opined.

Campos denies that his social media strategy is political marketing. He says he expresses himself well through them, where, according to him, he behaves authentically: “I am on the internet what I am in my life. That’s what I think is the big difference: there’s no point in having a character.”

He says that he is demanding with the content of his profiles and that he actively participates in everything: “I do the programming every week, I demand a lot, I criticize, I ask for adjustments, I follow everything. I think people do a lot like this, a ‘little manual’ for fit anyone. That doesn’t work.”

The mayor also cited the influence of Eduardo Campos, his father, who died in 2014 as a result of a plane crash that occurred while he was running for President of the Republic that year. “The biggest inspiration in my life is my father. In his time I didn’t have such a strong social network, but he didn’t give up communicating with people. He was one of the greatest communicators I’ve ever seen”, he says.