From Brazil to New York: What Elections Can Teach Strategic Communications Professionals

Whatever your politics, elections offer an extraordinary opportunity to observe communication under pressure. People compete for attention, respond to unexpected events and try to persuade audiences to do something that matters.

Watching Brazil’s presidential election, I found myself thinking about these challenges and about Zohran Mamdani’s successful campaign for mayor of New York a year earlier. The contexts and personalities differ, but some questions travel well: how do you turn attention into participation? How do you connect what happens on a screen with what happens in someone’s community? And how quickly can you respond when the conversation changes?

Janones: keeping the conversation moving

André Janones is a federal congressman who became a prominent figure in President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s digital mobilization. He supported Lula’s presidential campaign in 2022 and took a highly visible role again during this year’s runoff against Flávio Bolsonaro.

His “Exército do Lula,” or Lula’s Army, connected WhatsApp followers with livestreams, social media activity and invitations to participate.

In “How André Janones Helped Turbocharge Lula’s Comeback in Brazil’s Election,” The New York Times described how he “used a WhatsApp channel to help organize millions of Brazilians online.”

For strategic communications professionals, the significant word is organize. People were given specific ways to participate, helping carry the campaign’s message into their own networks and communities.

UOL, a major Brazilian news portal, reported on a YouTube broadcast lasting 24 hours that began after the final televised presidential debate, bringing together politicians, artists and supporters. Janones also encouraged participation beyond the screen, including public demonstrations of support.

What interested me was how the conversation could continue. Television offered a shared moment. A livestream gave people somewhere to go afterward. WhatsApp maintained contact and provided calls to action.

For those of us working in strategic communications, that raises a useful question: when someone pays attention to us, have we thought about what happens next?

We often organize our work around separate channels, with different teams, calendars and measures of success. The audience experiences something more fluid. Someone watches an interview, receives a message from a friend, searches for more information and decides whether to get involved. Our planning needs to connect those experiences.

Mamdani: giving digital enthusiasm somewhere to go

New York’s 2025 mayoral election offers another perspective on that question.

In “Lessons from the Zohran for NYC Campaign: Strategy, Organising and People Power,” published by the Commons Social Change Library, an online resource for community organizing, campaign advisers Gabriella Zutrau and Mohamed Alharbii described how listening to residents helped shape Mamdani’s policies and messages, particularly around affordability.

They emphasized the relationship between digital communication and organizing on the ground. Conversations informed the campaign’s message, while online enthusiasm had practical routes into participation. Their account describes complementary efforts rather than a single tactic that explains the victory.

That adds an important dimension to the discussion about Janones. We can become so interested in how content travels that we forget to ask where the story came from and whether people recognize their own concerns in it.

For businesses, listening to customers, employees and communities should help determine what deserves to be said. Strategic communications becomes more relevant when it addresses something people are already trying to understand or resolve.

Mamdani’s campaign also invites us to look at the relationship between what people encounter online and what they experience in person. A compelling digital presence gains substance when people can connect it with conversations, relationships and opportunities to participate.

Flávio Bolsonaro: the conversation moves while you are still editing

The days after Brazil’s election brought a different lesson.

Following his defeat and departure for the United States, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, circulated a letter announcing his intention to lead the opposition from abroad. As Agência Brasil, Brazil’s public news agency, reported, the letter also alleged electoral fraud without presenting evidence.

Folha de S.Paulo, one of Brazil’s leading newspapers, identified at least four versions. An early PDF circulated by allies used an obsolete coat of arms and described him as Brazil’s true president-elect. His own X publication carried the current coat of arms but retained presidential claims. The newspaper reported that the post was edited 22 minutes later, replacing those claims with references to being Brazil’s leader.

We cannot know from this sequence alone how planned or improvised the communication was. What it illustrates is how quickly a message can enter the public conversation, with amendments following behind it. A revised post cannot recall every screenshot or forwarded copy.

For organizations, the constructive lesson is to prepare for speed. If a team needs several rounds of approval before responding, its contribution may arrive after the moment has passed. Acting quickly also makes reliable checks more important, because the first version may continue circulating long after a correction.

A useful strategy gives people enough clarity to make timely decisions: what we stand for, what we know, who can speak and who has authority to approve. Preparation should help teams act confidently while their contribution is still relevant.

What this means for our work

Looking across these examples, I keep returning to the connection between preparation and participation.

Janones invites us to consider how different media can carry a conversation forward. Mamdani’s campaign adds the importance of listening and giving people a meaningful way to become involved. Flávio’s publication sequence reminds us that timing and accuracy must be managed together.

None of these examples explains an election result on its own. But each challenges a habit familiar to many strategic communications teams: planning channels separately, treating audiences mainly as recipients, or building approval processes that struggle to keep pace with events.

The question I would bring to our next planning meeting is this: are we ready to listen, connect and act while the conversation is still happening?

Silse Martell is the founder and CEO of Smart, a strategic communications and public affairs consultancy based in São Paulo, Brazil. Smart represents Kreab, the global strategic communications and public affairs consultancy, in Brazil.