Eduardo Bolsonarothe son of the Brazilian president, sees the political consultant Ferdinand Cerimedo pay with several bills for a lunch that they share in a Buenos Aires bar. He is surprised by the situation and an idea occurs to him: at the next meal, at the Gardiner restaurant, he will invite the seven diners and have himself filmed paying the bill: there are 80 thousand pesos in bills that he counts and groups to show how it affects inflation to Argentina. The video goes viral and generates the impact they were looking for.
Cerimedo, an expert in digital marketing and owner of more than thirty right-wing outlets, has been friends with Bolsonaro Junior since 2010. They met in the United States taking a course he taught Jaime Duran Beard. Thanks to that relationship cerimedo He began working as a consultant to Bolsonaro Sr. in Brazil. He also carried out actions in Chile, in the “No” campaign to the constitutional reform that the president had proposed Gabriel Boric. In both countries he was threatened with death. “Not in Argentina at the moment,” he clarifies, but just in case he is in an armored vehicle.
It is that the consultant plays hard. His media posts have generated more than one lawsuit and he openly admits having troll farms in his offices for his negative campaigns.
News: Were you the organizer of Eduardo Bolsonaro’s visit to the country?
Cerimedo: Yes, I was the coordinator. We dined at home with several politicians so that Bolsonaro can take the support of the representatives of our right to Brazil. That’s why I made the invitation on a personal level and nobody knew who else was going.
News: Did Milei get off when she found out that the PRO hawks would go?
Cerimedo: Yes, he called me and told me that he couldn’t go because he thought they were going to associate him with the PRO. He has the point of it, but I couldn’t help but invite him. That’s why later I coordinated a breakfast between them.
News: He usually works with provocative campaigns.
Cerimedo: In some cases yes. Brazil is one of those. We had to generate noise to wake up the undecided vote. You say to a guy who doesn’t like Bolsonaro because of his ways: “Look, Lula supports Chávez.” Then you make them doubt. You influence a small sector, but it can be decisive.
News: Does it have a technical name for that?
Cerimedo: It is what is called a negative campaign. Not dirty, because you’re not lying to her. You make him see things about your opponent that he would not want you to see.
News: Do the campaigns include trolls?
Cerimedo: Of course. We start from the basis that if you don’t do it, someone else will. Macri’s call centers were poorly done, but here (because of his office in Puerto Madero) there is artificial intelligence and a troll farm. You do not perceive that he is not a person: there are accounts that have 30 thousand followers.
News: Is that what they used with Bolsonaro and his sayings against gays?
Cerimedo: Yes. In the 2018 campaign he had spoken very ugly about gays. How did we go about reversing that? Through WhatsApp we began to send thousands of messages from trolls saying: “I am gay. Bolsonaro may be a Nazi, but the economy is fine and we are going to live more safely.” From that influence, part of the gay community supported him.
News: Talk about things that are taboo
Cerimedo: Nobody really has the balls to say that this happens. They are things that exist. The common voter knows that there are trolls and that the polls are rigged. Don’t underestimate him anymore.
Controversial
The consultant’s desire is to form a broad space of the extreme right in Argentina. However, he sees it as unfeasible: “There is so much ego that in a meeting of five liberals six parties come out,” he says. He sought to become the consultant of Javier Mileibut failed to seduce him: the deputy is forming a team that does not include him.
Of course, his political opinions do not prevent him from working with Peronist governors and even with mayors K. He is a consultant in Malvinas Argentinas and La Matanza. In fact, Fernando Espinoza He nicknamed him “Bolsonaro” because of his affinity with the Brazilian president.
He also worked with Together for Change. Via Patricia Bullrich came to do some actions for the government of Mauricio Macri and then he continued to be linked to the president of the PRO until she decided to withdraw from the 2021 elections.
about 2023, cerimedo he visualizes that, in such a difficult context, one of his specialties will be very profitable: “There is so much pessimism in everyday life that negative campaigns will make a lot of sense. The positive ones, of love, like that of Manes, are not going to take place”.
The marketer is like a magician who reveals the tricks of his profession. He says that among his colleagues “there is a lot of smoke sales” and that some of them “hate him for revealing it.”
News: That spicy style takes him to his media: La Derecha Diario published two years ago Larreta’s romance with his official, for example.
Cerimedo: Yes, and they denounced us for that, but it came to nothing. In the end they gave us the reason.
News: Adepa or Fopea would be horrified to see what he does in this office.
Cerimedo: Totally, but it is a different way of communicating. There are journalists who are horrified by how they title our media, but there is an audience for everything: La Derecha Diario has a million unique users.
News: It’s like the Magnetto on the right.
Cerimedo: I wish. We want to build from this side. We have media in Brazil and Chile. In January or February we are going to launch our first medium in the United States and we are in talks to start working with Trump.
by Juan González and Carlos Claá
Image gallery
