She arrives in Saint-Brieuc (Côtes-d’Armor) in a black van with tinted windows, from which three cameramen in hoodies and a sound engineer jump out. The driver and the make-up artist stay on board. Magali Berdah, 40, wearing a long, fitted gray coat, black leather boots and pointed nails, her hair pulled up in a bun, enters the welfare office where Anne Hidalgo is visiting, escorted by her bodyguard and the assistant, who follows her like a shadow February 18th.

Everything freezes. The socialist presidential candidate’s press secretary adjusts her stole and drops her phone to welcome the queen of influencers. The reporters from TF1, France 3 or the local press who followed the Mayor of Paris that day no longer exist. Magali Berdah, Instagram star (1 million followers), is the only one who will greet Anne Hidalgo with a big smile and a long moment on her arm before granting her a twenty-minute filmed tete-a-tete, which she is denied Other.

The pool of journalists left outside in the drizzle hallucinates. “That says it all about politics in 2022! »quipped a local; “If the ignorant inform the ignorant, we won’t get far”, mocks a photographer. Without even having to ask, the disarming Magali Berdah, utterly indifferent to the taunts, privatized the trip to Anne Hidalgo.

The boss of Shauna Events, who manages the careers of reality TV stars (41 million euros in sales in 2020), has just launched her channel on YouTube, the reference medium for under-25s. The product placement specialist broadcasts her 35-minute reports in immersion with the presidential candidates and already has a million views, as well as the reposts and retweets of her pool of influencers, protagonists of shows like “The Angels of Reality TV ” (NRJ 12) or “The Marseillais” (W9), which themselves attract millions of subscribers…

In short, to reach depoliticized and largely teetotal young people who no longer watch the news, “Magali Berdah is indispensable”, assures Geoffroy Didier, communications director at Valérie Pécresse. However, the war in Ukraine suspended the announced participation of the latter. “ The nature of the campaign has changed.” the Republican representative immediately decreed. For a week, the presidential candidates wanted to avoid any interference with programs that were too easy. The tone of the moment is serious, befitting the drama unfolding on European soil.

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