Brigitte Macron in Dijon, March 5, 2018. PHILIPPE DESMAZES / AFP
After almost six years at the Élysée, the first lady recently decided to allow herself less formal and framed outings than before.
She is reinventing her communication. After almost six years at the Élysée, Brigitte Macron recently decided to allow herself less formal and framed outings than before. Even outright to venture into eminently political, and sometimes even sensitive, terrain. Thanks to the launch of the “Yellow Pieces” operation – which she chairs each year as patroness of the Fondation Hôpitaux de Paris – the first lady has thus multiplied the media interventions noticed in recent weeks. Here, at 8 p.m. on TF1, where she reacted to the protest against the executive’s pension reform project. In the The Parisian where she said to be “for wearing a school uniform“.
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Outings which, far from being a succession of more or less fortunate coincidences, seem rather to be part of a strategy. To the point that Brigitte Macron is about to take a new step in the way she promotes her action. According Point , who met her at the end of January, the first lady would like to open an Instagram account soon. Contacted by Le Figaro, his entourage, however, refuses to advance on the planned schedule and on the platform chosen. “I am not on social networks, but I will certainly go there to highlight the initiatives that I carry or that I support“, she had already confided in early January to the magazine S, by Sophie Davant .
An insolent popularity, at a time when the president is running out of breath
In addition to highlighting her struggles – such as the fight against school bullying, or the integration of disabled people -, this approach must also put a stop to identity theft that targets her, while “lots of fake accountsswarm in his name. However, Brigitte Macron does not intend to respond directly to future interpellations from Internet users. Attached to direct contact with the French, the first lady will continue to favor the epistolary link that she already maintains with some of those who request her, through the some 20,000 letters she receives daily. And that she strives, as far as possible, to try to read as much as possible.
A figure hated by radical demonstrators at the height of the “yellow vests” crisis – some processions depicted her at the time as “Marie-Antoinette of modern times” -, Brigitte Macron nevertheless remains an important asset for his husband. At a time when the President of the Republic is struggling to find a course and breathe new life into his second five-year term, the first lady, for her part, enjoys a popularity rating much higher than that of the Head of State. According to an Ifop poll published in Paris Match in March 2022, a majority of French people (55%) declared themselves satisfied with it, and they were more than one in two (52%) to consider it too withdrawn. It seems she heard them.
TO HAVE ALSO – “To say that we are doing this reform for something other than pensions has weighed down government communication,” says Christophe de Voogd