When Does a Twerk, Dress, and a Party Send A Message?

How the world sees women in leadership is more than a debate about messaging a casual moment for a state senator

New Hampshire State Senator Tiara Mack responded to critics of her video showing her twerking upside down and saying “Vote for Senator Mack”

If you want to learn about marketing messaging, political debates often give a crash course in messaging lessons that work for marketing as much as they do about the history and civic issues they address. The recent debate on the 28-year-old Rhode Island congresswoman Tiara Mack's TikTok video is an example. It not only shows how messaging overlap can occur online — and often does — but also how messaging overlap brings together various issues in a debate, making discussions more intense and involving more parties than intended.

Rhode Island congresswoman Tiara Mack demoed a twerk dance in a video. Twerk is a dance craze made by combining the words twist and jerk. It is a hypersexual movement of the buttocks. Mack did her dance in an upside-down handstand, with the video ending with her saying “Vote for Senator Mack”. The video garnered much attention and debate.

TikTok temporarily banned the video but Mack defended the video, noting that it was not a violation of TikTok’s rules regarding graphic material in a video. Emphasizing the underlying message, Mack mentioned that people “should pay attention to who talks about my body instead of my body of work”.

Indeed Senator Mack has been working to represent her constituents. She endorsed the Abortion Coverage Act and has advocated for the elimination of barriers to sexual and reproductive healthcare. Her next video appearance was a more standard political ad. I do think the twerk video, while fun, did make for a bad marketing message for a campaign. Had that twerk taken place without the “vote for senator Mack” comment, the video probably would not have gotten as much criticism as it has.

Politics influences the general nature of marketing strategy. Politicians are aware that their talking points are a sort of ongoing marketing message, or at least the good ones are. Politicians speak to their political talking points at every opportunity. So messaging your constituents effectively is often about timing those opportunities.