Reading some news items and
the reactions on social media especially by the Congress netas, their followers
and especially the tweeple I felt compelled
to share these thoughts from a strategic perspective.
If I were a Congress
leader what is my objective ? To
win enough votes and get voted back to
power again.
Like all political parties in India
I do not have any conscience and will divide, kill, blackmail, stoke hatred, announce freebies, do development work, show progress, sell
family silver, buy media, advertise etc and
do whatever it takes to win. After all in elections in India as they say
everything is fair in love and war and elections are war. In my younger days 2 political
teams campaigning when they met on the road clashed and fought but have now moved to TV stations and Social Media.
There are already a set of
supporters and die hard fans of Congress so I would be wasting my time
appealing to them. That’s like preaching to the choir. Similarly there are
enough non Congress voters and here again I am wasting my time talking to them.
Nextly what is it that I want
to communicate ? I need to (1) Convey my parties programs, policies, vision,
actions, results (2) Counter the campaign of my opposition against me (3) Point out the flaws, falsehoods, failures
in my opposition.
So who is my target audience? They
are the by and large majority who are undecided, have likes and dislikes but based
on recent past look to swing one way or another. Now these people are spread across
geographies, castes, classes, urban, rural, tribal, etc and so as a political party I chose to
communicate with them differently. As things stand today social media is still
a fringe element as a campaign manager but it is also important and powerful enough since even
a 1% swing in votes can make a huge difference in our first past the post
system of elections. Also this is an evolving media that needs to be nurtured,
understood and suitably strategised over time with experience so that maybe some
decades down the line it can form an impactful aspect of elections.
Secondly even on Twitter you have a set of “mature” audience who
are a minority but who in turn can influence some others on their list but the
vast majority are still seeking a direction. My objective to help them decide in MY
favour. My target is to get these
undecided to vote for me.
Most importantly the audience
on Twitter or Facebook is generally educated, has access to smartphones,
tablets, computers, is generally more urbanised, decently well off. So your communication strategy must be planned with
the target audience in mind.
Now whether it is Facebook or
Twitter the two main social media platforms leveraged by political parties
there are many challenges that need to be understood but the
most challenging issue is the “span of attention” and “memory retention”. Let me
explain.
A person can tweet whatever he
wants but most of the times the response is to
“A tweet” and rarely taken into a larger context or the persons overall
persona. A classic example of this is what happened to Shashi Tharoor when he tweeted about cattle class on
flights. Anyone who has read Tharoor, listened to him over time or even
followed him on Twitter over time would never ever misread that statement. His die hard converted fans will swear that
he was done in by the opposition. But even within his own party there were
enough who disliked that comment. But
then 4 years ago the same politicians did not understand SM as they do now. I am willing to bet my all
that today the same comment by Tharoor would have at best attracted some
uncomfortable attention from some politicians but the onslaught he faced then
would be missing. That is because those who opposed him then are now on Twitter and have got a taste of the same.
Both the main parties have got
themselves a set of fans and converted supporters who are today trying their
best to propagate their parties message over Twitter. I call them Tweeporters.
To come back to my point the
reality is that the readers reaction even today is to the 142 characters sent out
and rarely analysed from a more holistic larger viewpoint. Whatever the comment, however false or crazy
it may sound, there are a section of the people who react to the Tweeporters statement and make judgements on that. It is another matter that these very same
people will react exactly the opposite way when they read something different from the
same Tweeporters. So it
is crucial that every message sent out is complete in itself and consistent in
approach. This is crucial.
The average reader who gets
influenced by these Tweeporters is continually swinging on a pendulum and come
voting day will vote based on which side
he is swinging. Also if he is being constantly
swung in a particular fashion the chances are that he will stay there come
voting day.
Now with this background let me analyse what the main parties are
doing.
The BJP under NaMo were first
off the block and so have a natural first mover advantage. Also the longer
experience has helped them manage the medium better.
Given the natural anti incumbency, the state of the economy, the rising
prices, the feeling of despondency gives them a edge in communicating more
efficiently than others. Also any party in power always attracts more flak than
the opposition. The main leaders who
matter took to the medium much earlier and established their clans online. They
may have opposed Tharoor for political reasons but they also learnt from him
very very quickly and joined the bandwagon.
Narendra Modi, Shivraj Chauhan, Sushma Swaraj, Rajnath Singh, Raman
Singh each of whom can stake a claim for being Prime Minister jumped in early
enough and understand the medium well enough. Each of these communicate to the people at
crucial times (even if some say politically
motivated – read my opening statement) and that makes for far larger impact
than anything else.
The Congress on the other hand
was slow and if I may say so actually believed the bullshit that was being
thrown around about the social media. This has been their Achilles heal. Even today
the number of netas online are few and as a party it is only now that they are
putting their act together. They have some excellent material within them from
the younger brigade but barring for the
affable and graceful Milind Deora none of the others are on board. I personally
would have thought some one like Sachin Pilot, Jyotiraditya Scindia should have
been online and communicating especially given their ministerial responsibilities would have given
them a direct access to the target audience. If people like Anand Sharma,
Chidambaram had logged in online the impact would have been tremendous. Even leveraging a Tharoor was done very late
in the day. But for reasons best known
to themselves Congress ignored this
media and actually still plays only lip service to it in my opinion.
Apart from the fact that the
prime neta of Congress Rahul Gandhi is not on Twitter and can even be explained
away by saying that India lives in the villages (which is true) fact is that he
is trying to address a section of the audience with who he is not
connected. Also we don’t hear from him
on Television, Print media communicating his vision, plans and actions.
Coming back to what I said
earlier, that the undecided voter would
be swinging and hopefully in one direction and there are objectives in
communicating as spelt out earlier. But how
is the Congress handling this, let us see.
The Congress started a Twitter
account for the Prime Minister and I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that
some inefficient stenographer is given the job to tweet and the PM has no
clue about it. This man tweets about his speeches from 2004 onwards, sends pictures of meeting other netas. The biggest joke is when there is a press release on a
important issue the damn thing is sent out sentence by sentence over Twitter. When
something really agitates the people there is zero comment. This when the opposition is talking,
communicating on the present in real time is a recipe for disaster.
Secondly I rarely see any of
the Congress Tweeporters pontificating on the parties vision, action, achievements
in a effective manner. You have a person send 3
tweets where the first says that poverty reduced by 30% under congress,
then says that 70% of India is hungry so you need FSB and then refer to Gujarat
riots of 2002. Even as a undecided voter I am bewildered. Either I am hungry
and poor or not hungry and not poor but
here I am being told that I am both hungry and not poor. How these 2 are
connected to 2002 riots beats me. This is rank bad strategy in my opinion. I would
sack these folks if they were my sales team for votes.
Nextly the constant message is Modi, Feku, Modi,
Feku. Now I sometimes wonder when did Modi join Congress ? Is he a Congress
rebel ? Congress talks of Modi, BJP talks of Modi, so what the hell is going on
here ?
The BJP takes up campaigns like
Pappu etc but they focus on that for a long enough time to leave an impression
on the undecided voter and then move away from the subject to come back at a later
date. A kind of hit and run tactic. Secondly they focus 100% of the time on what
Modi has achieved and include in it whatever accomplishments Gujarat, Madhya
Pradesh, Chattisgarh have achieved and give it a all India flavour, a positive
message and a feel good factor to the reader.
But Congress keeps referring to Modi irrespective of time,
space, subject and it is like a truck stuck in mud. Wheels keep turning fast,
truck doesn’t move but it sure is throwing mud on all around who not wanting to
get dirty will stand and watch but not help.
In this obsession on Modi
Congress Tweeporters seem to have completely confused between Gujarat and Gujaratis and Modi. They club
all of them together. Their fear is that if you say AMUL dairy the pride of India
is in Gujarat it will somehow mean a credit to Modi so they instead complain – “My
AMUL milk curdled yesterday, Feku Modi”.
Or if Gujarat has rains and
flooding affecting people they say – “Gujaratis stranded in flood waters, Feku
Modi”. Stupidity doesn’t get better than this. A guy in flooded waters cares little who is in
power and is angry, and you mock him and then hope to get him to vote for you ?
His anger at that point in time can be exploited to your benefit but instead
you make him angrier.
When the Anna movement started and the Delhi rape happened
Congress had a golden opportunity to seize it to its advantage and simply walk
away with accolades but instead there was either deathly silence or news about
rapes in MP, Gujarat etc as if saying
that what happened in Delhi was OK. If I
were a Congress strategist I would have shot the whole lot of my team for being stupid.
A stupid media which believes
that its readers are stupid morons puts out a story that Modi walked into the
flooded swirling water of Uttarakhand with 4 boeing planes, 20 buses, 60 vans
and then managed to identify only Gujaratis and then take them to safety. If I were a
Congress Tweeporter I would stay away from that story as far as I can. But
no like moths to a lantern they actually believed it and you had central
ministers pontificating about it. Now it may sound like smart politics but to
me the undecided voter I wonder – If such patently stupid people are asking for
my votes, should I vote them ?
Finally anything and
everything someone says is linked to Modi, 2002 riots but rarely if ever do the
Congress Tweeporters answer the question, debate the issue. For example the questions and answers go like
this.
Where is the money for FSB
going to come from ? – You are anti poor, what has Modi done for the poor,
children are malnourished in Gujarat.
Why is the Prime Minister silent
? – what did you do when 2002 riots happened ? Did you protest ?
Pakistan has killed our
soldiers, what is our response ? – Vajpayee lied when Kargil happened, where
was Modi then ?
While BJP puts out a picture
of Shivraj Chauhan carrying an Indian soldiers coffin Congress will be ranting
about what Modi did or did not do. The BJP Tweeporters clearly focus on a
subject without diluting it with Rahul or Sonia and talk of achievements and
when they need to attack Congress do so separately without mixing it with anything
else. So the communication is clear, concise and helps swing the undecided
voter.
Another aspect which is more
personal is that when I have interacted with both Congress and BJP Tweeporters
and netas and let us say I compliment them
specifically on a issue or defend them on a issue the BJP folks
have the courtesy to say thank you, the Congress folks ignore you or change the
subject which to me smacks of arrogance.
The undecided voter today
wants a positive message, a reassurance, a silently held hand in solidarity. Even
better than the BJP the Aam Aadmi Party is doing a brilliant job on SM.
They are completely focussed, working towards a clear target, communicate real time and stay
focussed on positives, asking the right inconvenient questions, communicating
actions taken and most importantly if they notice a trend in feedback they
react to change direction. The citizen
today on SM is young, restless and full of energy and the AAP is harnessing it
the best.
The reader is intelligent and
not as much a fool as you may want him to be and Congress with such a SM communication
strategy is pushing people away from themselves while the opposition BJP
gleefully accepts them. If there were to be a voting only on social media today I think the BJP would get
a 2/3rd majority not because of their own accomplishments but more
because of the stupidity of Congress.
But then like my earlier
experiences on here, the die hard Congress supporters will accuse me of being
Pro Modi and anti Congress while the
really intelligent Congress man tells me offline that he agrees with the weaknesses
which need urgent attention.
Luckily SM will not decide the
2014 elections but unless the political parties master it, future elections
can well be swung by SM. The folks who
ignore this medium do so at their own peril.
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