Audio-visual delight spices up election campaign

Chennai: Election campaigns this time could well be graded as a tech savvy one whatwith a number of pollsters opting to use mobile phones and social media networks to reach out to voters. Be it mobile SMS campaigns, or voice messages or Facebook and Whatsapp messages, increasing number of political parties have taken to these novel campaign modes as this election sees over 12 crore first time voters entering the fray, including 2.3 crore voters in the age group of 18-19 years.

“With the phenomenal increase in the penetration of mobile phones, SMS campaign is the easiest and cheapest way to reach out to large number of people,” said Congress Sriperumbudur candidate Arul Anbarasan who has launched “bulk SMS campaign” seeking voter support. He has set a target of sending out at least five lakh SMS this election season.

Though SMS and voice message campaigns have been in vogue since 2009 elections, this time there is a phenomenal increase in the use of these media, aver experts. “With the average cost of an SMS campaign working out to be 11 paise per message, it is certainly the cheapest medium,” said R. Bhoopalan, business director of Adithya Advertising.

“For now, we are already doing SMS and voice campaigns for four Lok Sabha candidates and are getting more enquiries,” he added.

DMDK’s North Chennai candidate M. Soundarapandian, who has kicked off a Facebook advertisement, said, “The number of visitors to my website has gone up due to this FB ad as I see a lot of them leaving their comments and suggestions.” Enthused by the response, he is now exploring Whatsapp and SMS campaign options.

However, such ‘spray and prey’ campaigns will not have a big impact, opined mobile media expert Mr Vishwanath Alluri, founder and executive chairman of IMImobile.

“For one, you cannot spam people with such unsolicited SMS and phone calls as this against TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) rules. Secondly, the database being used by political parties have all been obtained by illegal means,” he said. “Such mindless spamming on Facebook or mobile phones or disturbing people in the DND registry will not change the political landscape of India,” Alluri pointed out.