Marketing Transformation Using Social Network on Digital Media:

How BJP Used WhatsApp to Create a Successful WOM Campaign

Why Social Media & Politics?
• Presently, a good percentage of youth and middle age voters are on Social Media. That is the reason
social media is playing a considerable new role in Indian democracy
• A new way of reaching out to a younger and target population
• According to a survey, Facebook users in 160 Lok Sabha Constituencies were more than the victory
margin there in 2009 election and thus this means Facebook users could have been very well the
potential swing vote-banks in 2014
• Facebook Status Update and Photo posting with #hashtag trending, Tweeting Short Messages, Twitter
with #hashtag trending, Expressing Supports Through Blogs, Rally Videos, bytes of contestants and
general views of voters on YouTube and various WhatsApp groups are formed to further the election
agenda
Execution Strategy
Option 1
• Automated message blast
Option 2
• Developing WhatsApp Community
Option 3
• Create a trackable influencer marketing program to create WOM using WhatsApp

Option 1 Option 2 Option 3

Pros: Easiest Approach Pros: People in the community would
Cons: This method be expecting messages and would
resembled spamming & take them up positively
could end up annoying Cons:
voter a.) Time constraint
b.) Technology limitation(50 member
groups)
c.) Personal touch still not present
Pros: Personal touch not lost. Reach
and impact of the campaign could
be monitored
Cons: Huge team building, training
exercise would be required for
execution
Team Building Designers
Core Social Media Team
Create content and send msg to citizens who +
opted in (6 People)
CopyW

Regional Team 1 Regional Team 2 Regional Team 3 Regional Team 4 Regional Team 5
(2 People) (2 People) (2 People) (2 People) (2 People)

Designers Designers Designers Designers Designers

+ + + + +
CopyW CopyW CopyW CopyW CopyW

55 District Social Media Head (55 People)

Implement the campaign –Recruit Content carrier and monitor them
288 Social Media Centers – 1 Center Head + 10 Active Party Workers (3168 people)
Send campaign content to at least 100 people in friends and family
100 Content Carriers in each constituency (28,800)
Campaign execution and measurement
Miss call campaign
• People gave miss calls to add citizens of Maharashtra to
party database
• 32000+ registrations
• Relevant messages to these voters were sent
• Core social media team sent the relevant communication
to respective social media heads that further forwarded
them to social media centers

Direct Reach Indirect Reach Campaign Stats

One piece of 10,000 people would further forward INR 1.8 million
communication reached the campaign input to at least one 600 images, 17 video clips and 2
about 10,000 people in person making total reach 20000 audio clips
every constituency 200+ message/ constituency