Machan, vote podu

From the first week of February, for at least two weeks (eons by social media standards), Facebook newsfeeds and WhatsApp groups in Chennai were flooded with memes of Shaktiman, Nokia 3310, ICQ chat boxes and Chiclets — all of them relics from a bygone era; and all of them tagged with a message on the lines of “If you remember this, then you must be old enough to vote. Act your age, register to vote.”

And just as the posters began fading from the fickle memory of digital natives, up popped a video file of cricketer R Ashwin with the label: “Dhoni or Virat, Ashwin answers”. Click on the video, and Ashwin starts off in Tamil, “Is this the question you need to worry about? There are many other things that are much more important. Check first if your name is registered on the voters’ list.” This was clickbait at its cheeky best.

Similar videos with actor Surya, cricketer Dinesh Karthik and squash ace Dipika Pallikal, as also scores of memes tailored to a Tamil Nadu audience rapidly garnered likes, shares, comments and retweets. All of them came from one source: State Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni’s Facebook page TNElectionsCEO and Twitter handle @TNElectionsCEO.

The EC in Tamil Nadu, like elsewhere in the country, makes an effort to increase the voter turnout during elections. Since 2009, under the Systematic Voters’ Education for Electoral Participation (SVEEP) programme, the EC has run campaigns to inform voters about the correct identity proofs needed, location of polling stations, how to use an electronic voting machine (EVM), poll timings, how to file complaints and so on.

In TN, for the first time, the EC is using social media as a promotion tool. “When you think government, you think boring. We wanted to change that. We also didn’t want to talk down to people, we wanted to converse, as you will with a peer,” says Bala Manian, the 38-year-old strategy head at OPN Advertising, the agency behind the Election Commission’s spirited drive to get social media talking about voters’ rights and duties.

In its first phase, the #TN100percent campaign is encouraging people to vote. Ahead of the elections on May 16, the next two phases will focus on ethical voting and ensuring a 100 per cent voter turnout, respectively. Although there have been similar campaigns in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi, asking people to go out and vote, the TN campaign has created a stir all its own.

“We’re trying to create a movement of sorts, where everyone is emotionally invested,” says S Chockalingam, the agency’s 40-year-old creative head. “The fact that ours is a young agency also helps massively. The brief was to attract the 18- to 30-year-olds to this issue and I think we were able to do this.” The agency was also behind the IPL Chennai Super Kings team’s long-popular “Whistle podu” campaign.

“We decided to tweak the campaign to talk in the language of young people about the things they liked,” says Lakhoni, about the campaign. “In the 18-29 age category, we have 23 per cent voters — that is, about 1.34 crore. Of this, around two per cent are not registered to vote, which works out to 10 lakh people. The first phase is targeted at them. We are using celebrities differently by drawing attention and focusing on intelligent content. That way the campaign generates positive publicity all around,” he adds.

The social media and online campaign will be followed by TV and radio spots, as well as outdoor ads on billboards and bus shelters.

The use of humour-laced intelligent messaging makes this election season stand out from all previous ones, which were marked by a preference for sombre political posters. Complaints, if any, may be sent directly to the EC on WhatsApp (9444123456).

The ad agency and election officials are confident that the next two phases of their campaign will be received equally well. In a State that boasts an average voter turnout of about 70 per cent, the campaign aims to yank in the remaining 30 per cent too. “If it were a normal brand campaign, then this attention we have got would have been enough. But this is our State and we feel quite passionately about it,” says Manian.

“I mean, for us it will not be enough if a person just comes to vote; it’ll be even better if they talk to ten other people and tell them, ‘Machan, come and vote’. To achieve that last mile, that will be the hardest,” she adds.

(Sibi Arasu is an independent journalist based in Chennai)

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