Clk2c.com, an arm of the Ghaziabad-headquartered Samadhan Systems, which has got BJP’s mandate to undertake mobile video campaigns for some of its candidates during the ongoing state assembly polls, is bullish over the success of this model.

“To the best of our knowledge, it is for the first time any political party has adopted mobile video commercials (MVCs) for election campaigns,” Suresh Kabra, chief executive officer (CEO) and founder, told Financial Chronicle. “It is a new concept but once it clicks, it is expected to grow tremendously in the near future. Thousands of campaign videos are being downloaded on a daily basis, taking the party message to the masses in the targeted geography. The best part is that once downloaded, the party’s election message is available to the voter anytime for repeated playback on his handset. This kind of message reinforcement, to the end voter’s convenience, is not offered by any other campaign medium,” said Kabra.

Incidentally, there is no SMS sending involved in the process and therefore the question of DND (do not disturb) violation does not arise at all. It actually runs using a pull mechanism. And the beauty is no political party has put any restrictions as of now that if one particular party uses it, others cannot use it. But they may come in future, he felt.

This is just the beginning and the same model can be extended further. Kabra said, “Mobile videos can be used for any kind of mass messaging with a one-to-one connect (due to the mobile & video element). So we expect that political parties and even governments will start to use this media to deliver key messages on crucial issues and policies to their workers and voters at large in the near future. Eventually it could evolve to run referendums also.”

While the company runs MVC across all verticals such as real estate, finance, auto and FMCG, the company is confident that the promotion of political parties will also evolve to be big enough to define a vertical in itself. And that’s not without reasons.

This is a grass root level campaign, which should reach masses in the most cost effective manner. Everyone who can vote in a particular region is targeted. So it is much higher in volume deliveries (MVC downloads) and broader in target audience when compared to a campaign being run for other offerings.

“Besides, since the electorate in India is largely youth, any campaign targeted around digital will give a good ROI. Within the digital space, mobile is such a personal device which everyone carries everywhere all the time.”

“So more and more brands, including political parties, are targeting mobile to take their message across to the end user (in this case voter). Mobile presents several innovative ways to run the campaign, including mobile video commercial (MVC), mobile apps, SMS and voice based activity,” he said.

ritwikmukherjee@mydigitalfc.com