Whatsapp Marketing – BJP MH

case study
Whatsapp Marketing
 For the 16th general election, BJP made extensive use of digital and social media to reach
out to citizens and communicate their key messages.
 BJP party campaign employed a mix of digital platforms such as:
◦ Official website
◦ Various social media platforms,
◦ Short message service (SMS),
◦ Webinars and webcasts,
◦ User generated content websites and
◦ mobile applications.
 The 13th Legislative Assembly election in Maharashtra was held just a few months after
the 16th general election.
 Expectations from the state’s social media marketing cell were high. Several insiders
(party leaders, workers, etc.) and outsiders (political analysts, competing political parties,
supporters of BJP etc.) felt that the Maharashtra social media team would replicate the
scale of social media presence in the state; however, they were disappointed with the
results. Criticism included: 
 Social media presence of BJP Maharashtra was chaotic and confusing. There were
multiple Twitter handles, Facebook pages and YouTube accounts. The official properties
of BJP Maharashtra were neither verified by Facebook nor by Twitter. It was hard to
identify official properties of the party.
 In October 2014, the official Facebook page of BJP Maharashtra had about 150,000 likes
and the Twitter handle had about 13,000 followers. 
 There were about 4-5 parody accounts on Twitter and 7-8 fan-managed community pages
on Facebook. All these properties were managed by party workers and party supporters.
Each handle and page had a small fan following and there was no structured flow of
communication. However, Gajaria had conviction in his strategy and execution; he
believed that chaos was good and he had a strong reason to justify his belief. “
 Gajaria said:
◦ Our strategy was to bring about convergence of social media with ground-level
mobilisation. Social media is nothing but social conversations that are enabled by
technology. It’s best to make conversations look real rather than have an official
mouthpiece send out formal messages. Messages received from friends and family and
social media managed by volunteers can create a deeper impact than messages received
from a political party. After all, WOM marketing always scores over advertising;
especially in the case of a political party
◦ Gajaria also believed that campaigning strategies that worked at the national level
would fail to deliver results at the state level. The national-level campaign had adopted
a two-pronged approach where the party and the prime ministerial candidate were
promoted.
 So why changed strategy for MH:
◦ Modi’s objective was brand building
◦ Campaign was started on Social Media much prior to election.
◦ For MH the objective was to garnet max votes and time period was much shorter (5
months only)
◦ Further needs and behaviour of the target audience was much different.
◦ Expectations different from State and Central Govt.
◦ Population using Social Media (FB and Twitter) was highly concentrated in Urban
area.
◦ Such population was large enough for National level campaign however for State level
this was not good enough.
◦ Important observation that BJP understood early was that spread of messaging app
such as Whatsapp was evenly distributed.
◦ Early on (during general election interaction) BJP’s social media team realised that a
vast majority of rural people used Whatsapp unlike FB or twitter.
Segmentation and targeting strategy:
◦ Historically, geographically and according to political sentiments, Maharashtra
was divided into five main regions Vidarbha, Marathwada, Uttar Maharashtra
(Northern Maharashtra), Paschim Maharashtra(Western Maharashtra), and Konkan
(includes Mumbai and Thane) There were six administrative divisions and 36 districts.
◦ BJP had further divided a few of the 36 districts to create 55 distinct districts. Newly
created districts were heterogeneous and each district was homogeneous.
 For example, the biggest concern of voters in district 1 was water scarcity and
their expectation from the government was modern irrigation facility.
 On the other hand, the biggest concern of voters in district 2 was lack of formal
employment and their expectation from the government was local job creation.
 Each district had unique requirements and BJP decided to send carefully tailored, relevant
messages to voters.
Content Strategy
 The content strategy of BJP revolved around their development agenda and uncovering scams and
mismanagement by the INC-NCP coalition government.
 They stayed away from accusing or responding to accusations by their estranged ally, SS.
 Campaigns that targeted the opposition parties made use of humor in the form of caricatures and
comic strips.
 Use of humor would improve BJP’s outreach (especially in rural Maharashtra). Further, use of
humor could convey strong messages in a lighter way; thus, BJP could maintain dignity and
respect for the opposition.
 Deep understanding of consumers had revealed an interesting insight; voters in different regions
preferred a different flavor of humor
◦ People in Vidarbha preferred harsh humor.
◦ People in Marathwada preferred factual and direct humor.
◦ People in Uttar Maharashtra preferred spicy humor.
◦ People in Paschim Maharashtra preferred classic humor.
◦ People in Konkan preferred witty humor.
◦ People in Mumbai and Thane had an appetite for a mix-and-match of all.
 Two major campaigns - Bhau Cha Dhakka and Aghadi Cha Ghotala were conceptualized.
 These campaigns uncovered 116 scams by the INC-NCP coalition government.
 Selection of platform:
◦ Facebook, Twitter and Youtube were used to reach target audience but platform was choice
remained Whatsapp for the simple reason
 Reach Whatsapp could offer was much higher than all others (Facebook,Twitter and
YouTube) put together.
 Most importantly it was possible to send targeted messages using WA.
 Every district faced unique challenges…
 Communication that was relevant to one set of voters was not relevant to another set of
voters… For instance, Uttar Maharashtra faced issues such as farmer suicide while Paschim
Maharashtra faced issues such as irrigation and cooperative sector scams and Nandurbar
district in Uttar MH lacked overall development.
◦ With this kind of variance, it could easily turnout to be highly insensitive to send non-targeted
messages. Further, in the Marathwada region, political sentiments were highly negative for
Pawar of NCP party; BJP could leverage this insight to its advantage... Due to the strong
leadership of Mundeji and Mahajanji, voters in Beed and Dhule, had been pro-BJP for years…
 However, with their sudden demise, BJP realised that they were losing hold on both these
constituencies. Thanks to one-on-one messaging on WhatsApp, they could address low morale and
negative sentiments of voters out there. Targeted communication over WhatsApp gave them full
control; a broadcast approach would have clearly failed,
 Team Building had three options:
◦ Automatic message blast
◦ Developing a community on Whatsapp
◦ Creating a trackable influencer marketing program to create WOM using WA
 First option was easiest but would look spam to voters.
 Second option could be effectively managed but had similar limitations
◦ Time constraint
◦ Technology limitations (WA group with 50 group/50 participants)
◦ Could be looked as broadcast
 Launching a trackable influencer program looked difficult but most promising
Social Media Team
Core Social
Designer +
Media Team (6
Copy W
people)

Regional Team 1 Regional Team 2 Regional Team 3 Regional Team 4 Regional Team 5 Regional Team 6
(2 people) (2 people) (2 people) (2 people) (2 people) (2 people)

Designers + Designer + Designer + Designer + Designer + Designer+

Copy W CW CW CW CW CW

55 District Social Media Head (55 people)

288 Social Media Centers – 1 Center Head + 10 Active party workers (3168 people)

100 Content Carriers in each constituency (28,800)

WA Campaign execution
 Missed call campaign launched to register for BJP.
 Registered members received communication from official BJP number.
 32,000 people opted in.
 Center Head would receive relevant material from District head.
 Center head forward to 10 active party workers who would in turn send to 100 people in
his/her social professional circle.
◦ Direct reach – 10,000 people through viral marketing
◦ Indirect reach – these 10,000 would further disseminate to a larger base.