Recent campaigns urging the country's youth to vote have had little influence, finds an IMRB survey.
Ever since it became known that more than half of India’s 1.1 billion people are under 25 and two-thirds under 35, India’s young men and women have become all-critical to marketers and politicians alike. Sundry columnists and TV talk show hosts couldn’t stop gushing how young Indians will play a key role during the recently-concluded General Elections, especially in urban centres where youngsters have become more socially and politically aware.
Several awareness campaigns, such as Times of India’s Lead India and Tata Tea’s Jaago Re (Wake up), exhorted young voters — a number of them first-timers — to come out and vote in large numbers.
Despite that, voter turnout at Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore was disappointing. Mumbai saw a turnout of 43 per cent — lesser number of people voted in South Mumbai, Ground Zero of 26/11 attacks, than in 2004. Bangalore recorded 51 per cent, down 9 per cent from 2004. Delhi’s turnout was marginally better at 53 per cent. Political pundits are askance: How much influence did the social and political awareness campaigns have on young urban voters?
Not much, says a recent IMRB International survey. Carried out between May 1 and May 5, it sought to gauge the impact of the recent social and political campaigns on individuals aged 18 to 29 in socio-economic categories A and B from four metros — Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai and Kolkata.
Low recall
The revelations are startling. Only 18 per cent respondents could spontaneously recall the Jaago Re campaign and 6 per cent recalled Lead India. The celebrity-ridden Kuchh Nahin Ho Sakta (Nothing can happen) campaign, which starred leading Bollywood actors like Abhishek Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra, had a low recall of just two per cent.
On the upside, youth in Kolkata seemed most alive to such messages. Thirty-one per cent Kolkata respondents recalled Jaago Re and 17 per cent remembered Lead India. Recall of the campaigns was lower in the other three cities — one per cent each in Delhi and Mumbai recalled Lead India. Even the Election Commission’s much-extolled “Pappu Can’t Vote” campaign had a dismal one per cent instant recall among Delhi youngsters.
“Jaago Re’s high recall perhaps stems from the fact that it has been running across media platforms for some time now,” reasons IMRB International Senior Vice-president (BrandScience) Vivek Gupta who headed the survey team.
Even though 82 per cent respondents across metros said that they were aware of these messages, only 24 per cent said that these messages have had a big influence on them. In fact, around 58 per cent said that the messages had “a little influence” on them. Ironically, Kolkata youngsters, the most aware lot of all, were influenced the least. “I have my own mind to make my decisions. I follow politics with interest,” Anamika Gupta, 19, a Kolkata resident, told the survey team. Moreover, Kolkata youngsters polled for the survey showed scant acknowledgment for celebrity ads. “People are intelligent enough to make their own decisions without being influenced by celebrities,” said another Kolkata resident. Delhi showed a stronger celebrity pull in comparison with the other three metros.
Even the interest in the elections seems to have been limited. While a large number said they follow election news (from 83 per cent in Bangalore to 100 per cent in Kolkata), fewer said they follow it daily (13 per cent in Mumbai to 71 per cent in Delhi).
Sarath Potharaju, the 29-year-old head of communications of Jaago Re, is still optimistic. “In fact, I would be thrilled with this response. I would consider a 24 per cent impact a sizeable achievement. This is the first time that we have done a social campaign such as this and if you ask any FMCG or retail brand manager, a 24 per cent market impact is quite a feat.”
McCann Erickson Executive Chairman Prasoon Joshi, the brain behind Aamir Khan’s “Vote for integrity” campaign, is not surprised either: “Nobody wants to be preached. We have to respect when youngsters say that they know it. An initiative like this is a bit by bit exercise. It works at a subconscious level.” JWT India CEO Colvyn J Harris, whose company worked on the Lead India campaign, asserts that social messaging played a key role during these elections. “If it wasn’t for these social awareness campaigns, it could have been worse,” he says.
What impacts?
The IMRB survey looked into factors other than social messaging that influence voting decision among the youth. Mumbai’s youth are most inclined to choose candidates who affect change at a local level, the survey found out. “My father’s tea stall was broken by bullies. Shiv Sena helped us build it again. Our votes will go to Shiv Sena,” Nilesh Barwal, 21, a Mumbai resident, told the survey team.
Harris agrees that local issues impact the decision of voters, young or old: “I reside at Napean Sea Road. I can see a new wide road that is being built in my area and I can spot how badly it’s constructed. If our leaders can’t build a decent road in my area, how can I expect them to lead my country in a productive way?” This factor could explain the heavy local turnout during Assembly elections in Mumbai.
More than the social awareness campaigns, it was the advertisement campaigns launched by political parties like the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party which had better recall amongst the youth, according to the survey. While 67 per cent recalled the Congress campaign, 53 per cent recognised BJP’s campaign. More respondents remember Congress and BJP advertisements on traditional media (98 per cent for Congress and 94 per cent for BJP) than on other forms like hoardings, direct mailers, radio and the Internet. The message for media planners of the political parties is clear.
Few were aware that political parties have a web presence and fewer visited these sites, the survey reported. Only about a third of the respondents knew that the Congress and BJP have their own websites. About a tenth and fourth visited the Congress and BJP websites, respectively. Worse, only about one per cent visited websites dedicated to political heavyweights like Lal Krishna Advani, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.
Clearly, political parties, despite having made augmented efforts this time to reach young voters through the Internet, did not generate much response. “Personally, I would see them (websites) as campaigns built to promote a party or an individual to power. There was no call to action,” Potharaju says.
Joshi, however, attributes it to the way Indians take to information, “As a culture, we don’t have the tendency to look for information through the written word. Ours is a culture that follows the oral tradition. We want the moti baat (the essence), which is why TV ads draw much better response than websites.” However, if (Barack) Obama would have been quoted as saying that he liked Advani’s blog, everyone in our cities would have read Advani’s blog, Joshi quips.
Elections vs IPL
The most telling find of the survey was that political parties are no match for the Indian Premiere League (IPL) teams when it comes to brand awareness. Sample this: The chances of a young Indian voter recognising a Kolkata Knight Riders logo (80 per cent) are far more than him identifying a Communist Party of India (CPM) or a Trinamool Congress logo (71 per cent and 39 per cent, respectively). What’s worse, more young voters associate themselves with IPL teams than they do with national political parties.
Harris says that youngsters will find IPL more relevant than political parties until they have good reasons to relate to, believe in and consequently vote for a particular party. “This (elections vs IPL) is an unfair comparison. Any sensible youth will say that he or she will prefer politics to sports, when it comes to making a decision that could influence a nation’s fate,” Potharaju protests. Joshi, on the other hand, ascribes IPL’s better recall among youngsters to the latter’s need for instant gratification. “Politicians talking to youngsters, taking pauses, don’t appeal to them. Today, the young people can’t bear a moment of dullness,” he says.
There is a silver lining, however. The survey reports that more youngsters, across all cities, follow election news (94 per cent) than IPL matches (86 per cent), showing a high level of interest for political news. The critical question is, how can this keenness among the young population be converted into an active participation in democracy?
Names of survey respondents have been changed to protect their identity
