The results are out and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has comprehensively defeated all other political parties in the Delhi elections. Political Pundits attribute this landslide victory to Arvind Kejriwal’s drive for corruption free governance and the common man connect. However, not many know that AAP has done some commendable work with its impressive marketing strategies and innovative use of technology.
The credit for most of it lies in AAP’s partnership with VoiceTree which has designed a cloud based telephony solution for the Delhi Party. The solution enables the Aam Aadmi (common man) to become a party volunteer in no time and at no cost. AAP wanted that every person in sync with its ideology should be a volunteer who can give a meaningful contribution depending on available time and resources.
To solve this problem, AAP came up with a solution where an Aam Aadmi Party volunteer can call a random citizen of Delhi and then convince him to cast his vote in favour of AAP. Since, the number is toll free, the volunteer does not have to spend anything to make that phone call. Also, the personal information of the caller and receiver is hidden. AAP used about 100 channels in this election which means that 100 calls can be selected at the same time. It has truly been a people-led movement which has proven to be an excellent marketing tool for the Aam Aadmi Party. It also helped in crowd funding by creating a transparent platform for citizens to donate their money. Citizens of Delhi contributed over 20 crore to the newly formed party.
The raw data for this campaign was gathered by AAP’s volunteers who visited door-to-door house in Delhi and clicked photos of the numbers they had gathered. These photos were then uploaded on Facebook from which they were aggregated into a large electronic database, focusing on the phone numbers of undecided voters.
Arvind Kejriwal also used Google hangouts as a medium to interact with NRI’s to promote the party’s Adopt a Constituency campaign, in which they could pick an area in Delhi and help the local campaign team reach a fund-raising goal of 1.4 million rupees, or $22,500. In addition to this they also benefitted from the relatively superior expertise and experience possessed by NRI’s.
A small group of 10 volunteers from IIT-Bombay also lend their support to the party by creating a research tool to crawl through thousands of social media posts related to the Delhi elections as reported by Times of India. The tool was designed to analyse thousands of twitter handles and to gauge their reaction and sentiments towards various issues. It also measured public opinion on the Aam Aadmi Party. This helped AAP to focus on issues like “Women Safety” which was deemed as very important. Other promises like free WiFi and education were also derived through this medium.
The newly formed party also established a connect with the young voters by offering internships in the party. These interns were asked to perform volunteer work and participate in research projects undertaken by the Aam Aadmi Party. These interns inadvertently kept updating their social media pages and helped in promotion of the party through word of mouth.
In this day and age, the impact of technology on election outcomes cannot be ignored even in a diverse country like India. The same technology was used by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) to win in the Lok Sabha elections has now been used by the Aam Aadmi Party to transform itself from an underdog to a major national player.
