Social media and Indian Elections!

Its election time – at least, that’s what all the media suggests, with psephologists having a field day.

Be it by the scheduled time or sooner, its not too far away that the (mighty Indian) common man will cast his once-in-a-5 year all powerful vote.

This is also the first time that elections to the country will be held after the proliferation of leaders, followers, and influencers in the social band-wagon.

The mainline media is agog with stories as to how this will be one election, which will be also fought and won, with the influence and crowds that parties get or otherwise on social media – be in twitter, face-book or blogs!

How significant the influence of this new media platform will be when the ballot is cast is a raging debate!

That aside, how well can political parties, their leaders and followers make the best of this place, when it comes to brass tacks?

Here are 10 ways party sympathizers clued in to twitter and similar fora can make the best – to make sure they make a difference on the ground.

1. Political parties must form geographic clusters of social media followers of their respective parties and followers. This may be possible by segmenting the influencers/followers database (if at all they have any – else thats step 0 ).Given the nature of internet penetration and usage across the country, the urban focus and present ‘crowding pattern’ of (any party’s) social media enthusiasts, there will be huge tracts of the country where there’s practically nil followers. This gap analysis is a basic need.
2. Hiring people (social media influencers), which some parties have planned to do, must begin in these void tracts in social crowding.
3. Split the nation into 100 clusters depending on how the party wishes to do it, aligned with the state boundaries and any other similar criteria which the party will deem fit.
4. Once this job of deciding on 100 clusters is done, the strategic decision of where to hire people, and where to deploy people can be decided, and this will be done on the basis of looking at the follower ‘clustering’ across different regions.
5. Given the overall number of Lok Sabha seats in the country, which is 545, each of these social media cluster of influencers take the responsibility of making the online-offline connect with 5 or 6 MP seats depending on the task allocation.(This, gives a perspective of the humongous task at hand for the social media followers and influencers of the party).
6. The national social media co-ordination committee of the respective parties shall also work closely, with ear on the ground, to customize the message for the respective cluster population, based of socio-economic factors, local issues which could be of impact, national issues, past promises of incumbent (national and cluster specific), and broadcast/engage people online and offline with those messages. The crux of the messaging can be altered based on ground realities/feedback on a fortnightly/weekly basis.
7. Besides just engaging online, the respective cluster social media leaders/committee will also hold regular weekly message-connect meeting with the local party committees and workers who are on the campaign trail.
8. The social media cluster committee can be aligned into a few dedicated members to each LS constituency. These dedicated social media influencers shall be in constant touch with the workers on the ground, in each LS seat, and work closely with them, helping them in message connect, the to-do’s of campaign and also broadcast regular messages on leaders on the campaign trail, countering opponent messaging and use on-field carpet bombing of national issues.
9. Critical feedback from the ground to the leadership must happen from these cluster social media influencers. Points like the visit of some leader could influence the balance in favor, ground realities on which factors must be highlighted in public meetings and interactions, the kind of bills that can be distributed door to door etc will be also taken back and forth by the social media party evangelists.
10. With these as the broad strategy, each of the cluster social media influencers in the party shall have a monthly plan in the run up to the election. This monthly plan shall be brainstormed with the party leaders/important office bearers at the local/regional and national levels. Vetting shall be done for the broad strategic and operations plan for the 100 odd soc-med influence clusters across the nation.

So, push aside all the social buzz what you see now. Does your party have a semblance of the above 10 steps in its social media master plan in the run up 2014?

More importantly, is your social media machinery ready for this kind of a grind?

If yes, then there will be a semblance of influence at the ballot. And if not, better luck later...

Pharma PR - what ails pharma communication?

Back in April this year, I remember seeing this small piece on the shift in trends in the way pharma companies were approaching PR. It was under a caption "PR tonic" in Business Standard.
It read - 

"Recent developments in the Indian pharma industry, especially over compulsory licensing of life-saving drugs, have left multinationals jittery and encouraged them to change their public relations strategy in India. Till recently, the focus was on wooing government; now the attention has shifted to the media. This week, three major multinationals, caught in patent rows, did their media rounds one after the other explaining their stand. Their attempt is no longer limited to winning the battle over intellectual property-related issues, but to spruce up their consumer-unfriendly image and show that they care."


In the case of pharma companies be it Indian, or multi-nationals in this market, what ails their public relations strategy is this - the public in PR has been forgotten, with focus of the communication efforts only being institutional - doctors, corporate hospitals, the government, and the company's shareholders.

When was the last time you saw a pharma company attempting to tell the public about their commitment for affordable health-care, or how efficacious, SAFE, and fool-proof their processes and plants/operations are?

One large company which is embroiled in all kinds of safety issues, Ranbaxy, had its top leadership go about and state on prime time television that 'adulteration' wasn't a major issue for the Indian consumer!

This is only due to fact that the consumer is not a choice maker, like other products or services.

Does that mean that the PR of Pharma companies cannot have a communication strategy with consumer focus?

They can and must -

• communicate their commitment to better drugs
• communicate the safety of their drug development efforts
• communicate their support of better patient care and interventions
• communicate how their standards remain uniform across the globe - which is never the case by most

Like these, there a host of communication and image building opportunities for pharma brands.

Does Pharma PR do anything of this kind, with the consumers in mind? Can it do better?

What do you think?

Where is the "image" problem with Public Relations?

I have seen a handful of posts, where experts wax eloquent on the image problem with the "public relations" business, and with PR professionals as well....

If at all there is a problem that has come to hit the PR industry, it's just one problem - that of people , professional and organisations in this space over-promising to clients! The client, gets a feeling that once he has the services of a PR company, there's a magic wand that will transform his company's image the minute he signs up an annual retainer.

And post signing the retainer, the post sign-off dissonance is so much that the client ends up thinking that PR agents are nothing more that rogues - sorry about the usage of the word though.

When you make a pitch and promise the moon, if the client and his team spent a bit of their resources on a check about the delivery capability of the agency, and the relevance of it from their organisational ecosystem - then they would be not fretting and fuming about what promises they fell for.

The consolidation of the big global communications companies will only accentuate to the already sagged image problem for PR. Their presence may transcend boundaries, but would they have the local expertise to help build or re-build the image of a company in far of Bali or Cochin? Yes, with some and No, with most of these communications power-houses!

In this comes a great opportunity for home-grown communication professionals - only if do not fall in the over-promise trap!

So, where is the image problem in PR? and who is responsible?? Think!