The PR / Communication Side of Elections

A year ago I closely followed British elections and learnt that PR strategy impacts election campaigning big time. There were communication teams on both sides who were doing good and bad and their performance reflected through in election results. If you remember Ms. May was far ahead in opinion polls at the time of announcement and as the election campaign progressed she kept losing majority. From Slogan to everything else just bounced back on her due to loopholes in the PR part of the campaign, otherwise operational dynamics don’t change so quickly.

Here I am doing a little round up of the three main parties in elections 2018. Most of the stuff I have already written in small blogs.

PML N

The biggest mistake which we traditionally make in Pakistan is having journalists as PR experts. Big names like Irfan Siddiqui, Atta ul Haq Qasmi and Mujeeb Ur Rehamn Shami were there but things have changed in the modern days comms. PR side of a campaign can only be handled by PR professionals and for future PML N should make a note of it. One classic example of the lacking professionalism was fake image/post shared by Shahbaz’s official twitter account in which he was praised for metro project and he also appreciated back. I mean you could not even create a genuine image to appreciate a gigantic project which is on ground. 

Due to this lack of professionalism their key messaging remained weak and confused. What are the few things we will say? Will we highlight performance in Punjab or will we concentrate on Nawaz and Maryam’s jail sentence? They chose the latter as their key message, which was more of a weakness and did not have much impact on the lives of people of Punjab. In a way a performance based strength was compromised for a weakness.

Before that Reham Khan book was also a bad move. Talk about your performance which was in abundance rather than others personal life weaknesses which has got no impact on public life. It backfired.

In an earlier blog I have written that Nawaz and Maryam should not have returned to Pakistan as it meant that they will cut their communication with their voters. Shahbaz may have become the President of PMLN but all the communication was taking place through Nawaz and Maryam. Once that stopped 15 days before the election, voters were left to listening to the opponent. Even if it was absolutely necessary to go to the jail then in that case a communication strategy for both should have been mapped with generalized messages for their voters, coming from their social media accounts. That did not happen because communication professionals were not on their side to develop these messages. All they had around them were famous journalists.  

PPP

The same non-professional approach towards communications remained hallmark of Bilawal’s election campaign. He also hired journalists as Media Consultants who only seemed to have one qualification, they were harsh opponents of Imran Khan. Again key messaging was missing. The only message which was bombarded non-stop was that Bilawal is more sensible than rest of the politicians. They did some good influencer marketing around that as well but was it enough to win an election?

Secondly the entire campaign targeted PTI and not PMLN at all. Why? In the biggest battlefield of Punjab, PMLN ruled the province for consecutive 10 years so how will targeting PTI will win you the deciding votes? These are all PR mistakes which happened due to absence of professional management. Bilawal should have taken a leaf from his mother’s book who always hired lobbyists from UK before the elections. Hussain Haqqani would have done a much better job for them had he been brought on-board as PR consultant. HH was once considered as the main man behind running successful election campaigns. Although he is old school but with a synergy with a new team equipped with modern day communication tools, he could have done the trick for them.      

PTI

They definitely had behind the scene professionalism in their campaign. I saw a PR agency running their campaign in the international media. Had their messages in place mainly around corruption. One of the key message was their performance in KPK. From conventional to social media they just kept bombarding their performance in the province and showed people what they can get if they vote PTI. Very shrewdly, they used last minute, India bashing Pak elections prospect message and garnered more support. In all they looked organized with professionalism in their campaign.  

Even Reham Khan book episode, just before elections, was neutralized in the media in a very intelligent manner, literally converting a weakness into a strength. 

ENDS