How to win an election
It’s been eons since I have written in this medium, I had to brush off the dust on my keyboard as I get ready to type.
There are several reasons why I haven't written but I will just highlight two.
1-Rapid rise of AI — The large language models have taken over, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing app in history and content creation has never been the same. Never will I have to write a product description for an item on my website or blog post about Rabbit R1 by myself ever again. It's an absolute game changer, the category of productivity will never be the same again.
2-Monetization — Medium does not offer monetization for my region so my words are merely words and not tokens of revenue. I hear substack has come and taken over that space, Medium sort this out before we writers migrate to substack.
Now that we have gotten that out of the way I will start by saying — This article was not written by AI.
Elections
South Africa is heading into an election this year along with 39 other countries. Starting with Taiwan in January and running through the US presidential election in November, the year will bring 40 national elections¹
We are in for a bumpy ride as politics, promises, tap openings, and geopolitics take over. What does help in an election year is if a national team wins a big trophy but with South Africa’s soccer national team, this seems unlikely.
What fascinates me about elections is electioneering, time after time we see political parties use the same tactics and get the same results. In South Africa the game plan is very complex but let me simplify it
Game Plan
1-Put up election posters everywhere
2-Hold rallies and elections everywhere
3-Make promises that you won't keep
4-Give out freebies
5-Push out radio and TV ads
Why this game plan doesn't “work”
1-Election posters
The cost for election posters is high, below is a quote for 50 thousand posters, this cost doesn't include the artwork, weatherproof finish, and labor to put them up. If you factor in those costs you will be looking at close to R5–R10 per poster.
This is probably the reason why only Big Parties with Big Backing can afford to put up hundreds and thousands of posters, then once the elections are over they need to be removed.
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
Arent there more cost-effective strategies to drive up impressions(eyeballs)?
The Game Plan
If I had R500K and wanted to get maximum bang for my buck and get as many impressions as possible what would I do?
Social Media.
Underestimate social media at your peril, this strategy has proven effective for the former leader of the free world and countless other leaders, it is data-driven and does not depend on passers-by.
South Africans spend 10 hours and 46 minutes on their screen per day. Globally, people average 6 hours and 58 minutes of screen time per day. ² This makes South Africans particularly susceptible to social media targeting.
Advances in social media
Whatsapp and X have free ways to drive up impressions and engagement
WhatsApp allows users and businesses to create channels where content can be posted daily and be used as a tool to reach new audiences.
Cost — Free
X allows you to create an account and create X spaces where you can engage with your party followers
Cost — Free
TikTok allows you to share content with your followers, this can be unique content or content your party agrees with or endorses
Cost — Free
Facebook is the underdog, many believe its days of influencing elections are over, but with Instagram and WhatsApp as its assets, it remains even more relevant. Mark Zuckerburg hinted that they acquired Instagram as it was stealing away screentime from Facebook, It is all about screen time and right now Facebook controls Instagram and WhatsApp which as the ultimate screentime grabbers.
Cost — Free
But impressions are impressions, if you are not communicating the right message then those impressions are as useful as an expensive car with no petrol.
So if I was a small political party that wanted to secure 1 million votes what would I do?
How do you find the right message?
You need to find the right campaign message that resonates with your potential voters, you cannot be campaigning about climate change if your voters are more concerned with getting access to jobs.
Four key issues resonate with a wide voter pool right now
1-Employment
2-Foreign Nationals
3-Corruption
4-Crime
So all social media content and messaging needs to center around these issues.
Because we are in the AI century creating this content and messaging is even easier, I put all of the above into ChatGPT and asked it to create election messaging
Now that you have your campaign messaging, you can use other AI tools to create the artwork that you can distribute on your Whatsapp channel and discuss on X spaces.
Once you have the content that resonates with your potential voters you can create viral content, create paid ads on Facebook and Google, and use social media influencers to promote it
You can even start a podcast…
That will be the best use of R500K and probably achieve 500K votes
