Social Media Analysis: JVP SM Campaign

Elections are just around the corner. Political buzz is heavily seen on Social Media. Through our ‘Social Media Analysis: JVP SM Campaign ‘, we will be analyzing the JVP’s Social Media campaign. 

From its inception in 1965, People’s Liberation Front AKA Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) has come a long way since its first major election in 1994. Their political beliefs might be controversial to some people, but they’ve a substantial amount of followers behind them to support and drive the party forward.

JVP identified the need of its social media presence at the last Provincial Council Election in 2014. Their first Facebook upload was on March 2nd, 2014, a video containing the Provincial Council Election JVP contestants.

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It is clearly visible that there wasn’t much of a campaign input to the JVP Facebook page during the Provincial Election 2014. The percentages of the posts were; 80%- videos of speeches done by the party front runners and 20% – low budget video advertisements.

However, this year JVP seems to be fully equipped with a tailor-made Social Media campaign. Their Social Strategy includes its a Facebook page, Google + page and the official JVP YouTube Channel.

The new slogan of the JVP is “අපේ දේශයේ හෘදසාක්ෂිය”  . The creative idea of the campaign #GenEle15 is  “ඔබේ හෘදසාක්ෂියට ඉඩදෙන්න”. The campaign  intends to call upon  every citizen   in Sri Lanka to look into their conscience and decide who they should vote. Whilst this is their intention, their slogan says they are the conscience of the country. Therefore, the JVP campaign indirectly suggests people who wish to allow their conscience to make the judgement, to vote JVP.

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There’re very few artworks or digital  campaign banners on their Facebook page. They’ve managed brand consistency throughout the done banners by adding a red strip at the bottom of the banners which contains the JVP slogan, party sign and the party name.

The campaign has a strong creative idea, but the execution or else the content plan isn’t consistent enough. The page is filled with videos of an average duration of 1-3 minutes, the page administrators or content creators should be aware that most of the Facebook population including Sri Lankans use Facebook through their mobile device on the go, due to many reasons such as; the duration, data charges and depending on the surrounding they’re, there is greater probability that most of the people might not watch a video at a given time. But a picture or a banner will get more attention and engagement rather than a video at any time if executed strategically.

The above banners are specifically designed for their General election campaign with the Creative/campaign idea ‘ඔබේ හෘදසාක්ෂියට ඉඩදෙන්න’.  When designing  an advertising  banner, the banner has a specific goal that it should deliver; most of the time it is to advertise something. But through the above banners JVP is merely stating and ‘statement’ and they’ve not justified why they’re asking us- the viewer why we should allow our conscience to make the decision. A little copy justifying the headline would bring in more value to the campaign.

The campaign is fully worded in Sinhala though some general content they share on their page contains Tamil and English wordings.

Over the past couple of weeks, it was seen that the JVP Sri Lanka Facebook page was advertised heavily. However, we analyzed their Facebook page to get a broader understanding on how their campaign is functioning.

Likes: over 47,600

Likes growth: 52.61%

Engagement rate: 36.25%

PTAT rate: 17,270 (People Talking About This)

The average likes, comments or share per post:  476

As the above data states, it is evident that the JVP has been or still Facebook advertises its page. Building a meaningful community among a Facebook page is very difficult, it should be done in a systematic and a strategic manner in order to capture the right audience.

Engagement rate is relatively low, but if they boost their posts they might be able to reach more people in their page to get the maximum fan engagement. Over the years there have been various controversial statements about the effectiveness of Facebook’s PTAT rating; however, PTAT is still considered as an effective measure of engagement by many professionals. JVP’s Facebook page has a PTAT of 17,270, this includes the total number of people who have liked, commented, shared and made an impression on the page’s posts.

As a closing note, we’ve focused on Facebook as the JVP does not have an official account on Twitter. which is a huge disadvantage for them because the political buzz and engagement is staggeringly high on Twitter. Following are some tweets about JVP on Twitter;

Tweet 01

Tweet 02


Tweet 03

Tweet 04

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