Before I switched my work focus to the fields of Data, Information Technology and Information Systems, and almost fifteen years ago, I was employed as a journalist and then as an editor. I worked for two newspapers in Sarajevo, and both of them were daily newspapers at national level: „Jutarnje Novine“ focusing on general public, and „Poslovne Novine“ focusing on the business. In the first one I was a journalist that covers topics, such as economics and politics, and later on I was appointed as editor for „PC“ section. In „Poslovne Novine“ I was appointed as an editor from the beginning, covering the half of the newspaper, including sections such as International Business, Information Technology and similar. Despite the fact that I spent last 14 years in IT and IS, my interests for media, social and political issues never dropped. Maybe, because of the fact that the huge amount of the time in last 14 years I spent enabling IT/IS services and products for media organizations.
Before couple of years, during my work in Business Intelligence field, there was a huge debate in national media about the way the political parties communicate their content to the potential voters, and the effect that social media have. Because I worked in the field where data were used to analyse, predict and to some extent even prescript consumer behaviour by „saying“ customers what they need to buy, I was convinced that the similar approach can be used for the purpose of political campaign. My actual idea was to develop a „tool“ that would support identification of the best content and the optimal way for delivering that content to the potential voters. In other words, a tool to indirectly tell the voters for whom to vote by identifying the best way for political parties to deliver their content.
I was quite convinced that by using relevant previous research, industry knowledge, social media tools and current data trends, I could develop something like that. So, in my spare time that I had at disposal, I read and to researched huge amount of existing texts and articles about political campaigns and the way they have been run. I also analysed the way the winners from various countries run their political campaigns – with the focus on their content. I complemented that knowledge with my industry knowledge and experience. I also analysed current data trends that could be relevant, and possibilities given by social media. That all took decent amount of spare time in last five years.
Having all that, I developed a clear strategy that enables and supports the identification and definition of the most optimal content for respective political campaign, the way it should be delivered, and its life cycle. In ideal circumstances, every political party should have a clear vision of the „social and political state“ it wants to achieve if selected. So, the main idea behind my strategy is to identify the optimal way to communicate that vision in understandable and acceptable way for voters.
So, how does strategy looks like? The strategy is separated into the four blocks where each of them reflects cluster of similar activities: Define, Apply, Validate, and Act. Based on the firs letters of each step, I named the strategy as DAVA for easier communication.
1. Define
The scope of the first and the most important DAVA step is to Define – actually to define numerous aspects. Those definitions should identify the appropriate content, to sharpen it to the maximum, and to make it understandable for the voters. They should also provide information about the optimal way of the content delivery.
Most of the political campaign leaders or organizers never define a solid content-focused strategy for their election campaign. They just go with the flow. Somebody important or influential in respective political organization has an idea for the political campaign advert and they just go with it. Today, in the times where we are able to analyse huge amount of data in just few seconds, and in the times of social media and current political awareness of the people, such approach is not sufficient. Most people are not interested into accepting the ideas of politicians, but want that politicians tackle the actual issues voters are concerned with. That is probably one of the reasons why conventional parties in Europe lost their ground. In their political campaigns, they are persistent to say what they think that needs to be said, and not what actual voters want to hear. Even the fact they could be on the same side as voters, they lose them just because they communicate in the way that is not understandable and recheable for the potential voters.
Obviously, there is no way to reach each single potential voter with just one advert. The reasons are simple, we don’t share same interests, we are not concerned with the same issues, and we don’t have same understanding. Despite this fact, from my experience, most of the campaign leaders never asked the simple questions, such as „What we want to achieve?“, „How can we achieve that?“, „“How can we reach the most potential voters?“, „Which is the biggest group of the people that we aim on?“, „What are their attributes?“, etc. Those questions are crucial to define appropriate advert content or slogan and to effectivelly communicate with the potential voters.
1.1. Defining „aimed group“
To avoid such situations, as the first step in one political campaign DAVA recommends definition of the most relevant group of potential voters (example: workers, pensions, students) and identification of group attributes as well (for example: age, income, education, status). For the easier communication we will call such group as the „aimed group“. There are many industry-based ways to identify group attributes based on various statistical and data analysis; however, for the sake of not losing the focus of article, I’ll not tackle them here.
1.2. Defining relevant content aspects
As the next move, DAVA recommends to define three following content aspects that are relevant for potential voters:
- Identification of the „silent topics“ that have huge emotional impact on the members of the „aimed group“. Under the term „silent topics“ DAVA understands those topics about which are the members of the „aimed group“ afraid to speak publicly, but have deep emotional impact on them. For example, fear from speaking about the potential mobbing in the company not to lose the job;
- Identification of the topics on which the members of the „aimed group“ actively react;
- Identification of the subjects that cause attention of the „aimed group“ members;
This is the best done with the help of Data Analysis or Data Science that provide numerous methods and ways to determine the identification of appropriate trends. For example, one of the ways to identify the topics on which the most people of one society actively react is to analyse and identify the most commented articles in relevant news portals.
1.3. Defining „spontaneous movement“
The most of the people are willing to actively promote ideas or movements they see as their own. Thus, the next step in DAVA is to define the Support for initiating and promotion of „spontaneous movement“ around your topic. This step has an aim to strength the domination over the „aimed group“. The movement needs one strong personification – a leader. The movement needs a „natural“ enemy, somebody on the other side – not necessary direct, but perceptible. The movement as well needs the initial trigger – the birth time of the movement.
1.4. Define „initial advertising“
This step has an aim to define where and how to deliver initial advertising. For example, you define you want to deliver your initial advertising on a Facebook page of the main party candidate in the form of text and picture.
1.5. Define the „content of initial advertising“
This is very important step and is based on the work you done in previous steps. What you do in this step is defining or better said preparing your advertising slogan – text and picture of the future post. Defined slogan should incorporate „silent topics“ that have huge emotional impact on the members of the „aimed group“. It also should integrate the topics on which the members of the „aimed group“ actively react and subjects that cause their attention.
1.6. Defining the „boost concept“
In this step, you define a group of the people that would support boosting of initial advertising, and the persons that are responsible for deleting and managing possibly inappropriate comments on social networks.
The boost concept completes the whole Define block of DAVA.
2. Apply
So, by defining the „boost concept“ the most of the job recommended by DAVA strategy would be done. Next block in DAVA strategy is to Apply. That means:
- to post defined content on the profile/page of appropriate election candidate or leader;
- informing and requiring actions from people from the boost groups;
- activating initial budget to promote the advert outside the common network;
- watching over to immediately react in the case of inappropriate comments;
3. Validate
The success of the previously published post, defines its future. Thus, we came to DAVA block that is called Validate. At this step, you define what do you consider as successful post. You actually set the border. If the post preformed below the border, than you simple ignore it and go to the DAVA section 1.1. to identify other focus group, or other content that might be suitable. If post preformed above the border, you use that content to communicate it through the other channels, such as billboards, TV, newspapers, prospects, etc.
4. Act
In the case that slogan and focused topic had noticeable effect on the potential voters through all its channels (for example, huge media interest or coverage, engagement of the population), the situation should be used the reach and enlarge the feeling of the „spontaneous movement“. This includes supporting and organizing local political branches to further promote and discuss the topics with local population. As DAVA is actually seen as never ending improving process, this is actually only the last step in its first loop.
I actually tested the effects of the Define block from section 1.1. to the section 1.5.. I made two personal Facebook pages with same attributes, however, each with different names. None of those pages had a single person that previously liked or followed them. For both Facebook pages the same illustration was used: a worker on the building site, with a text message on the left right corner. First text message was a slogan without applying DAVA steps from section 1.1. to the 1.5.; the second used recommendation from mentioned sections. Both posts were advertised for five days on different Facebook pages I mentioned earlier, for same amount of money, and having the very same target groups. After five days, I compared results. The post which content applied DAVA recommendations had 7 times more likes, was shared 23 times more, had five times more comments, and five times more views.
Note: Because of the lack of appropriate resources, I couldn’t extend my tests to include steps after and including „boost concepts“ – section 1.6 and after.
This article provides only overview of the DAVA and doesn’t tackle every single detail or practical step that the strategy includes. For additional information or clarifications, please do not hesitat to contact me directly.