The Brief

Objective: Get Youth of India to #RockTheVote in the National Election. Drive youth participation through interactive debates with political spokespersons and real-time engagement. Challenge: Mobile is a powerful media of personal communication. But, Smart phone form less than 30% of the market. Continuous internet connectivity is imperative for real-time engagement. Less than 10% have high-speed connectivity. Therefore, need to design a offline solution for real-time social interaction Big Idea: MTV India was the first ever in the world to launch “Dial the Hashtag” with Twitter & ZipDial, making #RockTheVote content accessible to 100% of users even if they had a feature-phone, have no mobile data connectivity, and have never used Twitter before. How it Works: On air on MTV, youth prompted to "Dial the Hashtag" by simply giving a missed call to 011-30494949. No data service needed. All free of cost! Then the user started receiving tweets by SMS from @MTVIndia on #RockTheVote. The new Twitter-ZipDial followers of @MTVIndia could then click through to see more rich media content (when they come online) and refer their friends to join the conversation and Follow the #RockTheVote through a simple ZipDial Friend Referrals experience that works on 100% of phones.

Mobile is the best personal communication device and social-media the perfect engagement platform. Therefore, we needed to engage youth through mobile and social media, combining both for a real-time interaction. However, the challenges: In India, smart phones have seen a rapid growth, but, still penetration is below 30% of the market. More than 70% of the market lack superior internet access features and social media apps. Further, less than 10% access a high-speed data-services on mobile. Therefore, rich media content streaming is always a challenge. In addition, it was imperative to keep the cost of engagement minimal, to ensure higher participation. MTV in association with ZipDial activate the "Dial the Hashtag" technology the first time across the world for Twitter. We used the sms-based communication service that allowed the user to dial the hashtag #RockTheVote on Twitter and participate in the conversations. This could reach all mobile phone users (including non-smartphone) through just sms service. During TwitterTownhall, #rockthevote debates between political parties allowed even offline users to interact with politicians and policy makers in real-time; though they did not connect to social-media. All this activated through a missed call mechanic, with no cost to user. Technology backend was managed end-to-end by ZipDial, who worked closed with Twitter technology HQ and MTV to develop "Dial the Hastag"

Elections in India received record-breaking participation by the youth in 2014. For the first time, TwitterTownhall presented a youth-friendly and non-partisan interactive platform for youth to connect with political parties/spokesperson and vice-versa. The live interactions on Twitter were further amplified by "Dial the Hashtag" to reach offline listeners. • TwitterTownhall reached 15.6 Mn social interactions with the youth and was participated by the then ruling party (Congress) and the challenger party (BJP) MTV India successfully rallied Youth voters and brought them into the #RockTheVote conversation way beyond the reach of traditional online social media. • Only 16.7% of the users have some kind of internet access on their phone and less than 27% of users already have either a Facebook/Twitter account. Thus, Dial The Hashtag reached out to the masses, as it did not need internet connectivity. • Geographic reach was far and wide with 66.5% of users coming from outside of Metros • Users were highly engaged with 79% active through the entire elections campaign season. • 15% increase in reach was achieved through ZipDial Friend Referrals, meaning that even feature phone users created a viral impact to grow the #RockTheVote campaign.