Results and Effectiveness

2 million live interactions on-ground, 80Million impressions on digital media assets, activating 27million on Facebook with an outreach of 15.6million on Twitter and 30million on television. A new record for voter turnout, especially youth with 8.2%Growth 50% Growth in MTV's viewerships during Jan-Jul2014Built on an intersection of pop-culture-Bollywood-Music-Humour, the movement received appreciation - with over 16Million Indian Youth participating in #MTVRockTheVote. #MTVRockTheVote received a whopping US$1million coverage on media through PR and mentioned as one of the most effective election based campaign by BBC,CNBC,Financial Express,TOI Gold Winner at Promax 2014; Sabre Awards South Asia; Appies Asia.

Creative Execution

The biggest youth connect event in India during the national election2014, highlighting the need to vote. The country’s “first” youth-targeted voter registration was brought to their doorsteps by setting up camps across 200 colleges in 10 cities enabling e-registration. Music concerts with leading artists to ensure fun-filled evening to generate higher participation at the camps. Stand-up comedy artists performed on stage, leveraging humour as an excellent drug to break the hesitation. We launched a humor series on MTV with fun takes on youth-issues, also on Cinema and social media. One comic-strip a week, funny but with serious message in leading newspapers broke the inertia. We launched a powerful music anthem with 2 leading Bollywood singers/composers, to mobilize the movement. Also, 10 leading Bollywood actors participated in the campaign to urge the youngsters to vote. A large youth-entertainment platform was set up #TwitterTownhall for live interactions with spokesperson of the parties. We launched a unique-mobile-feature called “Dial-the-Hashtag” that allowed participation in #rockthevote discussions through a missed-call, first-time in the world.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

How MTV sent the youth power to polling booths. MTV-a youth icon, has always led several social movements celebrating youth power. #MTVRocktheVote was conceptualized as a movement that aims to make youth aware of this power, and their right to be heard. India hold its elections to the parliament every 5 years. In 2014, 120 million first time voters aged between 18-25 years were eligible to vote. This was greater than the winning margin of the last election. The task at hand-to mobilize and motivate the youngsters to vote. Unique insights that shaped the idea are: Less than 15% of the youth actually voted in the last elections. Youth are hyper aware. But they simply didn't want to vote. Inertia mixed with reluctance to discuss critical issues that are affecting the youth were the root cause. Youth friendly live platform allowing them to interact with the political parties participating in elections were also missing.