The Campaign

Indonesian have just experienced new era of democracy after 32 years of dictatorship. Most people never openly disclose their personal political stances. During the 2014 presidential election, Jokowi, a new hope who was running for presidency, gained high electability before the campaign started. A month before the election, the smear campaigns caused him to lose support. The floating mass was actually supporting Jokowi. Their silence was causing a rapid decrease in Jokowi's popularity and electability. We had to encourage them to proudly express their support and bring back confidence in voting for Jokowi. Strategy: depict Jokowi as a people & action-oriented leader in light-hearted and idyllic campaign materials, to enable audiences to amplify their support enthusiastically. Executed in 19 versions of comic book artworks, shareable on social media. They told truthful stories of Jokowi’s walkabouts, touched Indonesia’s diverse cultures & campaign issues. Highlighting Jokowi's strengths by leveraging his iconic 'rolled-up sleeves' and character's similarity with Tintin's: action-oriented and problem solvers. The high-res files were accessible on gulunglenganbajumu.com, which functioned as the data bank for co-creation materials. With almost zero budgets, the campaign has revived people's confidence in supporting Jokowi & generated thousands of volunteers to share, co-create and produce. Organically it went viral. Re-tweeted by >25 opinion leaders' accounts, 65K to 2.1M followers each, including Jokowi himself. In a month, www.gulunglenganbajumu.com gained >150K unique visitors, >900K hits, >52GB download traffic, >25 artworks contribution. Gained >US$250K media value, >80 coverage. Became cover story of volunteers’ phenomenon in books and movie: “The golden ink of Indonesian political campaign.” (Dewi Lestari, Authors)

The Brief

Establish the perception that political campaigning is ‘cool’ to remove cynicism towards political campaigning as the basis of willingness to participate further. Establish perception that Jokowi is a leader who brings new hopes – he supports changes, he is devoted to the people, action-oriented and cultured. Make the audiences feel proud of Jokowi because Jokowi represents the people. Generate active participation from the audience to campaign for Jokowi creatively. The KPI: To stimulate the audience to amplify the message by sharing them on social media, reproduce the campaign materials into variety of alternative mediums, and co-create materials that were campaign-able for Jokowi.

Results

With almost zero budgets, the campaign has revived people’s confidence in supporting Jokowi and generated thousands volunteers to sharing, co-creating, producing. Organically went viral. Re-tweeted by >25 opinion leaders' accounts, 65K to 2.1M followers each, including Jokowi himself. In a month, gulunglenganbajumu.com gained >150K unique visitors, >900K hits, >52GB download traffic, >25 artworks contribution. Reached >1M unique users, engages >120K users, generated >5M impressions on KenapaJokowi, a volunteers' Facebook page. >7 others volunteers’ and official campaign team's websites shared the artworks. Gained >US$ 250K media value, with >80 coverage in major mass medias. Became cover story of volunteers’ phenomenon in books and biography movie. The campaign has demonstrated of how creative/positive campaigns by the volunteers could win against smear/negative campaigns, and hailed as Indonesia's first election campaign that has empowered people to win their hopes. "It’s a proof that politics can be presented as exciting, fresh, ...clean.” (Dewi Lestari, Authors)

Execution

In 5 weeks we periodically launched 19 versions of "The Story of Jokowi's Impromptu Walkabout” on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Path, Instagram). To amplify them, we tagged or mentioned The Opinion Leaders. Later on, when Jokowi’s supporters had followed us, they organically went viral. The materials were in the form of illustrations, hand-crafted to retain originality. It steals attentions & is easy to digest, and it didn't require advanced gadgets and Internet services. It was easily applied to campaign materials: t-shirts, posters, etc. By executing in illustrations, we got the agility to adapt with the developing issues and special moments during the campaign period. For instance, the "Papua" version was posted within the same week of Jokowi’s Papua visit. It was a reminder that Jokowi was well accepted by the people in Eastern of Indonesia. While Prabowo, whose involvements in human right’s violations during his military time were still questioned, was not welcomed.

The Situation

Indonesian's have just experienced a new era of democracy after 32 years of dictatorship. Most people never openly disclosed their personal political stances. The 2014 presidential election, was a turning point in Indonesia’s history. Jokowi, a new hope who was running for presidency, gained high electability before the campaign started. One month before the election, the smear campaigns caused him losing supports. The floating masses, which positioned themselves as bystanders, were actually supporting Jokowi. Their silence causing rapid decrease in Jokowi’s visible popularity and electability. We had to encourage them to proudly express their support and bring back confidence in voting for Jokowi.

The Strategy

We targeted the OPINION LEADERS. They are active on social media, have high number of followers, have social concerns and aspire to make social change. They became the building blocks of our target audience. The Idea: Depicting Jokowi as a people & action-oriented leader in light-hearted and idyllic campaign materials to enable audiences to express their support and amplify it enthusiastically. Highlighting Jokowi's strengths by leveraging his iconic 'rolled-up sleeves' and character's similarity with Tintin's: action-oriented and problem solvers. His famous habit in 'Blusukan' (impromptu walkabouts) became our campaign theme and we created affinity through culturally preferable symbolization. On social media we shared 19 versions of the comic book artworks and illustrated the setting across Indonesia, based on culture characteristics, local wisdoms, current issues. They told truthful stories of Jokowi’s walkabouts, and touched Indonesia’s diverse cultures. The high-res files were accessible on gulunglenganbajumu.com, which also functioned as the data bank for co-creation materials.