Get India to Vote (2024)
Times of India | Unpublished
Brief
Times of India, the country’s leading English newspaper partnered with the Election Commission of India and released an open-source brief to creatives across the country. The task was simple: India, the world’s largest democracy is having its eighteenth general election. They wanted print ad that built urgency to drive the masses to action on the voting day and make their contribution to the nation-building process.
Strategy
1 out of 3 Indians did not vote in the last election. Of the 50 constituencies with the lowest turnouts, seventeen were in major cities, reflecting an unfortunate trend of urban apathy. We identified that the job to be done was to get urban Indians of voting age who are apathetic towards their civic duties to cast their vote by reminding them that democracy is a modern, Indian privilege.
Idea
A country that doesn’t vote is as good as a country that cannot vote.
We used autocratic and dictatorial regimens as boogeymen to remind Indians that democracy is a privilege that we shouldn’t be taking for granted. We deploy it in 3 steps to trigger the 3 actions you need to take before voting.
Intervention A
Register yourself as a
voter on the electoral roll.
Intervention B
Know your polling booth
and voting day.
Intervention C
Cast your vote at your
polling booth tomorrow.
We made the front page ad unignorable through a simple masthead innovation to change the name of the country. Furthermore, we used actual propaganda posters from these countries as the canvas and then superimposed the Indian flag to create a sense of unease. Viewers were forced to confront a hypothetical future where India's democratic voice might be threatened.
These print ads earned us a spot in the coveted Top 10 shortlist, from 300+ entries across the country.