After its massive advertising campaign on television, newspapers, radio, and outdoor, the Arvind Kejriwal Government tried to reach out to Delhiites through their mobile phones to highlight the freebies his administration had offered during the past one year.
Of about three crore mobile connections in Delhi, the AAP Government had decided to reach out to those 1.38 crore users who had not subscribed to “Do Not Disturb” service.
This is being done through interactive voice response (IVR) which is an automated telephony system that interacts with callers, gathers information and routes calls to the appropriate recipient.
The AAP Government made a 1.45-minute audio clip of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal highlighting his Government’s achievements pertaining to free medicine and medical tests to the Government hospitals, waiving of outstanding water bills, compensation to damaged crops to farmers.
Top sources said that this was the first occasion when a Government in the country has tried to reach out maximum number of people through mobile users. Earlier, political parties used IVR to reach out to maximum number of people during elections. “This is the cheapest mode to publicise the Government achievements,” said the sources.
According to sources, of the 40 lakh mobile users which a Mumbai-based company tried to reach out on Holi festival, it succeeded to contact about 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh mobile users. Source said that half of the mobile subscribers disconnected their phones midway without listening to the Chief Minister’s entire recorded message.
It is learnt that for each per second call, the Government would be paying 0.5 paise.
Reports suggest that the Government was first keen to reach out to all the mobile users all across the country. “But on advice of some officers, it later decided to limit its mobile campaign only to the national Capital.”
The Government had recently launched an aggressive advertising campaign on news and entertainment channels, newspapers and magazines, FM stations and through hoardings to highlight the achievements it had made in the past one year.
The Government had initially earmarked Rs526 crore for the adversiting campaigns for the current fiscal. later on, the Government had cut down its advertising fund. According to sources, the department of information and publicity has surrendered Rs430 crore as it was unable to spend the entire amount of publicity. The government had spent only Rs 80 crore till March in its publicity despite the fact that the AAP Government’s advertising campaign was not limited to Delhi alone.
“It had launched an aggressive advertising campaign across the states in the country. The Government even earned a wrath of opposition parties for issuing a full page advertisement on the recent reservation row of the Jat community in the neighbouring Haryana,” said the sources.
Congress leader Chattar Singh are of the view that the Government was extending its advertising campaigns in other states as it wanted to spred its wings outside Delhi as well.