OBJECTIVE:
The 2014 presidential election, a turning point in Indonesia's history. Jokowi, a new hope, 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 mass, which positioned themselves as bystanders, was actually supporting Jokowi. Their silence causing rapid decrease in Jokowi's visible popularity and electability. We had to encourage them to proudly express their supports and brought back confidence in voting for Jokowi.
STRATEGY:
Depicting Jokowi as people oriented leader in light-hearted and idyllic campaign materials, to enable audiences expressing their supports 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.
We created a meme series of comic book covers that were shareable on social media. They told truthful stories of Jokowi's walkabouts, touched Indonesia's diverse cultures & current campaign issues. The high-res and big size files were accessible on gulunglenganbajumu.com, which also functioned as the data bank for co-creation materials.
OUTCOME:
With almost zero budgets, the campaign has revived people's confidence in supporting Jokowi & generated thousands of volunteers to sharing, co-creating, producing.
Organically went viral. Re-tweeted by >25 opinion leaders' accounts, 65K to 2.1M followers each, included Jokowi himself.
In a month, gained >150,000 unique visitors, >900,000 hits, >52GB download traffic, >25 artworks contribution.Excluded >7 other volunteers' sites that also displayed our artworks.
Gained >US$ 250.000 media value with >80 coverage, locally & globally, including cover stories.
Indonesian have just experience new era of democracy after 32 years of dictatorship. Most people never openly disclose their personal political stances; tend to state themselves as neutral, regardless their personal belief.
In 2014 presidential election, the populations were flooded with smear campaigns to discredit Jokowi. It had created a significant impact. Indonesians are sensitive towards ethnicity and religion issues, and Jokowi's popularity decreased significantly.
The urgency is to have a campaign material that enabled Jokowi's supporters, who tend to be silent, to openly express their political stance.
We invited people not only to vote, but also to actively support Jokowi. We created a logo based on Jokowi's habit of rolling-up his sleeves. Our tagline was: "Roll-up your sleeves, support Jokowi-JK".
His famous habit in 'Blusukan' (impromptu walkabouts) became our campaign theme as a 'reason to believe' of an action-oriented character. We also highlighted Jokowi's strengths by leveraging his character's similarity with Tintin's.
We created affinity through culturally preferable symbolization. We created 19 memes of comic book covers: "Kisah Blusukan Jokowi" (The Story of Jokowi's Impromptu Walkabout) and illustrated the setting covering various places across Indonesia, based on culture characteristics and landmarks, in accordance with the local wisdoms and prides.
Overall we captured Jokowi's love for diversity, arts & culture, and also to common people. By executing the campaign in illustrations, we got the agility to keep up with current issues.
For instance, "Papua" version was posted right after Jokowi's Papua visit, to emphasize that he was the only candidate who was well accepted by Eastern Indonesia people.
The high-res and big size files were accessible on gulunglenganbajumu.com, which also functioned as the data bank for co-creation materials.
Result:
With almost zero budgets, the meme campaign has revived people's confidence in supporting Jokowi and generated new behaviors in doing political campaign in Indonesia: Sharing, co-creating, producing.
Organically went viral. Re-tweeted by >25 opinion leaders' accounts, 65K to 2.1M followers each, included Jokowi himself.
Generating thousands of volunteers to produce as campaign materials and contribute with artworks. Gulunglenganbajumu.com gained >150.000 unique visitors, >900.000 hits, >52GB download traffic, >25 artworks contribution in one month.
On facebook.com/kenapajokowi our artworks reached >450,000 people and gained >26,000 interactivity in one month. The artworks could also be downloaded on at least 7 other volunteers' websites: jkw4p.com, kenapajokowi.com, jokowiday.com, etc. We couldn't count the results on other websites or pages that continuously displayed and shared our artworks, including of the political party and official campaign team.
The campaign gained >US$ 250.000 media value with >80 media coverage including cover stories, locally and globally.
Jokowi won the election with the supports of the volunteers. Indonesia political history has noted our campaign as an icon that 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 practice democracy in a creative and peaceful atmosphere.
Tempo Magazine asked us to draw for their magazine covers with our illustration style, for The Volunteers Special Edition: "Winning, The Volunteers Way." We also became their resources for their cover story, "The president's underground troops."
Some books that covered the story of volunteers' phenomenon and creative campaign were published, covering us as resources and contributors. We were asked to write books about the creative process of the campaign. "Creativity in Democracy: The Story of Jokowi's Impromptu Walkabout" and "Freedom Art", a posters book of our campaign artworks.
Some testimonials in the books are saying: "This campaign has built up our optimism as the volunteers." (Abdee Negara / Guitarist)."The campaign has successfully turned the tensions of election to a joyful festival of democracy." (Goenawan Mohamad / Journalist). "The golden ink of Indonesian political campaign. It's a proof that politic can be presented as exciting, fresh, and clean." (Dewi Lestari / Authors).
Our artworks were also shown in a biographical motion picture "Jokowi adalah Kita" (Jokowi is Us). In its trailer, we could see Jokowi and his family's conversations regarding some volunteers who translated his character as Tintin.
This campaign won many Indonesia advertising awards: granted us as Indonesia's Top 5 Agency of The Year, Digital Agency of The Year, and Media Agency of the year. Also granted us Agency of The Year in the independent agency festival.
The perks of being in the digital era, a series of memes has successfully empowered people. This campaign has revived people's confidence in Jokowi 's presidency and became the first Indonesia election campaign that enabled people's voice to win their own hopes.
