Guerrilla marketing that helped students mobilize citizens now needs to get them to the polls. SNS has more resources, but according to the opinion of the marketing expert, this does not necessarily mean a great advantage
Stickers students in lockdown they are spreading massively in groups on Viber, just as they were spreading in the streets in previous months. And those pasted on banners and benches, and those in the digital world, carry the same message: "Students win".
The students' approach to marketing is described by many as "guerrilla", an unconventional advertising strategy that uses creativity, the surprise factor and relatively low costs to achieve a goal.
In this way, the students mobilized the citizens to come out protestsWill they now, when they elections announced, will this tactic be fruitful again and encourage people to vote for them?
The student campaign started a long time ago
Informally, the campaign in Serbia started months before the elections were announced.
Photo: Ognjen Stevanović/FoNetStand of students in the blockade to inform citizens
Students communicated with citizens mainly through posts on social networks. They did not rely excessively on traditional media and not at all on paid advertising. Their messages, together with them, were spread by citizens through t-shirts, badges, banners and stickers.
Part of the campaign took place through direct "door-to-door" contact, but also at stands that were set up in cities across the country.
The election campaign now sets before them a different goal than the one they had before. Until now, it was necessary to gather people around several common demands and take them to the street. Now we need to communicate the political program and convince citizens to complete the student list on election day.
Marketing expert Igor Avžner believes that financial resources and media space for a classic pre-election campaign are not available to students, but that this is not a key problem, given that the target group of the electorate of the student list is much more oriented towards social networks.
Photo: Ognjen Stevanović/FoNetStudent campaign
A locked-in electorate
"Nor will the Student List have tens of millions of euros to pay for advertising in all media with national coverage, nor is there any need for such a thing. On the other hand, all that will be spent, I assume tens and tens of millions of euros by Aleksandar Vučić, on billboards, appearances on television, coming out of the refrigerator and similar things - he was late with that. The electorate has been absolutely hammered in the last two years. The so-called 'swing voters', those who would they could vote for you, and they could also vote for someone else, no", explains Avzner.
He adds that the students' campaign in Novi Sad officially started yesterday.
"You can see by the expression on their faces how motivated the people are, how eager they are to vote. Will the students reach every village? Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But there is 'word of mouth', passing the message from person to person, from mouth to mouth. There is no better communication than that. The students have been doing it for the last year and a half. I think the only goal now is to encourage a high turnout," he says.
"Copy-paste" tactics of SNS
Avzner believes that Aleksandar Vučić's strategy will be aimed at driving the anti-regime electorate into abstinence, because high turnout is dangerous for the Serbian Progressive Party.
"Student candidates are completely irrelevant, and the regime's insistence on the Student List was only aimed at digging up some dirt, discrediting people from it," he explains.
Photo: Tanjug / Amir HamzagićAleksandar Vučić at a meeting in Užice
During the student blockades and civil protests that followed them, SNS used "copy-paste" tactics. "Serbia wins" stickers appeared in cities, graffiti of a red hand with a raised middle finger appeared on the streets, and marches were organized in front of party rallies. There were not many new, creative ideas. But that does not mean that they will not be in the official election campaign.
Photo: 021.rsBanners with the inscription "Serbia wins" in Novi Sad
"There are various tricks that Vučić will use, which are actually of an organizational type. For example, increasing the number of voters at one polling station in order to create crowds, so that people go home. I think he made a mistake there as well. The motivation against him is too high for anyone to give up the opportunity to spend that one hour more to insert his ballot, so that the next four years of his life are not wasted," concludes Avzner.
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