Persuasion gets a scientific twist in the new normal world

“Use of insights and data driven communication is the key to creating persuasive communication that moves the needle of opinion and gets people to act,” according to Ashwani Singla, a reputation management strategist and Founding Managing Partner of Astrum. Singla was addressing the students of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai at their annual media conference.

Singla, who was the campaign strategist of Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) highly successful campaign for the 2014 General Elections, recently founded Astrum, touted as the country’s first science-based specialist reputation management advisory.

Speaking at the event, Singla affirmed, “Data driven reputation management is the future.” He added, “Understanding what makes people tick is as important as the ways to reach them. Blending science with creativity helps shape the story that engages and persuades.”

Citing the example from the BJP’s election campaign strategy for 2014, Singla stressed on the key elements that drove the highly successful campaign. Elaborating these steps, he opined that the first step was to identify the ‘persuadable’ from amongst a large and diverse set of voters, followed by an understanding of their ‘motivation drivers’ that shaped the ‘relevant and believable storyline’ which was delivered through ‘holistic engagement platforms’.

To unearth the insights needed to devise the strategy, Singla and his team conducted the largest every voter polling exercises covering over 3,000,000 voters in over 350 Lok Sabha seats and undertook booth level polling data analytics of the constituencies polled over two Lok Sabha elections.