How AAP used memes and Bollywood to woo first-time voters in Delhi

• AAP used famous dialogues from Main Hoon Na and Baazigar and turned them into memes to talk about its achievements.
• The idea was to attract first-time voters in Delhi.
• Delhi goes to polls on February 8.

Political campaigns in India are more often than not all about mudslinging, blame games and gloating. But in the times of social media, campaigns are not complete without memes which often lead to fun banter, while also targeting other political parties creatively.

The campaigning for the Delhi legislative elections have come to an end but throughout the campaign, Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) social media communications caught everyone’s attention. It came as a fresh surprise as serious political parties spoke through memes.

But there was a reason why AAP went for these meme-worthy stories. “We used to report from our press conferences or talk about our achievements. But this time we thought about the millennial generation – the first-time voters and how can we attract them,” said Abhijeet Dipke, the 23-year old guy behind AAP’s memes on Twitter.


Ankit Lal, AAP’s social media strategist, told ET that the theme of the messaging is 'vote on the work our government has done in Delhi'.

So, AAP turned to Main Hoon Na and Baazigar – using famous dialogues of the movies in memes to talk about its achievements. “Youngsters started noticing our work because of all these references. They knew we were talking about something different,” said Dipke.

One of AAP’s tweets that went viral was a meme from Baazigar, which included a dig at BJP’s Manoj Tiwari.


The tweet got a response from BJP and Congress who put out their own versions of the meme.

But while the memes might be funny, Dipke says there’s a lot of hard work that went behind them.

“For the last four months, we have concentrated on putting together all our achievements, the report cards, and work done in the last five years. Then we jotted out our key highlights. After that we thought – how do we communicate them in the best way. The memes were just a funny way to talk about the truth,” he said.

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