February 16, 2008	Saturday	Safar 08, 1429

LAHORE, Feb 15: This time cable channels and short multimedia messages (SMS) are also being used as election campaign tools, with almost all parties and independent candidates taking advantage of this direct-to-home campaign.

Most of the cable operators, especially smaller ones, have spared one channel, which is otherwise used for airing Indian movies, for such advertisement. These channels are now airing specially made advertisements, speeches and messages.

The Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) was the first to use SMS for campaign, but, of late, other parties are using it too.

“It is time to make money without any additional investment,” says Muhammad Adrees, a cable operator from Saddar. The candidates of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), PML-N and PML-Q spend a hefty amount for their advertisement. The payment is being made per minute basis and most of the advertisements stretch to 20 minutes each. Since these advertisements are aired in the intervals of new Indian movies, their viewer-ship is huge, especially women.

“All candidates know that women are easy to mold as their political attitudes are not as firm as most of the men,” says Mian Mehmood, an advertiser. The advertiser and the candidates know the importance of women’s votes, and the most effective way to influence them is cable network. Of 80 odd channels being aired on the cable, Indian movie and Star Plus channels are the two most-viewed channels. Both have a huge untapped women viewer-ship, especially housewives. Most of the advertisements being aired on these channels are made for women, playing on feminine emotions-eastern and religious, he says.

The SMS service is not as much effective and widespread as the cable TV network because of record problem, says another advertiser Irfan Qureshi. Some candidates claim to have got access to mobiles network data of certain cellular service providers and sending SMS to all those with home address falling in their constituencies. They claim to have got data from franchisees, which not are quite updated and most of the promotional SMS do not reach their intended target. So, SMS promotion has its limits as far as candidate specific-canvassing is concerned. But it certainly helps party promotion. There are reports of Mian Nawaz Sharif’s message circulating on voice SMS, but it was party benefit rather than any individual, he said.

The election campaign’s dependence on cable and mobile technology has increased many times because of security situation in the country and ban on public meeting, says Muhammad Ayaz, a cable operator from Cantt. Candidates could have ignored both sources of campaign, but because of security restrictions, candidates and parties have turned to both these sources.