Use emotional political marketing to get fence sitters’ vote for BN, Zahid tells Puteri Umno

SHAH ALAM - Umno President Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi has asked Puteri Umno to target fence sitters and lure them through 'emotional political marketing' to entice them to vote for Barisan Nasional in the upcoming general election.

This comes after PKR's number two Rafizi Ramli launched “Ayuh Malaysia” campaign a few months ago to woo fence sitters.

Zahid during a speech at Barisan Nasional (BN)’s Puteri convention said the existence of Puteri gave the party an excellent operational strategy for Umno's workforce and future leadership.

"This will not only benefit the party today but is more of a training ground for the party's workforce and future leadership.

"Puteri is very important to help Umno in reaching out to young women out there. The party needs to embrace them not only today but everyday," he said.

In his speech, Zahid also requested for the women’s wing to step up its effort to get more support among peers although the current party messaging was hard to get through to the public due to the 'communication noise' in social media.

"In an age where social media has a huge influence in shaping people's thoughts and opinions, we know that party's message are difficult to penetrate through the communication noise, where the platform is too dense with many different messages.

"The communication noise made the party's messaging not reach our targeted audience, making our efforts ineffective.

"This can also change the perception of the message or can even create the opposite effect," he said.

Commenting further, Zahid stressed Puteri Umno to take note of the number of young voters especially women in Malaysia which could be an effective way to approach the young women voters.

Based on the Department of Statistic Malaysia, Zahid said there were currently 75.1 per cent of the country’s population categorised as urban and 24.9 per cent as rural.

"Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya both have 100 per cent urban population, while three other states, Selangor, Penang and Melaka urban population exceeds 90 per cent, and only one state has a rural population of more than 50 per cent which is Kelantan.

"Puteri Umno has to pay attention to this statistic as their target audience are young women. It is a huge number which we cannot ignore," he said.