Presidential candidates woo voters with unique campaign ads

Voters pack the street to hear a campaign speech by one of the five leading presidential candidates in Busan, Monday, on the eve of the presidential election today. Yonhap

Funny, heartwarming and ‘party-signature’ messages seek to attract young voters

By Lee Kyung-min

The five leading presidential candidates are making last-ditch efforts to lure voters via social networking services (SNS) campaigning, Monday, a day ahead of the presidential election, today.

Campaign offices say frequently reaching out to voters online with consistent messages is as effective and important in cultivating loyalty from them as face-to-face interaction including handshaking and making eye contact during street campaigning.

Candidates, in particular, seek to create a well-organized story in online advertisements with a funny twist, thereby piquing the interest of young voters apathetic to “old and corrupt” politics.

Frontrunner Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has www.moon1st.com, a website that explains his campaign pledges in detail specific to regions, gender and socio-economic groups. More than 2 million have visited the site.

He also adopted a marketing tactic used for “infomercials,” in which his campaign strategists act as shopping hosts to “sell” his campaign pledges in the form of a commodity.

For example, two of Moon’s campaign workers had a segment to sell his childcare policy. The conversation between a working mom (a former news anchor) and a father first addressed the hardship of repeatedly asking their parents to babysit and finding proper and trustworthy childcare services.

Following this, the two said their “headache” will be resolved by Moon’s policy which guarantees a government-funded childcare system.

The pledge includes 100,000-won ($88.4) financial support for parents with children aged up to five; increasing the number of public childcare institutions three-fold; and raising the amount of paid leave from the current 40 percent of a monthly wage to 80 percent.

Moon, who has 503,000 likes on Facebook so far, is constantly communicating with voters about his campaign itinerary.

Justice Party candidate Sim Sang-jung has posted new footage with new messages every day on her Kakao Talk account under the name of "Haru (meaning “daily” in English) Sang-jung."

The friendly and personable image in the videos is appealing to voters who are used to seeing her rather strong, aggressive mannerisms shown in debates.

Recently, in a 64-second online ad, Sim, wearing a yellow bodysuit, walks toward the camera and says, “Well, isn’t it a great day to reform,” in a witty twist of the line, “Well isn’t it a great day to die!” from the popular movie, “Shinsegae.”

After such an eye-catching start, Sim concisely utters her campaign pledges one by one: No more unpaid wages; leave work at 5 p.m.; change the status of irregular workers (part-timers) to regular workers (full-timers). The footage has almost 180,000 hits on YouTube with nearly 3,000 likes.

A campaign poster for Ahn Cheol-soo of the People’s Party was well-received for using a phrase, “The people win,” instead of writing the party name on it.

Ahn frequently uses Facebook Live to communicate with voters, fully capitalizing on his past experience in which he rose to stardom among young voters after holding talks at universities.

Ahn also live-streamed his street campaigns _ including the “on-foot campaign” over the past few days _ using virtual reality technology in Seoul, Daejeon, Gwangju and North Jeolla Province.

Hong Joon-pyo of the far-right Liberty Korea Party is also gaining traction on Facebook with what could be considered pandering to voters in their 50s and older.

His remark: “Let’s not be ashamed. Let’s not hide anymore,” apparently targets senior citizens who have been subject to harsh "ageism" for supporting former President Park Geun-hye who was removed from office following a massive corruption scandal.

Meanwhile, Yoo Seong-min of the Bareun Party is generating storytelling content explaining his campaign pledges on Facebook.