As part of the mandate of the VIP campaign, which aims to encourage young people to vote and become active agents in their democracy, the #2X campaign was launched to amplify the political energy expressed in movements where young people showed greater involvement in digital and real world spaces.
Through an aggressive above-the-line and social media engagement plan, which used activations, TV, radio, outdoor media along with digital (social media, blogs, Whatsapp and USSD) as resources, #2X ensured that youth issues were highlighted as an integral part of political discourse throughout the build-up to, during and after the elections.
#2X is an online tool that aggregates commentary from different social media platforms onto a single interface, giving users a visual representation of what young people were talking about across the country. By using the hashtag #2X to articulate a given issue, any young person could mobilise a community around an issue to generate the political pressure needed to get a response from the relevant political stakeholders and shift the South Africa’s political agenda and represent themselves.
The campaign which ran from April to August 2016, aimed to reinforce the vote and make democracy, specifically voting during the local government elections, more meaningful to young people, was an outstanding success. The campaign was featured in a number of media platforms from eNCA, Times Live and numerous radio stations across the country. It also garnered more than 10 million digital impressions and engagements throughout the campaign.