U.S. Election: Campaign Calls are Counterproductive

STOCKHOLM, October 31, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --



Global startup, Truecaller, conducts market research and discovers surprising insights about the presidential campaign and their effect on voters. 93% of respondents do not want campaign calls at all. 60% would block all future campaign calls if they could, especially "rude robocalls."

Truecaller, a global crowdsourced phone directory, conducted an online survey asking over 1000 American voters, about the 2012 United States presidential election campaign calls.  The purpose of the survey was to conduct market research for future improvements in Truecaller's call filtering service. The research also revealed telling insights in how U.S. voters perceive campaign calls, and the results can be described as harmful to both the Romney and Obama campaigns.

When asked: "How would you like to receive information for the next election?" 93% of the respondents answered that they do not want campaign calls at all. If they had a choice, 60% of the respondents would block all future campaign calls. Instead, 54% want email and postal service to be the main communication for campaign representatives for the next election.

"With the United States 2012 elections happening in November, we wanted to measure the methods of campaign representatives and how they are perceived by Truecaller's user base in America. It was a great opportunity to take our product, which deals with identifying unknown numbers and blocking spam calls, and tie it in with the affects and methods of campaign calling to voters," says Alan Mamedi, CEO of Truecaller.

Respondents use words such as intrusive and rude when describing how they feel about campaign calls; and the data paints the same picture. When asked how they feel about campaign calls, only 1 of 10 respondents answered helpful, while 69% have negative feelings about campaign calls:

• 44 % a waste of time
• 25 % intrusive
• 19 % informative
• 12 % helpful

Perhaps most importantly, the research shows how campaign calls affect the respondents view of the candidate. 51 % of the calls from the Republican campaign had negative effect on voters. 36 % of the calls from the Democrats had negative effect. Democrats had a 22% positive effect while the Republicans had a 10% positive effect to respondents. The rest remained neutral.

The method of "Robocalls" is particularly annoying, according to the respondents. Robocalls are automated one-way communication where citizens cannot ask questions and candidate representatives cannot receive feedback. One respondent expressed it this way: "Their automated calling service is rude and never allows for my opinion to reach the desired advocates. You find that all these are a waste of my time, the survey questions have no real relevance."

According to the data, 62% of all campaign calls are automated, or so called "Robocalls". 67% of survey participants would block robocalls while 54% would block campaign calls from humans.

Short facts about the research

• 33% of users received campaign calls (337/1035)
• 67% of the respondents who received calls got between one to ten calls
• 56% of them were received on mobiles and 44 % on landlines

Over 300,000 unwanted campaign calls blocked with Truecaller

Approximately 327,672^[1] unwanted campaign calls have been blocked using Truecaller spam-call-filter in the 2012 election (up until the survey was performed October 18-26 2012).

Press kit including infographics of the survey findings, survey results and full data sheet: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7uads23fq7h77s9/DyMd6iz4oz

About Truecaller

Truecaller is a global crowdsourced phone directory app available on iPhone, Android, Symbian (S60 & S40), Blackberry, Windows Phone and on the web. Truecaller has millions of users that currently perform more than 120 million searches each month and the user base increases rapidly. Truecaller's users, from all over the world, share their phone books, including numbers to pre-paid phones, and together create a relevant global phone directory, users can easily opt-in or out at any time. Founded in Stockholm, Sweden, 2009 Truecaller is owned by the founder duo, angels and VC company Open Ocean. For more information visit http://www.truecaller.com or download Truecaller at m.truecaller.com.

[1] According to our sample size compared to our user base.

Media contact: Alan Mamedi, CEO and co-founder, +46(0)704-506-210, [email protected]

SOURCE TrueCaller