Double Meeting: On the 5th of February, Socialist front runner Jean-Luc Melenchon utilized the Musion3D Telepresence solution to kick off his campaign appearing in the flesh in Lyon and as a three-dimensional spectre in suburban Paris at the same time. Delivering his address in front of two live audiences in this way is a World first.
Multi Meeting: Following on from the success of Double Meeting Jean-Luc Melenchon chose again the Musion holographic Telepresence solution to address simultaneously 7 different audiences on the 18th of April, 2017. This allowed him to appear in the flesh during a public rally in Dijon and as a live streaming hologram in the five French cities of Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Montpellier, Nancy, Nantes together with the Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean.
Mr Melenchon’s iconic political broadcast as a live hologram is a World first event of its kind.
#LaForceDuPeople and #JLMHologramme started trending shortly after the events started and Melenchon’s official Twitter account announced that 60,000 people were following the events live on Facebook and Twitter.
This isn’t the first time holographic technology has been used in the political landscape. Indian Prime Minuster Narendra Modi and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan have both successfully used the technology to their advantage in the past.
The impact of the rally has assisted Jean-Luc Mélenchon to leap 19 points in one month to become the most popular candidate in the French Presidential race. With less than two weeks until the election, the representative for ‘Unsubmissive France’ is leading on 51%, according to an Elabe personality poll for the financial paper Les Échos.
Since the midterm elections in 2012, French abstention has risen to around 50% and 70% among young people. This mass of voters is one of the keys to the presidential election. JLM is targeting this demographic by appealing to the way they socially engage. JLM has engaged in an agressive social media strategy including youtube, twitter, facebook, instagram and website. The official you tube channel has a spectacular amount of views amounting up to 21,718,691 way ahead of his competition.
The impact of holograms on the audience drive social media activity and so become highly viral. Audiences at the event that witness the spectacle are naturally inclined to share their experience on their own social media which increases the impact of the rally.
“Everyone agrees that the influence of social media on French politics is growing stronger all the time. But no-one really has any clue how to measure it, or what it all means. In the absence of guidance, the best bet is to be as eye-catching as possible: perhaps by making your own hologrammatic double. “ Hugh Schofield BBC Paris.
Not only in France but worldwide its captured the interested of major press publications such as: Fortune, Reuters, BBC and Le Point.
