THE promise of positive change has worked like a charm in political campaigning. American president Barack Obama?s rallying cry ?Yes we can? was born during economic upheaval and was amplified through the power of new media. Mobilising the masses and especially, online masses with messages tailored to their expressed interests, is how Obama swayed the votes. India is one of the largest democracies, but political advertising is yet to assume the hues and contours of what happens globally. Political campaigns in India are known to be carelessly done, and disastrously put together. There are no rallying cries. But not this year. The Lok Sabha elections 2014 is far more combative and inflammatory with three dynamic and mercurial personalities?Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and Arvind Kejriwal leading from the front, for the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) respectively. Each predicting and projecting positive change. As Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director of Madison Media says, ?There is increasing realisation amongst political parties that good advertising can indeed help them win an election. And as the stakes are indeed very high for them, they will try their best to avail every opportunity to convince the electorate that they are best suited to rule the country. Across any and all platforms.?
Bold Strokes
In the World Twenty20 tournament, India got lucky and scored a seven-wicket victory over Pakistan. The match on March 21 coincided with an animated ad spot for one of India?s leading political parties, the BJP, which was innocuously done and posted bang in the middle of a nail-biting match. The ad went this way: A batsman is just about to hit a six, when the umpire protests and says ?Hamari maange puri karo? (Meet our demands). He is joined by a host of other interesting characters who show up and clamour for their demands to be met, which includes kids who don?t want to do their homework. The voice-over goes: ?No time wasting yaar. Ab ki baar Modi sarkar.? (This time it is Modi’s government). While this one is irreverent and in a lighter vein, the tone is absolutely sombre for some of the BJP’s full-page print ads. In a top English daily runs a prominent saffron coloured front page advert with a giant mug shot of Modi. The body copy reads as follows: ?It?s time we controlled rising prices. It?s time we controlled corruption as a way of life. It?s time we created real jobs and growth. It?s time for effective and decisive leadership. It?s time to make a difference.? The tagline goes: ?Time for change. Time for Modi?. Similarly, in a 30-second spot on television, a woman is shown talking about the steep prices and the falling economy and urging people to vote for change, which is the Modi government.
The Congress party has tried out a myriad mix of ad messages. It delivers the pretty picture with its Bharat ke mazboot haath (India’s strong hand) ad campaign which shows children going to schools, strong buildings being created, labourers getting a better life and craftsmen thriving and protected. It also has visuals of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi speaking to the masses. ?Har haath shakti. Har haath tarakki? (strength in every hand, progress for every hand) goes the baseline. The third phase of the Bharat Nirman ad campaign was rolled out earlier this year which talks about the collaborative role of the government and the people in nation building. In one ad, an army officer speaks on a mobile phone to his family, and refers to the policy that has made mobile telephony affordable for every Indian.
A spot on healthcare speaks about hospital infrastructure created by the government but also medical services provided by the people that make the hospital functional. The concept is underlined by the voice-over that says ?Akele toh yeh desh bana nahin? (the nation did not get built on its own). In January this year, the Congress party revealed its ?Kattar soch nahin, yuva josh? (It’s not about extreme views, but about youth power) campaign in which it featured youth representative Hasiba Amin. ?On one hand, the Congress?s strategy is combative and on the other hand, it goes for the safe, report card approach which is ?Look at me. Look at what I?ve done’. There is great dissonance in their communication,? says an advertising chief involved with the political campaigning for a rival party. He declined to be named.
The Robin Hood of Indian politics, the Aam Aadmi Party, is absent on mainstream media but is using unconventional ways including street plays and youth internships to woo voters. Apart from the traditional forms like door-to-door campaigns, the party is also holding Nukkad Charchas (roadside meetings) and Mohalla Sabhas (neighbourhood gatherings). The party has reached out to the cable operators who are unsatisfied with the government?s mandatory shift to digitally addressable systems. Ad spends by political parties are expected to touch R20 billion this year.
Battalion of executives
The Congress party has opted for many of the same people who were behind its advertising campaign for the 2009 elections, picking Dentsu and Taproot. Genesis Barstellor is advising the party on its public relations while Webchutney is reported to be in charge of its digital mandate.
On the other hand, the BJP is said to have roped in talent from overseas for its campaign and may have signed up three big names from the advertising business in India?Prasoon Joshi, chief executive and chief creative officer of McCann Worldgroup India, Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director, South Asia – Ogilvy & Mather and Madison chairman and managing director Sam Balsara. Santosh Padhi, co-founder and chief creative officer of Taproot India says that this time around, the political campaigns of various parties are sharply targeted and in small bursts, rather than a solo long-running campaign on television. A lot of the communication is going viral, and the combat is on social and new media platforms. ?The nature of the communication is adversarial. It involves taking swipes at the competition. This is not how political advertising used to be done in India,? he notes.
Lintas veteran and playwright Alyque Padamsee says that advertising has changed a good deal in the past five years. ?Five years back, the idea of political advertising was to run a jeep in the fields with the loudspeakers on in full blast,? he says. Indian politics today is far more interesting because it sees the rise of three mercurial personalities — each depicting a different style and manner of expression. ?The Congress advertising shows Rahul Gandhi in deep contemplation ? remarkably like Hamlet musing over ?to be or not to be?. Modi comes across as aggressive and dictatorial; he rules with a clenched fist and you could expect a Hitler-like salute from him. His demeanor is more like Macbeth. And of course, Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party comes across as Henry the Fifth,? he says. The Congress campaigning, in his view, is lackadaisical and flawed. The images of Rahul Gandhi in deep introspection fail to inspire, he says. The BJP campaign on the other hand comes with power and is packed with punch. ?There is no doubt that Modi has got help from some agency or ad professional, who has had experience with political campaigning overseas. It doesn?t look like Modi aspires to be prime minister. He wants to be president. Just as Clinton was and Obama is,? says Padamsee.
But the party that has truly upset everyone?s apple-cart is the AAP, asserts Padamsee. ?The visual cues are exceptional. One is the cap that reflects nationalist sentiment and pride, which Arvind Kejriwal inherited from Anna Hazare. And the second is the broom, which is symbolic of cleaning up corruption. While the anti-corruption rhetoric is being used by both the AAP and the BJP, it looks a lot more convincing when it comes from the former,? Padamsee remarks.
Prahlad Kakar, ad film maker, Genesis Films says that Narendra Modi has definitely stolen a march over the competition by engaging in tactical warfare. ?Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyer called him a tea vendor or Chai wallah. He used it as a political weapon to launch into the ?Chai pe charcha? campaign and targeted tea vendors across India. He caught the imagination of the people. Tea, in fact, is our national drink. Most Indians drink tea and that is true, even of the south. As a campaign idea, it was brilliantly executed,? says Kakar. The Chai pe charcha campaign had Modi visiting a tea stall and interacting with the people. The programme was relayed at 1,000 tea stall locations identified by the BJP in 300 cities across the country. As per Kakar, if you develop a conventional ad campaign and run it on mainstream media, you are stuck with it. But when you develop campaigns in response to people or situations, the campaign has an amplified impact.
?Young people of India form 30% of the electorate. They are irreverent, largely anti-establishment and prone to asking questions. When the BJP talks about job creation, they are talking to this highly volatile section of the population. Rahul Gandhi has also tried to engage this target group with his ?Yuva Josh? ideology which to my mind was absolutely the right thing to do. But both these parties come with their limitations,? says Kakar. ?While Rahul Gandhi comes across as credible, there is a huge millstone around his neck, which is the corruption ridden tenure of the UPA government. In the BJP?s case, it is the communal RSS that is the bogey. Many of the RSS political leaders are perceived as ?fringe lunatics?. Women fear for their rights and safety.?
Mobilising the masses
KV Sridhar, chief creative officer of Leo Burnett India subcontinent, says that there will be 12 crore new voters this year, which is why most political parties are looking to bridge the gap with the youth. ?AAP has designed its campaign around word-of mouth and social media alone. They don?t have huge budgets for mass media. They are using a lot of online communication, and on-ground communication. The volunteers who sign up with them give them positive word-of-mouth. Their anti-corruption rhetoric has caught the imagination of the people,? he says. Sridhar says that a big plus for the party is that people are volunteering to do their communication. ?The most evolved form of communication is people talking to people and that?s how ideas go viral. I?ve not even seen any big corporation or political party manage to engage people with this kind of passion and volatility.?
Sridhar says that he is personally disappointed with the Congress?s communication campaigns, which send out mixed signals. ?As far as strategy is concerned, things are an absolute mess. Their ?Mein nahin hum? campaign backfired because it was similar to what Modi had adopted in the past. Using the government machinery, they have tried to project their achievements and their reign in a positive light, but the ads have proven to be unconvincing. Their public relations campaign backfired ? the Rahul Gandhi interview with Arnab Goswami. At least with the BJP, there is one leader?s face that is constant in all their campaigns. They have projected their leader well, as someone who is capable of leading the country. But that party also comes with its own corruption issues.?
Arvind Sharma, outgoing chairman and chief executive at Leo Burnett India subcontinent, says that effective use of advertising campaigns in electoral battles dates back to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher?s time. ?Labour isn?t working? is a famous advertising campaign credited with making a difference to the 1979 United Kingdom electoral outcome. Obama?s 2008 campaign ?Change we can believe in? captured Obama?s promise of changing things in Washington well and resonated with young voters in America. It mobilised massive on-ground youth support and got Obama elected as the US president. ?Political parties in India have been using advertising campaigns since Rajiv Gandhi?s time. However, it is hard to come up with very many examples of campaigns that can be given credit for impacting electoral outcomes. They generally tend to add to the volume of election visibility and noise rather than have a decisive impact on the outcome. There are reasons for it. Politicians in India are a sensitive lot. It is not easy for agencies to give them anything other than what they want to see. Advertising campaigns often boil down to limited creative expression exercises,? says Sharma.
?I can think of one campaign, though, that delivered stunning results that nobody in the country expected. The ?Aam aadmi ko kya mila’ (What did the common man get) campaign in 2004. I don?t say this because I was the architect of this campaign. I say this because it was a good piece of thinking that managed to change the political discourse in India. It even gave birth to a political party,? he says. That campaign was in response to the BJP?s ‘India Shining’ campaign. ?And its results in 2004 left even Congress and UPA which were absolutely not expecting to form a government, surprised! This campaign was made possible because at that time we were dealing with an out-of-power and disputed Congress. And that sometimes can make for a good client,? Sharma said.
Prathap Suthan, managing partner and chief creative officer of Bang in the Middle, who was the architect of the BJP ?India Shining? campaign, said that it was never meant to be an election campaign. The campaign was executed by Grey Worldwide, Suthan?s former company for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the brief was given by the ministry of finance, in order to project India as an investment destination and to enforce investor confidence. ?Rediffusion Y&R had undertaken the first campaign for the NDA called ?India?s time has come? which failed in its objectives. They wanted a stronger campaign, which is when we at Grey executed ‘India Shining’ for them. We tried to project India as a great investment opportunity and highlighted the economic prosperity that the nation was seeing. It was never meant to be an election oriented campaign. But Advani of BJP hijacked the idea and used it for the polls. They did a translation ? Bharat Uday ? for a campaign that was primarily targeted at an English speaking population.?
Suthan added that while the campaign ?India Shining? has been blamed for the BJP?s defeat in the 2004 polls, the fact is that it wasn?t the campaign but the failure of the NDA to strike the right alliances especially in the regions down south, that cost them the elections. In Suthan?s opinion, the current campaigns for various political parties don?t leave voters with much of a choice. ?The BJP campaign is uninspiring. It looks like an adaptation of the 2004 Congress ?Aam aadmi ko kya mila? campaign. It is also running late and the campaign should have broken at least a month back. The Congress ads look well-shot and well-produced. Visually pretty, but too pretty at that. To the point of being superficial. I haven?t seen much from the AAP. From what I know of them, they haven?t got the larger India piece yet. Most voters aren’t sure whether they have the elegance or maturity to handle the country, ?says Suthan.
Din of election season
Josy Paul, chairman and chief creative officer of BBDO India feels that political parties need to devise communication strategies that break through the din of noisy everyday news. ?One way to achieve this is by creating visual properties that cut through the mind numbing cacophony. Slogans and songs are old tricks that only add to the decibel levels. It’s a good time to introduce a visual language that captures the imagination of the masses. For example, the use of intrusive mascots. What parties need is the equivalent of Vodafone’s Zoozoos, that odd but lovable Casper-type character,? he says. In his view, the BJP came close to creating ground breaking communication with the ‘Chai pe charcha’ movement. But unfortunately, they were not able to create widespread engagement with the idea because it is too elaborate in its execution.? The idea needs to be distilled down to simple units of action which make it convenient for mass volunteerism. The most important thing is to put the idea in the hands of everyday people everywhere ? only then will it get a life of its own and spread organically,? says Paul.
Symbols such as the AAP?s broom to sweep away corruption are very powerful but this visual shorthand needs greater maximisation, says Paul. ?We’ve not seen the idea multiply imaginatively across touch points. With greater consistency and integration it can become a moving force. One hasn’t seen anything significant in the use of the internet. There’s nothing on social media that changes the way political parties organise supporters and communicate differently to create new followers. Mostly it feels like political parties are resorting to a war of words instead of the power of fresh imagery that have universal appeal,? he says.
Sharma disagrees on the usage of new media by political parties. ?Political campaigns over the last couple of elections have made advances in terms of their use of new media. All major political parties are using missed call campaigns to connect one-on-one with voters. Their use of digital media has been extensive – display advertising as well as Facebook and Twitter. Some of the Twitter duels are certainly very amusing,? he says.
