BJP poll campaign to revolve around three 'I's

Focusing on three ‘I’s —inflation, internal security and incompetence — in its campaign for the coming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sought proposals from at least four leading advertising companies for a political blitzkrieg against the UPA government.

According to BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, “We have conveyed our ideas to the advertisers and we hope to finalise the deal within a month.’’

The four companies that are working on the BJP campaign are: Graphicads, Lintas, Prachar and Everest Brand Solutions. The first three, along with Crayons (which has already bagged the Congress account), had handled the BJP campaign for the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

As Naqvi chairs the weekly meetings of the party’s election strategy group in the spruced-up ‘war room’ in the headquarters, he says the party is planning a “smaller” advertisement-based campaign. However, the fact that the media have witnessed a boom since the last election, Naqvi says the advertisement campaign would eventually be of much higher scale than the last one.

According to estimates, the BJP had spent around Rs 500 crore for the election campaign in 2004. “We are preparing for not only the Lok Sabha elections but also for the 12 Assembly elections that would be held between November 2008 and April 2009,’’ Naqvi says.

However, wiser by the bad experience of the ‘India Shinning’ campaign that had brought down the BJP-led NDA government in 2004, Naqvi says, “We have realised that translating political ideas into effective campaigns is a difficult job.’’ For this reason, the BJP is planning to ‘diversify’ its campaign. It has also approached several media companies like Star, Zee and Aaj Tak for campaign material.

Besides the television and print media blitzkrieg, the BJP is targeting the ‘cheaper’ option of FM radio. “The revival of radio as a popular medium, both in urban and rural areas, should be exploited,” Naqvi said.

Small-time theatre groups may also gain from the BJP campaign.

The party has recently discovered that the “nukkad natak” (street play) is more effective in changing the voters’ minds than the advertisements. The party, according to Naqvi, has already engaged such groups in eight Lok Sabha constituencies in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Bihar. “The result was positive and now we have to work out an elaborate strategy on this,” Naqvi said.