Extensive use of diverse media, but ad campaigns achieved little

Political advertising still well below corporate ad innovations.

Advertising campaigns should be given little, or practically no credit, for the clear edge that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has gained in these elections, say leading ad professionals.

Despite the fact that the Congress spent around Rs 150 crore and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Rs 60-75 crore, ad professionals say the political advertising by both the leading national parties, and even local campaigns of regional parties, were primitive and lacked creativity.

It was similar to what it used to be in the pre-cable era of Doordarshan advertising and failed to establish any connect with consumers. Political advertising has not evolved to keep pace with corporate advertising, which has gone to a new level, as with the ‘zoozoos’ campaign for Vodafone, they argue.

“There is no work that stands out and can be admired for making a difference for brand/party recall or creativity,” said Sagar Mahableshwarkar, national creative director, Rediffussion Y&R.

Another factor missing in these general elections was a uniform message. For instance, “The BJP’s ‘India Shining’ campaign during the 2004 general elections still comes to mind for delivering a single distinct and focused proposition,” said Rajesh Aggarwal, president, Dentsu India, pointing out that the parties also failed to suitably modify their messaging across multiple mediums – print, TV and internet.

The key difference between the Congress and the BJP campaigns was that the Congress campaign was positive, revolving around hope, youth and a better tomorrow. The BJP’s was more stark and grim — the current economic crisis, rising prices, jobs losses. “People vote for a better tomorrow. They do not vote out of fear but vote for hope,” said Rohit Ohri, managing partner, JWT, the creative agency for Congress.

The IMRB, which did a survey of four ads — the BJP’s Bhay Ho and Dishayein campaigns, and the Congress’ Jai Ho and Kadam campaigns — said the Congress ads were liked more by 74 per cent of the target group, while the BJP ads were liked better by 54 per cent. Of all the four ads, the Congress’ Jai Ho was liked best by 76 per cent of the target group, while the BJP’s take on Congress’ Jai Ho, called Bhay Ho, simply did not work.

While both the Congress and BJP used all major mediums — TV, print, outdoors, radio and internet — extensively, “the Congress used print more extensively than the BJP, which used the radio and internet more intelligently as its budget, at

Rs 60 to 75 crore, was smaller,” said Sashi Sinha, chief executive officer, Lodestar Universal — the media buying agency for the BJP.

However, what did work in favour of the parties is that all of them used every available media more effectively. For instance, Raj Thackeray sent letters to voters that was put into peoples’ homes in Mumbai and Mamata Banerjee used SMS.

With over 100 million first-time voters coming to vote, the use of the mobile and internet medium by the political parties was laudable, said Narasimha Jayakumar, business head, travel and local business, Google India. He points at major political parties using words like terrorism, education, economy and security as key words to attract traffic to their websites. “Most political parties have websites. Post advertising and use of ad words and our ad network, which reaches to over 40,000 pages on the world wide web, the traffic to these political parties’ websites increased 30 to 40 times over,” he said.

Another thing in this election was political parties willingness to make the debate sharper by criticising their opponents.

“This helps voters make informed decisions as they know the flaws, arguments and positions of various parties,” said founder of Font & Pixel Media, Aloke Thakore, who along with senior journalist Sishir Joshi has provided a research framework to track the daily political news and advertising campaign coverage across leading channels for all political parties.