Browsing tag

Elections 2009

Political Advertising: Indian Politics Reaches Twitter

March 30, 2009

Whew! Indian Political parties are on twitter now… While I was already chating about change in campaign strategy of Indian politicians this time, here I observe some other interesting & noticeable updates:

  • BJP on Twitter: Yeah BJP has really gone ahead of Congress as far as online strategies are concerned, you go anywhere online & you just can’t ignore BJP’s ads or L.K.Advani messages. And now they are on the latest micro-blogging fad – Twitter too! Not only they are present but they are tweeting quite regularly both by posting their updates as well as interacting with followers. Have a look on some of their latest updates, updates do look promising enough.

bjp_twitter

 

  • Congress on Twitter: Till now I have not observed Indian Congress Party formally present on twitter, yes but SM Krishna (candidate from Bangalore) has definitely joined twitter now. He says he has done this to interact with net savvy Bangaloreans!

Well, all interactions & communications on internet with today’s generation are fine but I again wonder – do all these political parties really understand their image amongst Indian Youth? As mentioned in my previous post it’s a welcome change to see such aggressive new age political campaigning in India but don’t you think that these are simply marketing gimmicks? Will they really act on their promises or will these remain as just promises once the elections are over? How much can marketing help them when the core product itself is not good? Would be good to know it from the readers of this post – do you really believe in current communications sent out by any of these parties? Personally speaking as a marketer I like their campaign & appreciate their effort but as a consumer, these communications are not impacting me much as somehow don’t have that trust left on the product itself.

“Jai Ho” vs.” Bhay Ho”

March 29, 2009

While Congress was quick enough to take rights & create a video out of much acclaimed song “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire but quicker was the counter strategy from BJP to come out with another video based on the same song. And I must say I loved this video! Truly marvelous & strikes straight within! This video titled “Bhay Ho” speaks something like –  “Aaja aaja voter is jhanse ke tale, aaja jhote moote vaade ke tale, BHAY HO”.

What a competitive attack! Though BJP says that they have not officially released this video & it’s some party supporter who has sent this video to them but I think it’s one of the smartest counter campaigns against any competitor in Indian Politics. It’s surely an interesting case study for new age Indian Political Advertising & if it’s really done by a common man, then I think BJP should immediately look at hiring the man behind this video in their promotional team. Have a look on it, I definitely had a laugh watching this video.

 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0yL7Dv_keo]

Political Advertising: Advaniji on web!

November 11, 2008

Just last week itself, I wrote about Political Advertising in India for 2009 elections and here comes another surprise of the same. Now after celebrities it’s the turn of Politicians looking up to the mighty web world. Joining the league is none other than L.K. Advani whose website http://www.lkadvani.in/ got launched on his 81st birthday on 8th Nov’08. BJP launched this website for their Prime Minister candidate Advani with an objective to reach out to the young and first time voters in India. As per BJP, this is the first website of its kind by an Indian Political party and is yet another step towards reinforcing the forward looking and futuristic attitude of their party.

The site opens up with an intro note and welcome message by L.K. Advani and is available in two different languages – Hindi and English. It’s an interactive website with loads of photos, videos, speeches and forums wherein visitors can participate and post their comment / suggestion / grievances. Overall the site looks neat and very 2.0 types except for the first landing page after home page. I think it’s too boxy, maybe they could have used some tabs and made it less cluttered. But content wise I liked the site. In fact to be honest I never expected it to be this deep esp. their “issues” blog section…quite nice and interesting posts there, though I think there should have been a section for users’ comments on each of these posts in order to make it truly interactive. I’m sure they have not allowed comments to avoid nuances and mud-slinging by opposition parties but then if you want it be interactive you need to provide the facility of comments and expressions, see some cool examples of Bollywood celebs like Big B or Aamir Khan. The forums allow posting and comments but as of today I don’t see much participation from external people over there. The home page content is definitely getting updated as I can see a difference between yesterday’s and today’s content, have a look at the scrn-shot:

lkadvani

Overall a neat website and considering the fact that most of the first time and young voters are digital natives it’s definitely a good step and modern approach towards reaching out to Indian youth. It’s good to know that Indian Prime Minister candidates are going high-tech, but wondering is it their own thought or is it Obama effect 🙂?

Also my fundamental question about Political Advertising in India remains the same – is it worth spending so much money before the elections in communication campaigns when most of the Indians know the realities of Indian Political scenario? It’s good to see such interactive platforms getting launched but is BJP going to take any step to solve the real-time issues or grievances being posted on the website or will these just remain as comment counters to prove that the website was a successful strategy with X number of comments and Y number of hits in Z number of days? Will it actually help in a building a “Strong, Prosperous and Self-Confident India” or will it end in just being yet another marketing gimmick?