Rahul Gandhi made a comment recently that BJP’s marketing is much better than that of the Congress party. This brought to my mind a topic I wanted to write up in more detail especially in the wake of the Bihar election where Prashant Kishor, the architect of Modi campaign moved over to Nithish Kumar’s side.

The Modi campaign brought to the fore the power of branding and social media into politics, which was untapped until then by political parties in a big way, giving them a first mover advantage. Though there are several elements to a political brand building exercise are the key ones are the message, the messenger and communication.  

Cut to the 90s, during my pre MBA days, when a journalist friend of mine and I pitched a perception management service for politicians and landed our first client, an MP and son of a former Chief Minister. This engagement was blessed by the CM, who saw the need to polish his son, but did not want to be the one doing it.

Our first meeting with this newly minted MP was interesting. A pretty naïve guy, did not have balls to take strong positions, not known to be a good speaker, and finger nails that were like 5 inches long, at least on a few fingers, (if I remember right). A far cry from the father who was a political mastermind and communicator.

Right away we decided to drop the focus on messenger and chose to focus on his message of the development his constituency instead. We used integrated communication with print and visual media (no internet/social media those days) to create visibility for the politician. We made monthly visits to his constituency, camera crew in tow and produced a campaign video for him. That was our only client as I moved onto business school overseas.

Things have moved ahead and we are starting see the advent of marketing as a critical components of political campaigns these days. But one key factor to consider is that marketing by itself will not provide a competitive advantage as rival political parties adopt professional marketing in their campaign.

Here are some observations based on a few recent elections.

In the run up to the Loksabha elections Rahul Gandhi had major issues. The first was the messenger himself. Pitted against Modi and Kejriwal who are charismatic communicators, Rahul did not stand a fighting chance.  The Arnab interview was a PR disaster which reinforced the image that RG had no clue about political issues except for some scripted notes. The image that came out was of an unwilling heir apparent, who did not quite believe in himself, but was being pushed to get into the family business by an overbearing mother. With regard to the message itself what came out was one of cognitive dissonance.  The BJP marketing that made him a butt of jokes did not help either nor did the casting him as an Italian outsider.

Rahul Gandhi message was around being an angry young reformer within the Congress party, who was against corruption. But at the same time, he had not taken any decisive action against the corrupt characters within the Congress party. The other challenge was that the anti-corruption mantle was already taken over by Arvind Kejriwal. Any amount of communication could not help as the messenger was ineffective and the dissonance in messaging was not unauthentic. Authenticity does matter. Moreover the grand old party seemed to have no clue about managing youth and social media. There was hardly any one even rating RG on www.netamaker.com

Kejriwal on the other hand is a great messenger with street creds from the Anna movement and his personal story. His message was great and resonated with youth, young and old who heard his message.

But at the same time, there were two issues with the messenger and the message and communication as Kejriwal resigned and jumped into the Loksabha election fray. One was that the messenger himself - though Kejriwal was well known in Delhi and had an intense social media following, was an unknown entity to villagers in the Hindi heartland. In terms of communicating with the voter/customer, Social media and Delhi news does not really get to the villages where a more intimate face to face approach is needed when launching this “new untested product”.

Moreover branding can go only so far, an organizational machinery is needed to make thing work at the grassroots which is even today a person to person affair, with rallies, and word of mouth with local TV radio playing some part these days. Scaling a national brand building effort requires time and money, especially for a new untested brand.

The Modi campaign however had all the pieces of a marketing campaign going right backed with big money. It had a great message of development and jobs, which was backed by the Gujarat model development stories, which played very well into the youth who were yearning for economic opportunities. The messenger with excellent oratory skills could connect with the audience very well. An integrated communications with print, visual, social media and rallies backed up with local leaders campaigning for Modi made a huge impact.

In the Delhi Assembly elections how veer,   BJP applied an overdose of the same marketing machinery, had confusion about the messenger and chose the wrong messenger. Outside of branding itself, the political strategy of bringing an outsider backfired. AAP on the other hand had the messenger who apologized to the voters ( a first in India I would think), had all the communication channels going for them including gram sabhas which was basically intense face to face  participatory governance,all aligned with an authentic message that focused on transparency, anti- corruption and anti VIP culture.  

The AAP campaign had a congruent and well researched message aligned with a good messenger, which made up or its lack of money power by intense door to door campaign volunteers and NRI calls.  For BJP, Delhi proved that flooding airwaves with a marketing campaign alone does not win the battle. In fact the muscular campaign turned to be counter-productive as well. At some point the voter seemed to say, “don’t try to buy me with your money power”

 By the time the Bihar elections came a couple of things had changed. The first is that by engaging Prashant Kishor and team Nitishkumar and Lallu had professional marketing on their side thus limiting the marketing advantage that BJP could have. But more than that, the dissonance in BJP message had started to go far and wide. Part of this dissonance was due to the lack of message control (and lack of aggression/lynching control) with every one with a saffron robe (even if it was new/borrowed) making outrageous statements and actions with no consequences, drowning the development message.

The economic message on which the Lok Sabha election was fought by BJP failed to deliver as well. Instead that message was hijacked and what the voters saw and heard was a message of an aggressive Hindutva agenda that was creating intolerance in the country. Welcome to dissonance -   aka promise of a brand vs reality of delivery. When a promise given by a brand is broken, consumers/voters can behave like jilted lovers. “Jumlas” can really hurt voters.

The opposition parties in Bihar decided to resolve their differences and fight the common enemy. The Loksabha math gave the answer there, BJP had just 31% of votes across the country, which was good enough to take advantage of a splintered opposition.

So what lies ahead in the coming elections?  I am sure more of voter segmentation and messaging and technology for sure would be pervasive. But as marketing strategies are adopted by all parties, and lose the first mover advantage, will politics go back to issues, and more of accountability or back to more of caste, creed and class?

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