Political Branding In India | How Narendra Modi & The BJP Won 2014 Elections

Usually, when we think of a brand, we think about the huge sets of categories with diverse product lines, from toothpaste to apparels, toys to bikes, cement to buildings. However, if we think about India, it has witnessed several stages of governance.

India has been the victim of raids by outsiders, lost its wealth and properties to outside rulers. Raids by Timur, Mohammad of Ghazini, Invasions by Alexander, Turks, Mongols, establishment of dynasties like the Chalyukas, Pallavas, Rashtrakutas, Mughals lays the huge history of how India, as an empire, has been ruled over time.

It was only after the British left that India identified itself as a democratic nation. Till then, the power was quite centralised. As soon as the people of India became a vital stakeholder in choosing the governing body, Indian politics started emerging as a brand.

Just like a brand, every political party has a agenda,a set of beliefs to carry on the service towards people. The people of India are their target group who are very important to be taken care of, if they wish to come in power. The winning party is the major brand and the opposition and other parties can be seen as the competitor brands.

Political Branding: The Current Aspect

It refers to the outlook of a political party keeping in mind its main entities’ –  the projected leader, policies of the party, brand ambassador, campaign. In the Indian  context, now individual leaders are more significant than the party as a whole. So, for them the leaders that they project are a kind of their brand ambassadors. The public is their target consumer and the more they associate with the brand ambassador, the more  likely are they to choose the brand(party) over others. A consumer-oriented approach is what the whole marketing and branding thrives in politics.

To streamline this genre of branding, I would like to focus on the 2014 Lok Sabha Polls which witnessed a historic win of BJP. The theme set for the overall campaigning and promotions of the party revolved around brand Modi and their promise to bring back “Acche Din”. The whole marketing strategy adopted by the party can be understood under the below elements.

Consumer Insights

Because of Modi’s achievements in Gujarat, he was already a famous and iconic brand with strong local bonding. In other terms, the brand Modi was a prominent local brand that the rest of nation was already aware of . The brand value of Modi was higher than brand value of BJP in the eyes of public. Taking this insight into consideration, the party decided to project Modi in all the campaigns rather than BJP or NDA. Thus, the regional brand of Gujarat (Narendra Modi) became the brand ambassador of BJP campaigns. Earlier also, BJP had projected  L.K. Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee as brand ambassadors in their elections. Slogans like “Ab ki baari, Atal Bihari” were the slogans in the previous elections and it has been proved that consumers often connect emotionally when such slogans are a part of the marketing campaigns held by the political parties.

Slogan, Theme and Advertisement 

People like Prasoon Joshi, who had immense experience in advertising of many brands, were behind the execution of huge scale promotions of BJP. Advertising agencies like Ogilvy, McCann World Group, and Soho Square had been the pillars in executing this whole planning. They fixed a theme of their promotion which was “Acche Din” , as their proposition to the public.

This theme was established with their catchy slogan “Abki Bar Modi Sarkar” .The Hindi statement had an emotional appeal to vast section of the country . Just like any local brand, they chose the slogan strategically so that it could resonate with people’s feeling and even though it was Hindi, the statement was so simple, yet powerful, that non Hindi population could understand.Thus, language played an important role giving a “desi” touch to the overall strategy.

Story Telling (Youthful brand offering)

Brand “Modi” had the archetype of a father figure who is responsible towards his duties and willing to make sacrifices to bring prosperity and development to the public. To incorporate this feeling into the target group, the brand came up with tales of Modi in comics, books and other mediums. They told stories about how Modi alienated himself from his family to stay focused on his goals and work towards the service of public. To connect the youth with this old father figure, they built agendas of Modi visiting colleges like SRCC, to discuss about the models of development that helped Gujarat in having a fast pace renovation. This brought forward the visionary side of this father figure.

Also, just like, development is the pillar of any economy, youth is the pillar of any country. So, this whole series of visiting colleges projected him as someone who could envision the potential of youth and work towards it.

Integrated communication campaign by leveraging Technology 

Their campaign made excellent use of various mediums to spread their message. Media planning was done at its best using platforms like TV ads, print ads, YouTube ads, social media to cater different categories of their target group. They knew exactly what platforms are the various categories using to consume content.

Thus, the media planning and buying was on point. For rural people, it was rallies of Narendra Modi that showcased his outstanding communication skills to link with the rural sentiments. For youth, twitter and other social media acted as a medium to interact and position themselves as advanced political party. For an average household, it was television to increase the reach and penetration of their campaigns.

Summary

Currently,every other political party is active in implementing marketing strategy to woo the public. But the strategies that BJP implemented contributed highly,  because of its holistic marketing methods. They took care of consumer insight, worked on them to come up with communication strategy,chose appropriate medium to spread their message. They incorporated market analytics,media,digital ,advertising and branding that gave them the wholesome output.Connecting to the target group is of utmost importance in marketing. Every strategy comes after that.

This is where it made a difference and made a mark in history by winning the elections by huge margins.

*Featured image credits - Siasat.com