HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL CAN LEARN FROM THIS POLL CAMPAIGN: PIYUSH PANDEY
The elections are won by the campaigns that are done by the karyakartaas on the ground level. So, that’s the largest side of the campaign which is master-minded by the BJP; Amit Shah and his team. Mass media is only a small part of it. And that’s where multiple teams worked, and yes, we at Ogilvy also worked on it. In fact, there were many campaigns done by other teams, especially a team from Ahmedabad. We did many campaigns there as well. So, it was team work rather than one specific agency working on something.
Q] What kind of brief did the BJP give this time, were you allowed to be downright cheeky or asked to maintain a level of seriousness in the communication?
An election campaign is not like a toothpaste campaign that we ad agencies usually work on. There are multiple issues, multiple tasks. There is a task of communicating what the Government has achieved. There is a task to kill all myths and accusations. There is a task to communicate that the nation is very important to all of us. So, there were multiple things like that which we had to keep in mind.
Q] Ogilvy is known for coming up with very relatable taglines…during the 2019 General Elections, what kind of slogans did you come up with for the BJP and Narendra Modi?
There was ‘Modi hai to mumkin hai’, ‘Kaam rukena, desh jhukena’, ‘Hum Modiji ko chun rahey hai.’ We did a lot of Print advertising which was very localized, based on many issues specific to certain geographies. Also, there were a whole lot of teams like Modi’s digital team, BJP’s digital team which did a lot of work. It was all about multiple tasks and multiple teams and we just happened to be one of the teams that worked on the campaign. But, the biggest thing is that as far as elections are concerned I will never blow up the role of mass media, I believe it is a very peripheral role. It is what happens on the ground, what work the party has done, and how their workers have connected with the electorate, from villages, to little towns to bigger towns that speaks for them. Basically, if you look at it, credit goes to the huge efforts of the BJP team led by Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley and their election committee. So, at the end of the day, it is the worker that wins, the man on the ground.
Q] If you had to talk about that one thing that really worked for Narendra Modi in the past five years, that helped bring him back to power, then what would it be?
I think it is the trust, it is also good leadership. More than anything else, it is the belief in one leader who is likely to take you into the future you desire. His integrity, leadership and determination are the key three things, obviously backed by achievements of this government. So it’s a good mix. It is probably a reference for a whole lot of modern marketers on what is the meaning of a campaign which is micro-managed. Harvard Business School can learn from this one.
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