Agenda reporters explore the world of new-age campaigning, blooming with innovative strategies, storyboards and sales pitches that combine traditional wisdom with contemporary trade and technological appeal to woo voters during elections
A major part of the credit for making the Samajwadi Party’s election campaign a hit among the youth of Uttar Pradesh goes to Billy Joel. HowIJ The party, despite its apathy towards propagating English, has bought the rights of his popular song We didn’t start the fire and adapted it to promote Netaji Mulayam Singh Yadav. The Hindi version, “Man se hain Mulayam/Iraade loha hai.” (He is soft-hearted but iron-willed), written by Yadav’s teacher Udai Pratap Singh and sung by Javed Ali, features the names of prominent socialist leaders and lists the welfare schemes of the Akhilesh Singh Yadav Government. Its rhythm has certainly caught fire.
Meanwhile in faraway Bengaluru, Congress candidate and ex-Infosys man Nandan Nilekani has developed an app that analyses and breaks down statistical data of his constituency, a technology he intends to share with other politicians post the elections. The BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi is “beaming himself out” with holograms to complement his real time rallies and interactions while the seemingly cashless AAP is using public transport, neighbourhood addas, street plays and fund-raising dinners to sell its ideas.
Caught up in the cacophony of hammering keyboards, drumbeats and blaring speakersIJ Eco-warrior and Congress candidate CD Meyyappan of Chennai Central constituency is making a difference noiselessly. He is using solar-powered flex boards, which can easily be carried by party volunteers and activists, to spread his message and flash his image. The boards, charged by solar panels, can be illuminated for up to 10 hours. In neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, “politricking” is in vogue whereby contestants are trying out gimmicks, from running with young people, doing menial jobs like brooming floors and ironing clothes to sharing home meals, much to the amusement of voters. Telangana PCC leader Ponnala laxmaiah played cricket with boys while inspecting the Ambedkar stadium at Karimnagar for a public meeting. TDP candidate from Khammam Assembly constituency Thummala Nageshwara Rao countered by taking part in some ground exercises with another bunch. In Delhi itself, most candidates joined morning walkers to convince them about how fit a choice they were. Welcome to the world of new-age campaigning, which is not just about digital revolution and discussion boards, but about smart ideas, innovative strategies, storyboards and sales pitches that combine traditional door-to-door wisdom with contemporary appeal. Election season is a multi-module package of entertainment, information, technology and interaction.
MEET THE MASTERMINDS
The idea behind Modi modelling his “change” slogan on US President Barack Obama’s 2008 rallying cry, “Yes We Can,” or the online NaMo store selling merchandise inspired by his life and values has been the result of hours of brainstorming by image experts, brand gurus, corporates, technocrats, poll analysts, lobyyists, activists and media watchers. Political consultancy is a booming business, not just in cities but even in small towns and rural areas. The advent of social media, telecom density, IT-enabled users, cross-media linkages and access has resulted in the mushrooming of such firms. One time unseen, amorphous and boringly backroom, campaign committees have now upgraded themselves and made the Indian elections a big business, where everybody is out to win and there is no room for reconciliation, only return on investment.
The BJP campaign has been incredibly professionally managed and got the buzz. As part of its initiatives and perception trackers, it was among the first to hold workshops on social media and the elections. While AAP is probably the first party to have a dedicated fan base on social networks and the Congress promoted itself through mass media, the BJP primed its base on Twitter and Facebook steadily.
Besides social media management, candidates hire political consultants for speech-writing and media management, like giving interviews to local dailies and channels, and analysing news relevant to their constituency to ensure that they strike the right chord during their public rallies. These agencies charge anything from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 50 lakh. Saurabh Vyas, a graduate from IIT Bombay and co-founder of Gurgaon-based firm Political Edge, says, “We are not a PR firm that helps the candidate in his image-building exercise. We help candidates understand their constituency, offer concrete solutions on delivery mechanisms and come up with a campaign model that stands out among others and ultimately woos the voters. In short, you can say that hiring a political campaign firm helps you in making your presence felt effectively.” Vyas adds that the need to hire political consultancy firms has increased because elections are now a serious business model and one has to understand the intricacies to make a mark. “The online revolution has made a big difference to how people think and behave. To understand this behaviour in rural and urban areas, one needs expert guidance,” he adds. Consultants are fast replacing their traditional counterparts, political mentors, mainly because of the increasing number of new faces with little political background getting party tickets. An analysis by Gramener, a data analytics company, shows that post the 2009 elections, as many as 233 young leaders (less than 35 years) had won.
Gaurav Singh, who co-founded the Delhi-based Poltubaaz in 2012 to provide election management and strategic solutions to parties, explains the range of his war-room services: “We help in analysis, which includes voter profile, swing factors, new categories of voters and the types of voters at the polling booth level. Then come managing your team at the booth levels, identifying issues and problems at that micro level, covering voters at booth levels and planning movement of candidates. Effective strategies are all about designing solutions for local problems, capturing the votebank and converting response to votes. The campaign model should include traditional means like door-to-door campaigning, rallies, intensive interaction to build confidence as a deliverer, designing of distribution material for voters as well as digital promotion. Quite a hardsell.”
Slogans for Arvind Kejriwal’s hoardings in Mumbai are written in Hindi: “Jitne Sitam Karna Hai Kar lo, lekin Desh ko Badal kar Rahenge” and “Is baar Imaandaar”, a clever retort to “Abki baar Modi sarkaar.” Says Sanjeev Gupta of outdoor publicity firm, Global Advertisers, “Political campaigns have given rise to a profusion of hoardings around the city and at bus shelters. With an aim to influence voters, parties have used large Hindi fonts. Right now, the city is covered with political campaigns. So creating a clutter-free, highly visible outdoor media plan required immense resources. Agencies approached us for larger hoardings, strategic locations and illuminated sites. This election season has boosted our business by more than 30 per cent.”
Radio, too, was suggested by consultants in tier II and III cities. “It played an instrumental role as we heard many celebs, radio jockeys encouraging people to go out and vote. Since radio has its reach in far-flung areas, it was wise to use it for the benefit of parties. AAP allocated Rs 2-3 crore for radio out of its Rs 18 crore publicity spend and that enabled it to reach millions of people, cutting across socio-economic groups and ethnicities in a multi-cultural city like Delhi,” Vyas tells us. Then there have been the chaupal and chai corner open mike sessions, no doubt born out of the jibes by warring parties, but a real time concept that has rivalled Google hangouts.
INDIGENISATION OF THE WESTERN MODEl
In the book Global Political Campaigning, Fritz Plasser analyses the Americanisation of political campaigns across the globe, explaining American trends and successful methods that are “adopted” by other countries and appropriated in the national context. Online campaigns of parties suggest how they’ve been shopping from the Obama store.
The internet penetration in India is only 15 per cent of the population but the Obamafied campaigns are largely aimed at the huge base of young voters, many of them headed to the polls for the first time, and counting approximately 144 million of the electorate. The party that converts these online hitters into offline voters will be at a significant advantage. The AAP implemented a volunteer-driven campaign like Obama’s during the Delhi Assembly polls, which was managed online. The party asked its large support base of online volunteers to disseminate its message to 20 new voters every day, online or offline. This continues to be the AAP’s key communications methodology as well as SMSes and recorded voice messages. The AAP’s fund-raising techniques also resemble those of the Obama campaign, and are driven both by small-time and large contributions that are mobilised online and by direct appeal. The idea of a “clean money trail” has been a crucial factor in the party’s acceptance as a corruption-free alternative and a transparent purveyor of power.
Nilekani’s “Ideas for Bengaluru” campaign on Twitter, inviting suggestions for the city’s improvement, mirrors Obama’s micro-listening approach of parsing constituents’ concerns. Similarly, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is adopting the micro-listening approach offline by conducting interactions with small groups and “hearing them out.”
THE PERSONAl TOUCH
It was 6’ o clock in the morning and Raj Mohan Gandhi, AAP’s candidate in East Delhi, was busy arguing with young people about his party’s ethics and policies at a park in Trilokpuri. A yoga teacher slammed the party for “shying away” from responsibilities. Gandhi humbly asked for “another chance”, even invoking his pedigree (he is the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi). “Bhashans (speeches) are stale. It’s all about one-on-one interaction with voters. The educated masses comprising professionals don’t have time to listen to hour-long speeches. I will have to catch them as per their convenience,” said the man who has been staking his personal integrity on the at-home approach. Journalist-turned AAP’s candidate from Chandni Chowk Ashutosh happily posed for photographs and signed autographs as part of the “I am with you always” approach.
This has forced veteran politicians to devise new mechanisms in their campaign diaries. Congress veteran CP Joshi, facing former Olympian and BJP nominee Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore in Jaipur Rural, installed huge projectors at popular street corners to boast about his past laurels and “good work.” In Pala village, he extracted mileage out of a qawwali night, where over 500 people settled into the rhythm of politics immediately after mesmerising performances. Even Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, when not tweeting, is trekking to far-flung pockets to have his say. Doctor-candidates, like BJP’s Harsh Vardhan, are accompanied by young doctors who hold on-the-spot health camps.
“The remarkable change this time is that netas are open to criticism, saying if they have fallen short they will do better. They want to empathise rather than just deliver speeches. In rural areas, there are limited options of connecting with people. So we take part in bhojan prasadi (temple feasts) and chaupal talks. Villagers share their plight, the discussions are intense and need in-depth research and preparation. The human touch has worked,” says Amit lal, communication and campaign strategist for Joshi.
Krishna, a IT professional from Bangalore south, feels virtual chat apps, blogs and podcasts have personalised the campaign even more. In UP, SP’s Akhilesh Yadav has spearheaded the idea of a lCD video book that documents the party’s vision and progress sheets. “The lCD books are intended to reach out to people in the remotest corners whom we haven’t been able to address,” says Yadav, while keeping the cost of the gadgets a secret. It is a spoke-of-the-wheel strategy that the BJP is interpreting through Modi Raths in 403 constituencies, showcasing his development agenda. The personality cult still works in the feudal hinterland.
(With Kumar Chellappan, Biswajit Banerjee, Kestur Vasuki, Mohit Kandhari, Divya Kaushik and Karan Bhardwaj)