'The focus was to achieve a pan-India reach through the electronic media'

JWT handled the Congress’ national advertising campaign for the electronic media. The budget was around Rs 75 crore, approximately two-thirds of the Congress’ entire national advertising budget. The planning began in January-end, with the campaign hitting the airwaves on March 20. Other than electronic media, about 20 per cent of the budget was spent on the print media — mainly regional — and the rest on digital and other media. ROHIT OHRI, managing partner, JWT, gives SAPNA AGARWAL a lowdown on what worked and what could have been done better. Excerpts:

Was there anything unique in the Congress campaign this year?
The focus was mainly to achieve a pan-India reach through the electronic media. Not much was spent on print. Also, we focused our communication on the different segments to reach out to the key components of the electorate — housewives, farmers, manual labourers and the youth. Moreover, the first-time voter — comprising over 20 per cent of the electorate — was the key focus area for all parties.

In addition to development and inflation, terrorism was a key issue/plank this year. Issues were predominant, rather than rhetoric and sloganeering, as in previous years. Most importantly, the political campaigns, for the first time, looked sophisticated, professionally planned, created and executed — akin to how an MNC would do. More than 250 pieces of films, radio spots and songs were created, in multiple languages.

The campaign scheduling was phased in a scientific manner, across three phases — The Past Achievements: Starting with the Congress’ heritage from the freedom movement era, moving on to the launch of the party plank/theme, and then focussing on the party’s achievements over the last five years.

The Vision For The Future: The next phase focused on future programmes for the different elements of the electorate. Specific focus in this phase was the party’s ‘vision’ for the youth.

Reason To Vote: Communication for this phase took place during the one-month period when elections were actually happening. It candidly captured a cross-section of voters who had already decided to vote for the Congress, citing their own specific ‘reasons’ for voting for the party.

The campaign reached its peak two weeks before the elections began. The campaign, through the electronic media, reached over 75 per cent of the voting population consistently.

Did the fact of not being allowed to advertise during the IPL make the campaign less effective (SET MAX was not allowed to take political ads due to the ICC Code of Conduct)?
Given the high cost, noise-levels and a strong urban bias, IPL was never a choice for the Congress. A prudent mix of Doordarshan, ‘intelligent’ C&S channels like news and views and high-reach entertainment genres were used. Radio FM and digital media were used extensively to reach out to the youth.

If you were allowed to redo something, what would it be?
We would lay more emphasis on projecting Congress as a party with a very strong youth leadership. A young country like India deserves it, and only the Congress can provide it.

Did corporate advertising help?
This is the first time that the corporate world deliberately made a concerted effort to raise awareness of the ‘right to vote’. The most remarkable effort was by Tata Tea, because they backed up their advertising text with a clear effort to ‘help’ people to vote, through their website.

Their ‘one billion’ effort was by far the most successful and created a kind of momentum in urban India. But till a concerted effort is made in semi-urban and rural India, from where most of the voters come, the average voter will continue to expect ‘incentives’ to vote, or stay away from the booth. Most advertisers, however, just rode the election bandwagon.