BJP peaked early: Congress

MANDATE 2004

With the Congress led alliance certain to return to power after a gap of nine years, its campaign managers today attributed the party's success to meticulous planning and execution.

"We put together a team which analysed the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) campaign. We felt the BJP campaign had peaked too early. The first step was to dampen its "feel good" campaign," Congress' top campaign manager Salman Khursheed told Business Standard.

This was the message with which the Congress President, Sonia Gandhi, kicked off her mass contact programme.

The Congress campaign was based on three legs: devising the campaign, targeting the campaign at specific voters and timing it right.

Months before the elections took place, the Congress had decided to steer the campaign away from individuals to issues.

This tactical move paid off as Vajpayee's personal popularity was riding extremely high, which no Congress leader could have matched.

The think tank had also sensed that the "India Shining" campaign of the National Democratic Alliance had struck a discordant note with villagers, women and the youth. "The rainbow approach of taking everybody together worked very well for us," said Khursheed.

Accordingly, the party did its media buying. "We spent far less on media than the NDA. yet it was very effective," said Anita Nayyar of Starcom, the media buying agency engaged by the Congress.

As per Khursheid, the spokespersons identified by the party were required to make themselves available to journalists so that the Congress had to spend less on media buying.