Advertising and political parties: A failed experiment?

Ad agencies Dentsu and Burson-Marsteller India are likely to be handling the advertising campaign of the Congress in the coming general election . While Dentsu India is yet to confirm the news, Prema Sagar, Founder, Genesis Burson-Marsteller India has done so. "We confirm that Burson-Marsteller has been engaged to provide counsel to senior officials of the Congress party as part of an exercise that also involves other communications and research companies."

Does this sound familiar? More importantly, does it hold out hope for the beleaguered Congress? I am sceptical, given the record of "professional" advertising campaigns for political parties in the past.

In 1989, there was the 'My Heart Beats for India' series of print advertisements created by Rediffusion for Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress. It had images of scorpions, masks, broken dolls and other horrific images - all intended to show what would befall India if it were to choose an option other than the Congress. If anything the campaign lent itself to lampoons and parodies at the cost of the Congress. The party, as is well known, lost the election.

More recently, there was the Bharat Nirman series of advertisements initiated in 2012 by the Congress. They were created by Percept/H and film maker Pradeep Sarkar of Apocalypso Filmworks. These were certainly pleasant looking and better crafted than those of 1989, but hardly the kind that would swing public mood, given the prevailing anti-incumbency sentiment. In any case, the large ad budget - said to be Rs. 100 crore - has raised hackles and questions.

There was also the India Shining ad campaign of 2003/04 by the BJP-led NDA when it was in power. In this case, the Congress, then in the opposition, benefited instead of the BJP. The campaign exposed the BJP's disconnect with ground reality at the time. India Shining was the brainchild of Grey Worldwide.

It is said that the Congress had engaged JWT for a media blitz to counter the Aam Aadmi Party and Narendra Modi blitzkrieg in 2013. This has never been confirmed, though it is known that 11 parties delivered pitches to the Congress.

Paradoxically, what worked was Leo Burnett's rebuttal of the India Shining campaign in 2004 with an 'Aam Aadmi'-kind of messaging on behalf of the Congress. In 2009, the Congress buying out the rights to AR Rahman's Oscar-winning title track 'Jai-Ho ahead of Lok Sabha polls and using it extensively, worked too.

A US agency is said to be involved in Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi poll campaign, but really, has it made a difference? It is purely Modi's own persona that has stood out, as has that of the latest winner, Arvind Kejriwal.  His personal equity and ability to generate faith among voters worked.