Mumbai : How does one craft a winning marketing strategy when your brand’s target group (TG) is basically every 18+ out there, and when the entire country of over a billion is potentially your consumer base? Former Leo Burnett president-North and the author of "Don't Forget 2004: Advertising Secrets of an Impossible Election Victory" Jayshree Sundar gives us the lowdown, in an exclusive in-depth conversation with IndianTelevision.com.

Having worked extensively across all sectors including auto, FMCG, durables, and government in her advertising career of over two decades, Sundar got a shot at working on a political campaign in late 2003. And not just any, but for the grand old party of Indian politics - the Congress party.

Circa December 2003:  The Congress party had taken a drubbing in three state elections, and the AB Vajpayee-led BJP government was on a roll with its ‘India Shining’ campaign. And to make matters worse for the party, who had been out of power for nine years, the 2004 Lok Sabha elections loomed large in less than five months’ time.

Yes, the scenario is not much different from today when the national party has faced a rout in pretty much every one of the five states during the recently concluded assembly elections.

Nobody expected the national party to even matter in the final reckoning, much less pull off a resounding, surprise victory in May 2004. It’s the quintessential story of an underdog ‘brand’ taking on and winning against a mighty opponent in a segment it has been completely written off, to make election and marketing history.

Sundar reveals the core differences when it comes to political advertising versus regular brand advertising, while also giving us an insight into what she would do differently if she were to redo the campaign today.

Edited Excerpts:

On the core difference between political advertising and regular brand advertising

At the very basic level, both are the same. Because, you have to find the right set of consumers, you have to target a specific set of consumers and you have to get your brand messaging correct. But there are many differences.

Firstly, a general election comes once in five years. And what you are really looking for is the consumer or the voter who will go out on the voting day and cast their vote. Here, there is one vote for one person and there is no difference between rich-poor, man-woman, rural-urban, old-young. Every vote is the same, unlike in your normal brands where you have your heavy users, medium users, light users, and non-users. But here every voter is equal.

Secondly, in political advertising, there is no repeat purchase. So if you miss your voter on the D-day, because they haven't been motivated enough to go out to vote- it's over and out. Your campaign, your messaging, your persuasion, the relevance of your messaging have to be so sharp and so good that on the voting day the person is motivated enough to go out and cast their ballot.

Also, on-ground activations and the scale of execution in a political campaign are huge. It has to go down to the last village - from stickers to posters, to wall paintings et al. So, if you're executing a creative campaign, it's a lot of work right down the line, because your consumer could be sitting in a tiny village somewhere. And, we know that more of rural India goes to vote than urban India. So you cannot say, I’ll only focus on metros and mini-metros. You have no such choice in political campaigns.

Another thing is, like how brands have a brand ambassador, in a political campaign having a brand ambassador- and by that I mean the leadership face- is very important. Without a leadership face, the voter is left confused- ‘Who am I voting for?’ So, it's crucial to announce that name.

Likewise, the slogan is critical. Getting a good slogan with good currency with the public, which becomes a part of the popular lingo, like 'Yes, We Can,' 'Let's Make America Great Again' etc is key. And it's complex, because every state is different, and has different issues at stake. So, yes, those are some of the core differences between a regular and a political campaign.

On how they went about reaching out to the entire country as target group

This was, without doubt, the largest target audience one is ever going to deal with and the largest target audience in the world: An Indian general election. If you have to reach out to everybody 18 plus and hope that they will vote for you, that goes to over a billion people in India. And obviously, you cannot reach a billion people because then, in media terms, you will need endless money. We had to get going, with a very limited budget. So obviously we knew upfront that we are not going to be able to do that. So then out of that, who do you carve out as your 'primary target group' and what you want to message them becomes critical.

From the research, we found out that in semi-urban and rural areas there were clusters of consumers who were completely untouched by the NDA’s ‘India Shining’ campaign. And these were four clusters. These clusters were the unemployed youth waiting for jobs, women which were 48.5 per cent of the population then, but felt very unaddressed. Then there were the farmers who were struggling with high loan rates etc, and then there was the middle-class. So, this was the group of people we carved out. This was the unserved, unaddressed market, which, therefore, we needed to get in and address. That’s how the core strategy was formed.

On what was the most daunting part of the campaign and the job at hand

The whole job in its entirety, I would say. The first daunting part of the job was to crack a winning strategy that would make it past the competitive field of eight agencies who were pitching.

And, the second one was the huge scale of execution. And also the fact that everything had to be kept top secret- that was the one mandate from their side that nothing should leak out. So, we had to put in a lot of checks and balances to make sure of that. All this was unlike any other regular brand campaign.

On comparing the media strategy for a political campaign then & now - Would there be any change in the media mix today?

Yes, there will definitely be a change. The big differentiator today in the media plan would, of course, be social media and mobile. Today there are over a billion mobile screens in India, so we can roughly make an estimate that almost every voter has a mobile. And post-pandemic, the screen time of Indians has gone up drastically. It is now one potent device on which everything happens- work, entertainment, shopping, and social media. And the numbers are mind-boggling. Facebook, for example, in India has over close to 500 million subscribers, quickly followed by YouTube, which is another 300-400 million, and then WhatsApp. Instagram is also catching up. With all of this put together, the main difference social media has brought in is: it's a two-way communication medium.

In the case of mass media, you put it on TV or print, but it's one way- a brand talking to its consumer base. With social media, if I'm a brand or a political party and I'm targeting you, I send you something you can reply to me- there is a connection you can have. You can even do live streaming. And, now with digital coming in, it’s a whole different ball game. If you have the right data you will not have analysis paralysis if you are mining your data properly. As they say, data is the new oil, and if you mine the data properly you can penetrate deep down to the last polling booth. And you can actually have two-way communication and, you know, get to your voter directly.

Having said that, I must add that the mobile split or the internet split between rural and urban India is still skewed towards urban. Though rural is getting there gradually, it's 30 per cent connected as of now. So just going the social media/digital way would be a bit off the mark. For instance, for a farmer who’s in a field in a village all day, or the woman who's cooking in a little hut somewhere - they actually listen to the radio. So you would need to use the radio and go on TV, while print being expensive as a medium one would have to use prudently. However, you cannot ignore mass media or do away with them completely.

But yes, today one would have to put quite a big chunk of money on digital and social media.

On what has changed today, as far as ‘audience appeal’ is concerned

Today's consumer is very invested in politics. As I say, politics is the new entertainment. While we always heard India has two religions, which is Bollywood and cricket, I think now there’s a third, which is politics. The kind of interest there is, whether it's programming on TV, or YouTube, or social media, like foot soldiers who are making messages, there's so much investment and so much noise and buzz. Like when the country was going through the five assembly elections recently, all of India was glued to the results on counting day. It's got all the elements for excitement- there's protagonist, there's antagonist, there’s incumbency, non-incumbency, there are brand ambassadors, there’s a mystery in the run-up to the result day.

And to answer your questions specifically, you would find some of the issues are the same-  rising prices, unemployment, women’s issues, education, poverty -these are some of the issues that get taken out, year on year. And in some way, you'll find that they are big issues even today.

On what she would do differently if she had to redo the campaign in today's times

I wouldn't do too much differently, but definitely, I would have a big piece on social media and then have had fun in creativity with our slogan 'Aam Aadmi Ko Kya Mila' on social media. If you're doing an anti-incumbency campaign, you need to raise the right questions. I can imagine the kind of buzz it would have created today. It was a non-negative and honest campaign. Also, in political campaigning, you can't just keep saying the other party is bad. The whole picture has to be complete, so you need to give the other side of it- like, what will you do if you come to power.  

And for digital, we would need to go to influencers because they have a really large following. So I would pick and choose the influencers who would dovetail with our idea, and enlist their services as well.

On the objective behind penning it all down now - more than 15 years later

Firstly, although it's 15 years, there've been only three general elections in between. Having said that, yes, it's a long time since 2004. But I thought I will do such a disservice to my industry, to my profession, to the world of advertising, marketing, branding, politics, and even to the history of India if we just kept this totally among myself and my team. Such a big case study happened and, if nobody knew it wouldn't be right. Because this, in many ways, was the advent of political branding and advertising in India. 2004 had two amazing campaigns pitted against each other- ‘India Shining’ and 'Aam Aadmi Ko Kya Mila.'

It was something that was so integrated. I teach the subject of integrated marketing communications, which is the 360-degree approach to when advertising moved beyond just television, print, radio, and other things like internet, gaming, activation, and on-ground events. And this was a typical first INC campaign of India. So I thought it was important to tell the story about this milestone. And when the pandemic happened it all just came together.

Of course, I didn't write it like a boring case study, a textbook with bar charts and pie charts. I wanted to write it like a fast-paced thriller because I wanted to engage a lot more people than just the B-schools and students- basically, everybody who likes a good story.

On the lessons learnt from the campaign as an advertiser

As an advertiser, the lesson learned is to get your consumer right. Because if you don't tug at the heartstrings of the consumer, if the campaign has no relevance to him or her, they're not going to listen to you or go out to vote on that day.

Our biggest contribution was the background research and strategy built-up on the basis of solid consumer insights, which went into coining the winning slogan 'Aam Aadmi Ko Kya Mila,' and set the tone for the rest of the campaign. Hence, have a strong strategy in place and just stick to your plan and go ahead.

So definitely in advertising, one has to, first of all, find out who's the consumer that one wants to target and have to get the messaging right. And that has not changed and will never change.