Umeed ki cycle, Jawab hum denge, Sochiye jara, Humne to soch liya, Humne jo kaha woh kar dikhaya, Na ugahi, na goondayi, na brashtachar, hum denge saaf suthri sarkar. These are not just ad lines proclaiming the political stand of various parties in Uttar Pradesh these days, but strongly thought-out war strategies intended to kill?the opposition in this case.
Political campaigns are down to some hard, backroom tactics that can rival the heat of corporate boardrooms. The experts have been brought in to grip the mind of not only traditional voters, but also the young, tech savvy voters. Be it employing advertisement gurus and spin doctors for sleek, hard-hitting ad capsules, or getting scriptwriters to pen strategies, hiring PR agencies for publicity campaigns and image makeovers or tapping cyber space, the fight here is to get the maximum votes. After all, har ek vote
zaroori hota hai.
The Congress, which perhaps has the largest stake in UP, has hired top-notch ad agency Percept to handle its UP election campaign. The result is a series of print and electronic ads, all having different punch lines. The party kickstarted its campaign with Utho, Jaago, Badlo (Rise, Awaken and Change) and later went on to the Jawab Hum Denge line (the Congress will give a befitting reply).
Commenting on the campaign focusing on Rahul Gandhi, film star and Congress MP from Firozabad, Raj Babbar, who is also the chairman of the UP Congress media committee, says this entire election campaign is based on Rahul Gandhi. ?The reason why our ad campaign is most effective is that it has sincerity. The credibility of Rahul is unchallenged. He has a clean image and is going all out to connect with the weaker sections and people on the street. He has the vision for a healthy and development-oriented UP and is the right face to bring about change.?
In response to Congress? Sochiye jara, the BJP?s spin doctors have coined the ad Humne to soch liya, which tries to punch holes in the Congress camp, which has been going all out against the ?India Shining? campaign of the NDA regime. Says Sushil Pundit of The Hive, which has been in charge of the BJP election campaigns since 1998, ?We have models to showcase what we are promising. Gujarat, MP, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand are examples of our good work. What does the Congress have to show as its high point ? the monumental corruption unleashed by it at the Centre??
Talking about the campaign, he says another punchline of the party is Na ugahi, na goondayi, na brashtachar, hum denge saaf suthri sarkar, which hits out at all three adversaries. We are not promising the moon in our ads… just plain and simple good governance,? adds Pandit.
The Samajwadi Party, on the other hand, has based out an election campaign on the shoulders of its youth leader, Akhilesh Yadav and is aided by a team of professionals known as Team Akhilesh.
The tag line goes, Vikas ki Ganga bahane ko, Ab brashtachar hatane ko, Kranti Rath par ho savaar, Nikal pada hai Samajwad (In order to usher in development and eradicate corruption, Samajwad has hit the roads atop the Kranti Rath).
Talking to FE, a member of Team Akhilesh, said while the party has hired Mumbai-based production house Arkash for doing the audio-visual campaign for the party, the print campaign is being done by a team led by Akhilesh himself, and Goldmine is the releasing agency. ?Bhaiya (Akhilesh) is running his own ad campaign. You won’t believe it, but the punch line Nikal pada hai… has been taken by Bhaiya (Akhilesh) from his Facebook wall. Someone has written it on his wall and he liked it so much that he lifted it for the campaign.? Talking about the visual ad film Musafir, which is a 80-second poem written and narrated by Bollywood scriptwriter Nilesh Mishra, Arjun Sablok, creative head of Arkash, says the brief was very clear from Akhilesh: ?Pan out and find what is perceived to be lacking in UP and base a campaign on it?. ? The Musafir ad is what the SP imagines UP will be,? he says, adding that the phrase Umeed ki Cycle has also been coined by Nilesh after his interaction with Akhilesh. Word has it that BSP, too, has hired a PR agency for an image makeover, but no one in the party is willing to admit it. A party functionary said the party’s ads were all in-house products and that no big-ticket agency has been engaged. ?There is no reason for us to make cosmetic ads. It is their (rivals) promise versus our delivery. We are converting government decisions into ad films and print ads. We do not need to hire professional PR agencies,? he says, adding that all the ads have been commissioned to a local ad agency, Isha, on a low-cost basis.
But Mayawati’s campaign does endeavour to lift her out of the confines of a Dalit leader. There is an obvious attempt to repackage Mayawati to attract other sections of voters, particularly the youth. The image of an iron lady who wants only clean people around her has been deliberately perpetuated, as it was felt that without it, she would stand no chance,? says a senior journalist. ?Instant ads and counter-ads are being coined with the sole aim of cutting each others’ base. And apart from the usual TV clips, social networking sites, SMSs, e-mails are the new weapons of publicity,? he sums up.