Election results 2019 of the world’s largest democracy is out and once again the BJP team has come on top.BJP has amassed a total of 304 whereas NDA grossed over 350 in a total of 543 seats. The opposition has been annihilated and has become speechless.
A look back at the marketing lessons that we can learn from this victory
1)Strong brand aids decision making
Amit Shah on 23rd evening addressed BJP supremo as world’s most popular leader. This is definitely right if you take into account the verdict that 90 crore Indian voters gave in 2019 general elections
A Stronger brand reduces confusion in customer minds. At the decision-making stage, when the customer picks brands he wants to make a safe and assured choice
BJP as a party has grown big and huge over the last 5 years under the charismatic leadership of Modi. Modi remains the strongest personal brand in India. Love him or hate him there is no denying that he is most popular PM India has ever seen. Everybody has an opinion about him and everyone wants to ride on his popularity.
In the last 5 years, BJP has become Modi and Modi has become BJP. The election campaign had become a sort of a presidential campaign. Mahagathbandhan formed as an alternative of stopping Modi posed a great threat in taking away a chunk of seats away from BJP in UP heartland. Congress, a pale of their past had not strong personal brands to speak of. Rahul Gandhi, although reinvented himself in the last 1-2 years couldn’t pose any serious threat to Modi brand. Nor could a series of local leaders like Mamta, Chandrababu Naidu etc
People needed to make a safe choice, Modi and BJP provided that safe and only alternative
2)Research cues properly before setting out customer campaigns
Campaign issues should be well thought and researched before going full hog
Rahul Gandhi Congress campaign of “chowkidaar chor hai” was a poor campaign to start with.
As per the NSSO report, Joblessness is at an all-time high of 6.1 %. Did Congress miss a point of not making this into the main campaign?
Demonetisation was definitely a sore point of last 5 years Modi rule and looking back maybe that should have been brought back into people’s memory
Another campaign highlight would have been the farmer story of rural India, But Congress ignored all these issues and took a non-issue to make as the central campaign theme
3)Brand architecture needs clarity
Every brand needs a vision and purpose to appeal to the customer.
Congress and mahaghatbandhan had no vision and purpose to start with. Their purpose was to stop Modi from coming back to power and not good governance.
When people looked at UPA, they had no leader to speak of. Everyone was a leader and no one other than Stalin of DMK openly declared Rahul Gandhi as PM candidate
This lack of clarity clearly hurt their chances of coming close to BJP
4)Story Telling is very important: Play to your strengths
Every brand needs to understand and play to its strengths and tell that story well
BJP in the last 5 years had their own share of strengths and weakness. But they played to their strengths well
They picked up strong points like nationalism, attack over Pakistan, government schemes like Jhandhan and Ayushman scheme
These became a highlight in every BJP campaign. The weakness of opposition was brought out clearly by BJP leaders at all rallies across the country. With a clear plan meant they were silent on their weaknesses
5)Innovative marketing:-
Modiji has been already bestowed with the Kotler marketing award.it is a reality that Rahul and his team are far off in this marketing domain
With the code of conduct coming into place, BJP brought in innovative mediums like the non-political interview with Akshay Kumar, Namo TV, and movie about Modi. The movie could not be released but BJP was always much ahead in their thought leadership. They found creative ways of communicating to their TG and found the opposition wanting most of the times