When BJP reworks on Obama's Internet script

PUNE, INDIA: Blogs, You Tube videos, Facebook discussions, a bullet-by-bullet IT agenda and a swanky-new website. BJP's Political Campaigning is following the Obama script with full bandwidth. But there's a lot more punch that will take the script to work.

"...that a political portal without a blog is like a letter without a signature," confesses L K Advani, the BJP chieftain in his blog.

Yes! A blog by him! Where he goes on to say, "I am excited by the idea of using the Internet as a platform for political communication and, especially, for election campaign. ….I have seen how the tools of communication have evolved. As far as communication is concerned, I am technology-agnostic. My philosophy in this matter is simple: anything that works, deserves to be welcomed."

As he adds further, the Internet has many attractive attributes, but the best perhaps is that it is owned neither by the government nor by any private media groups. It is open to all and in this sense it is the most democratic of all the communication platforms invented by mankind so far.

Looks like BJP has really taken the power of Internet deadpan-seriously. All of a sudden you see them painted in a cool colour all across the Web.

There's a revamped website (www.bjp.org) with Google powered internal search engines, a brand new look, changes in speed and navigation and automatic email alerts while flooding other websites with links to the site.

And technology is not just the medium but also the agenda to woo voters for BJP this time. The party has released a 30 page IT Vision document that makes IT conspicuous by its presence as a full agenda this time.

There's BJP profile called BJP Supporter's Group with over 500 members discussing topics like coalitions, and election's agenda.

And through the new blog Advani is ruminating over subjects like 'The International message of National identity' or 'Understanding genuine secularism'.

Politics Re-branded

It's not the first time that political advertising is getting repainted. The last elections saw a grandiose advertising tussle and suddenly traditional vote-bank skirmishes changed into new-fangled ways of promising, proving and demanding real issues and results.

'India Shining Vs Aam Aadmi' set a new precedent of political blitzkrieg. The encounter turned professional with BJP battling Congress through ad agencies like Grey Worldwide and Orchard Advertising respectively.

However, with the Congress winning eventually, psephologists and other experts tried to autopsy on why NDA had lost despite a major advertising campaign. Looks like the warfare will get bigger and change a lot this time around.

And the current initial signs of onslaught show that Internet strategy could reshape political advertising. But what seems to be a good idea would travel a lot of distance before proving itself on implementation, says Ravi Chandar, a subject expert and CMD of Feedback Consulting.

“This may be inspired from Obama but it is not Obama. He really understood and leveraged the power of Internet to extents like online supporters canvassing and raising funds for him. The difference is that Barack Obama is able to view Internet beyond the current stage. For him, it's not just about getting elected but also to leverage it continuously in the future, once he has hit the connection."

Ramanujam Sridhar, former president of the Advertising Club, Bangalore and CEO, Brandcomm views the Obama route as a well-appreciated and proven one, more so because of the way it involved a large cross-section of people.

"US gave a phenomenal example of what Net can do for a category new altogether. Its follow-up by India parties shows that they are trying to say - I understand what's happening in this medium and they acknowledge its wider reach too."

Getting Young or Targetting Young?

The new incarnation of tech-savvy political campaigns points out the new vote banks that parties have now shifted focus on.

It's not only the medium that is getting uber-cool but also and possibly because of the young audience that parties now want to woo over. All the more so with recent groundswell of angst and awareness that the past year has spawned with 26/11 and recession hitting a double whammy.

Reportedly among the about 700 million eligible voters for the upcoming elections, there are 100 million first-time voters in the age group 18-24 who are well-plugged with Internet and mobiles, and it might be a new strategy to target first-time voters and younger-tech-inured audience.

About a quarter of the total electorate has typically young demographics and that explains the growing penchant for blogging, online networking and SMSing in the election campaigns.

Politicians have come to realize the power of Internet. And they better do, as Ravi Chandra illustrates with the example of a US senator, who lost for the first time in his long career, due to a small 'monkey' remark that immediately spread all over through You Tube.

Parties have thus realized how critical it is to be there in this new online world, where every student first clicks on a website to check about any subject or person.

"BJP's revamped site would be nothing short of a pleasant surprise for this audience," remarks Ramanujam Sridhar, an advertising maven and visiting professor at various IIMs.

"I am sure a shift in audience focus is happening. But it would still work in pockets and cities. The important thing is to present one's image as one with upgrades with time and is contemporary, be it the party campaigns or leaders."

How can the new script fail?

While denying possibilities that the tech-savvy attitude of Indian parties would be just a time-bound fad, Ravi Chandar warns that it won't be enough to just use technology, but also to use it smartly. Just using a cool medium won't do the trick unless the content is cool too.

"A blog needs stickiness, and today's youth needs fun cool stuff to come back to. Serious topics put them off. You have to tailor the same serious message in a different way," he adds.

Just being there on SMSs wouldn't be anything unless the messages are funny and humorous enough to read and pass on, albeit with a subtle serious message, he adds.

Targeting an audience wired into the forwarding and sharing culture online won't be the same ballgame as wooing other vote banks.

"Sites like elections.praja.in have techies as serious bloggers and today's youth would be inclined towards influencers rather than direct hits on any website or blog." he explains.

While he compliments Advani's blog for its effort and for getting a fair amount of hits already, he cites a small comparison with Obama again.

"You won't find any mention of current controversies like Rajnath's on a party's site but there was a section for Reporter's Rumor in Obama's case where he addressed the issues and refuted them. Credibility would really need to be worked on for appealing to the online audience," observes Ravi Chandar.

Source-credibility, multi-replication, viral marketing, youth-engagement, community-approach, reference-power, cool-content focus and peer influence would be the major gaps that parties would need to work on if they want the new tale to be a hit.

So who wins?

Be it BJP's IT vision or Congress' Jai Ho, as Ravi Chandar opines, the party with a winning chance would be the one that can highlight optimism and hope, specially in the kind of times we are struggling with. Optimism beyond recession, for the future would be the winning ace. "No more space for jaded subjects now."

Jaded at least now, is and should be the last word on tech-savvy leaders' minds.