Marketing strategies behind Narendra Modi Election Victory in 2014

Narendra Modi campaign team has used some very innovative and timely decisions that have helped give high visibility and add potent muscle to the election campaign. Here are some of the marketing strategies behind Narendra Modi victory in 2014 that have worked.

6 Marketing strategies behind Narendra Modi Election Victory in 2014

1 – Understanding Consumer Insights

We always say that marketing Strategies has to be based on consumer insights. Recently, you must have seen advertisements of Fogg deodorants where they differentiate themselves from competition saying that we are ‘All deodorant. No gas” vis-a-vis its competitors. This something they learned through consumer research. Similarly, the campaign managers of the BJP conducted consumer research. They found that the brand value of Narendra Modi is much higher than that of the Bhartiya Janta Party. Therefore, they took the decision to project Narendra Modi instead of projecting BJP or the NDA in all their campaigns.

2 – Getting the Best Minds on Board

Second, they hired the best-known names in Indian advertising. Sam Balsara, Prasoon Joshi, Piyush Pandey. These people have a wealth of experience behind them. They have run successful campaigns with hundreds of brands in their lives. And They took sentimentality out of the picture and looked at this as a business. They decided that their client was the Bhartiya Janta Party. If BJP was any other brand, how would they sell? Having these experienced senior people like the trio certainly helped.

3 – Catchy Slogan

There are slogans in Marketing Strategies. Nike has ‘Just do it’. Similarly, Bhartiya Janta Party decided to have a catchy slogan. ‘Ab ki Bar, Modi Sarkar’. It was extremely catchy. It was also easy on the tongue. Everybody could say it. Even the non-Hindi speakers could understand what it stood for and they could easily articulate it. So, it resonated with everybody.

4 – Integrated communications campaign

This involves the use of multiple methods of media but the message you send out should be a unified one. This was done brilliants by the Bhartiya Janta Party and their campaign managers. The message was Brand Modi and what he stood for. They ran TV ads, print ads, radio ads, they used YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.  So they targeted different audiences and segments, used TV to reach the average man. And they used the Internet to reach out to the youngsters who are online most of the time. They reached rural people through road shows and rallies. Narendra Modi himself addressed hundreds of rallied throughout the country and he also has a great ability to communicate. As similar to Bill Clinton He had an innate tendency to connect with the audience. I see the same thing with Narendra Modi victory in 2014.

5 – Word of Mouth

There was a clear perception that Modi was a doer. He could get things done. So there was a widespread perception that there was a policy paralysis with the previous government. Modi and his team took advantage and leveraged his image as a doer. Even things like word of mouth and viral hits like Kolaveri Di did not use any marketing. So that it just spread among people. There are a lot of migrant laborers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh worked in Gujarat and when they went back home, they spread positive word of mouth about Narendra Modi and his team.

6 – Database Marketing Strategies

Particularly in important states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. So that what the campaign managers did was collect huge database and they worked on reaching out directly to the people. It also greatly helped that the opposition ran a very lackluster campaign run by the opposition party. All these factors mentioned above resulted in a landslide victory. While advertising and marketing alone did not help, but in my view, they were major contributors.