AAP’s strategy, not ad budget, helped party win; Party didn't hire any PR agency for polls

NEW DELHI/KOLKATA: An advertising campaign that harnessed the resources of volunteers and used the media cleverly played a key role in the Aam Aadmi Party’s unprecedented election victory in Delhi, say ad industry executives. While sources say the BJP spent close to Rs 60 crore on advertising during the assembly election, the AAP got a bigger bang for much less through its campaign that comprised radio and outdoor advertising and lots of social media activities.
Media planners say it was AAP’s strategy and not its advertising budget that helped the party battle the Goliath. While its media plan included radio, outdoor campaigns, on ground activities and social media, BJP’s advertising was carried primarily over print, outdoor, social media and onground outreach programmes.

The AAP didn’t hire any agencies for advertising, public relations or any other form of communication and used an in-house team to craft its messages, and banked on its volunteers to execute the communication strategy. BJP’s campaign was planned by professional firms Madison Media and Soho Square.

Radio was the driving factor in this assembly election. According to a top executive of a private FM channel, the BJP, AAP and Congress spent Rs 12-15 crore on radio. “The AAP spent Rs 3.5 crore, BJP spent Rs 7.5 crore and Congress spent Rs 1.5 crore. If we also add the money spent in November then the total goes to Rs 15 crore,” he said.

Dilip Pandey, AAP’s Delhi secretary, claimed that the party’s advertising spending was only in lakhs. “The trick was to start our campaign early,” he said.

The party formed a Delhi Election Campaign Group back in October, which had Arvind Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Dilip Pandey, Sanjay Singh, Gopal Rai and 10 others as members. It drew support from celebrities such as actor Gul Panag, who did a motorcycle campaign in the national capital, and music composer Vishal Dadlani, who composed its theme song ‘ 5 Saal Kejriwal’, which was also the punch line for the advertising campaign.

Kunal Jeswani, chief executive of O&M that created ads for the BJP for the Delhi election, declined to comment.

The AAP campaign had several elements which led to this result, said Santosh Desai, CEO of Futurebrands.

“With ‘5 saal Kejriwal’, they positioned Kejriwal as an administrator rather than an agitator, apologised for their mistake and promised not to repeat it,” Desai said. “The campaign was extremely strategic and the party drew lessons from the previous year. It was a pointed and a very clean campaign, where they did not run down individuals on the other side. They focussed on a no confrontational campaign where a lot of ground work was done and personal contacts made.”

AAP’s Pandey said the party crowd sourced ideas from its Delhi Dialogues, but every part of the campaign was done in-house. It focused on radio campaign massively. It claims to have purchased airtime for radio spots in advance, even before the election dates were announced.

According to the AAP, the scripts for the radio spots were written by its members. “Even the recording of radio ads was done by the party members. Some of those ads were recorded on our phones. It was a zero-production-cost campaign,” Pandey added.

Hari Krishnan, managing director of Zenith Optimedia, said the AAP used radio very cleverly so that people didn’t miss the messaging. “If there was a commercial break going on, on one station with an advertisement of AAP, the other channel also had a spot for AAP so that whichever channel the listener switches to, there is an AAP spot,” he said.

According to a senior media planner, radio is an extremely cheap medium in comparison to print at the entry level. “Even if we compare the on-ground activities of both parties, the technology that BJP used to support its on ground outreach programme is extremely expensive. In comparison to this, AAP distributed leaflets and went door-to-door,” he said.