I&B aligns ad campaign with Rahul Gandhi's poll pitch

NEW DELHI: With just a month left for the election code of conduct to kick in with announcement of poll dates, the information and broadcasting (I&B) ministry has aligned its campaign with that of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi to focus on the youth. The ministry will introduce a new series of advertisements talking about the freedom of speech and diversity of opinion that has been possible through the boom in media whether television, community radio or social media. The campaign will be beefed up by an independent series of animated advertisements for social media.

"We are planning a new set of advertisements that will focus on the growth of the entire spectrum of information revolution in the last 10 years. While it has been a private sector initiative, the government has been an enabler in the process,'' I&B minister Manish Tewari said.

The UPA growth story in the last 10 years has been the recurrent theme in the Bharat Nirman campaign. The new campaign is to target the hardline, intolerance towards media that rival parties are linked with. The Congress campaign focuses on "yuva soch" and "yuva josh'' (youthful thinking and enthusiasm) to highlight Gandhi as a young leader in sharp contrast to BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.

The ministry also plans to introduce a set of animation advertisements that are targeted at the youth. "We want to use a variety of tools to get our message across,''I&B secretary Bimal Julka said. The series that is likely to be introduced this week is targeted at younger people between 18-30 years of age, who are constantly online and prolific users of social media.

The Bharat Nirman campaign has transitioned from talking about a rights-based approach which focused on individual government schemes like MNREGA, RTI, RTE and healthcare, to looking at the country's development in a holistic manner over a period of 10 years. "We are looking at the broad contours of growth not specific policies or schemes in this phase,'' the minister added. The tagline accompanying the advertisements is "jan jan ko chua, jan jeevan badla".

The ministry will spend Rs 75 crore in the next one month and the campaign will be spread over radio, TV, print, billboards. The government said it has spent Rs 102 crore in the campaign first and second phase.