Poll strategies for Punjab assembly elections

Political parties in Punjab India have started preparing for the assembly elections two years away. While SAD and BJP alliance would be contesting under the leadership of Sukhbir Singh Badal  having  the senior Badal as the chairman. This allaince would be presenting its performance record to the voters and hope to engineer a better on the ground poll management. From the Marketing perspective, SAD would have to offer something NEW to attract the floating voters in Punjab known for changing loyalties every five years. SAD would do well to engage a profesional market research company to find out the mood of the masses while going into elections.

Indian National Congress in Punjab has yet to decide its state ledership. Perhaps the party belives that it can win elections in Punjab on the strength of Manmohan Singh and the Gandhis' chrisma coupled with the anti incumbancy factor. It would be very naive to go for state elections without a powerful leader. Congress certainly would have learnt some lessons from their defeat in Gujrat and victory in Andhra pradesh. Strong state leadership is imperative in Indian scenario to win elections. Congress could hope to defeat Modi by offering a NEW leader in Gujrat who has the chrisma.

I believe the state congress would do well by offering a NEW package to the people to enhance its chance of victory in Punjab polls. Punjab and India has changed and moved on from the segmentations based on rigid caste and religion lines. It would make a better marketing sense if Congress in Punjab opens up the leadership role to every community and declare that anyone from any community could be the next Chief Minister of Punjab.

The choices are many infront of the PPCC for the next Chief Minister of Punjab. Its time we have a new face in the driver's seat in Punjab. As a political marketing profesional my research indicates that such a move could ensure the congress government in the next term in Punjab.

The Illusion of the End - Baudrillard

When ice freezes, all the excrement rises to the surface. And so, when the dialectic was frozen, all the sacred excrement of the dialectic came to the surface. When the future is deep-frozen – and, indeed, even the present – we shall see all the excrement come up from the past.

The problem then becomes one of waste. It is not just material substances, including nuclear ones, which pose a waste problem but also the defunct ideologies, bygone utopias, dead concepts and fossilized ideas which continue to pollute our mental space. Historical and intellectual refuse pose an even more serious problem than industrial waste.


Who will rid us of the sedimentation of centuries of stupidity? As for history – that living lump of waste, that dying monster which, like the corpse in Ionesco, continues to swell after it has died – how are we to be rid of it?

(Baudrillard 1994, p.26)

Rahul Gandhi way of marketing

Rahul Gandhi is a sincere young leader that India needs. But we have to see how many youth follow his path to find meaning in life. Rahul could win from almost anywhere in India almost unopposed. But can we say that he can successfully spawn an entire generation of sincere dedicated leaders like him? Probably he understands it that’s why he ends up with strange bedfellows in various states.


Rahul Gandhi is a kind of leader that we need direly. But if he could create even 100 leaders who are even fifty percent like him then India would surely become a world power and Rahul would be known as a greater Gandhi than the Mahatma. Can you do it Rahul?

Why MBAs lack aptitude for management ?

Despite large quantity of MBAs coming out of various institutes & b-schools the industry generally bemoans the shortfall in supply of trained professionals. Why do the new MBAs lack the industry relevant skills to enhance their employability quotient? Reasons are many fold encompassing syllabus, non-availability of teachers, lack of exposure and a general absence of aptitude.

The students who join the MBA & PGP courses are not to be blamed only; it is the manner the course curriculum is delivered. Firstly MBA cannot be taught in group settings alone as it is against the basic principle of adult learning. Students coming from different backgrounds must be taught separately. The lack of exposure of the teachers to the business complicates the matter further. Therefore the teacher ends up teaching MBA students as if they were doing some accountancy or economics studies. Lecture after lecture continue without learning about the industry and business domain.

How could a student study the marketing of passengers’ vehicles without knowing the name of major players and the product mix? Umpteen numbers of teachers discuss Coca Cola Pepsi etc in the classrooms without knowing the turnover of these companies. We, the teachers, must bring industry knowledge into the classroom if we wish to produce a student that could be employed in some industry.

Political advertising lessons from Haryana

Communications is part of the product experience. But still you millions of smart products failing in the market due to poor communications. And sometime poor products succeed on the basis of some great communications. Political parties also face the same situation in their pursuit of influencing the voters’ mind.

Before October 13 election day in Haryana most political pundits, and all Congress men, were talking about the sure shot victory of Hooda government. Strategically speaking Hooda government would have won the elections by better tally if they had not messed up their own campaign.

On September 1, 2009 my opinion on the possible defeat of Hooda government had appeared in the Times of India Chandigarh edition. And it has been proven. I still insist that political marketing should be left to political marketing professionals otherwise the political parties could lose a perfectly winnable election.

Hooda government had done good work and could have managed a better election result only if they had not gone for the ill advised Haryana No 1 campaign and would have maintained a low profile.

Beware of No.1 Advertising

The Haryana number one campaign by the state government may hurt its prospects of winning the next election scheduled for October 13. Though the incumbent Congress government led by Mr. Bhupinder Singh Hooda may have done good work in the state and also the disarray in the opposition ranks certainly would work in favor of party victory but lack of professional handling of political advertising may jeopardize its chances of an election victory. The late august advertising campaign by the public relations department of Hooda government goes against the time tested principles of advertising. Marketing thrives on innovation and freshness of the campaign theme. The present campaign lacked both. It was no different than ‘India shining’ campaign of NDA government.

There are approximately 1.20 Crore eligible voters in the state for ninety assembly constituencies. The august advertising campaign tried to target all of them in the crude mass marketing manner by employing all the traditional media of print, television and the radio waves. The marketing agency responsible for planning and execution of the campaign followed one-size-fits-all approach by bombarding all the sub segments of the electorate with the same message and frequency.

There have been many studies that suggest that the incumbent party should spend less than the challenger party for success in elections. A vast majority of such studies have been carried in America that has two party systems. Similar researches in the European democracies that have multi party systems like India also point to the same outcome. The winner’s curse or what’s otherwise known as anti incumbency also puts the burden of proof of delivering good governance and economic progress for a majority squarely at the incumbent party’s doorstep. Anti incumbency in Indian context operates majorly at the level of party in government than for an individual politician. Study of various factors that influence the probability winning in India reveals that for an election victory the candidate’s own appeal has less role to play in comparison to the party appeal. Similarly the anti incumbency also works more severely at the party level than at the candidate level.

Does the Hooda government think that all sub segments of Haryana population have benefitted equally in the 

last five years of their government? If the answer is how it could be so, then why not take a carefully calibrated approach to segmentation and message appeal and frequency. Large number of eligible voters may have benefitted from the current government but surely a vast majority would still have been left out. And those who are left out may react negatively to the claims of prosperity in the neighborhood and express their disapproval by voting against the incumbent government. Such voters tend to react less sharply if they hear less stories of development and may vote for future promise of good governance. Moreover opening critical message appeal card well ahead of the elections gives the challenger to prepare better in their rebuttal of the government claims. Therefore Congress party in Haryana would do well by focusing less on their past and talk about future plans.

It happened to NDA government too in 2004. The NDA government lost despite good performance and the ‘India Shining’ campaign. Mr. Vajpayee led government had a reasonably good track record of performance but they went overboard in their advertising proclamations of their achievements without regard to the fact that it is not really possible for a government at the centre or states to bring some benefits of progress to a majority of the voter citizens in a five year term. And when the governments go on claiming their high achievements, they actually end up adding insult to the injury, because for the larger segment of the voters the life is not comfortable.

India still remains a developing country with vast majority of poor population having access to mass media that regularly reminds them of their real condition in comparison to the others within the country and globally. The success of saas-bahu serials has queered the pitch for such brash self projection political advertising. The citizen voters’ exposure to saas-bahu serials reminds them of their own poverty and living conditions. Such programming due to its own compulsions has to be about the economically well off strata of our society, so that the viewers could aspire for that living style. It is not the behavior or the moral values of these saas-bahus characters that keeps these serial rolling endlessly for years but their projected life style that attracts the viewers who aspire to live like them. A rich household, expansive saaris and lots of gold jewellery are enough for most of our Indian women to die for.

India has distinction of consuming almost of twenty five percent of the global production of gold every year. But how many Indian households have gold in their possession? So please remember that when you are claiming big in your mass advertising it could lead to severe negative reaction amongst the targeted audience. Had the NDA government used the ‘India Shining’ campaign with a lower frequency and after a careful segmentation of the voters the results would have been much better. The Haryana government could learn from history and also from the Congress party campaign of 2009.

It has become a routine for the union and the state governments in India to release advertisement campaign in the media to showcase the achievements of the party in power. Such campaigns are funded by the public relations department or some other such constituent of the government that has been allocated funds for promotion. Most often the incumbent party goes overboard in its claims of achievements to positively influence the eligible voter citizens. They are being no different than an average commercial advertiser that promises a lot more than they could deliver. But how many products get a successful reception in the market is anybody’s guess. How could an election promise have a different outcome under the same conditions?

Though political and social organizations have taken to advertising for marketing themselves and to promote their programs. But most such organizations have not learnt the technique and skills to use such a potent marketing tool. Therefore even when the party or the individual invests a significant part of their budget on promotions still they have no clue to estimate its effect. Several measurement techniques are available in the business management literature to estimate the impact of advertising campaign effects in the market. The political parties and individuals hardly take the trouble to go for such a study post elections.

An advertising campaign needs to be designed on the basis of carefully laid out qualitative and quantitative criteria for achievement of the planned objectives. Therefore a seasoned professional would be required to manage the promotions. Unfortunately a politician would rather believe the judgments of the party based media managers or professional journalists who certainly may not have any specialist expertise of how the advertising works. Political organizations would do well by outsourcing their marketing completely to an independent agency. That would ensure an optimally calibrated approach to quality and quantity parameters in the communications. It would also lead to a greater efficiency in advertising and fixation of responsibility.

Gurinder S Ahluwalia is a marketing consultant and Director GNAIMT, Phagwara, Punjab. guriahluwalia@gmail.com

'Shining Claims' would not work in elections