Click to play videoMumbai: BJP’s India Shining campaign was meant to be the campaign that put an end all campaigns.
“The brief that was given to us was to catalyse India. Get India to have economic confidence and the people to believe in the country,” adman Prathap Suthan said.
But all it ended was the NDA government's tenuous hold on power.
“Advertising works but you need a good product. If you use advertising to sell a bad product it kills it even faster,” CMD, Madison Communications, Sam Balsara explained.
History repeated itself with the Samajwadi Party's attempts to prove that UP mein jurm kam hai but that too didn’t work wonders for Mulayam Singh’s government.
Clearly, political advertising hasn't worked in India.
“You can't believe politicians no matter how well they package the product,” a student said.
But then who has learnt lessons from history, especially when you are a politician and therefore a product that's trying to market itself.
When the Congress was in Opposition, the same politicians had dismissed India Shining as a Cherry Blossom ad. Today, they have teamed up with a leading ad agency to start their own campaign.
At a cost of between Rs 50-80 crore, it will run across radios, television sets and billboards across the country.
A newly created publicity fund will use between 0.5 per cent to 1 per cent of the money allocated for each of the programmes advertised, blithely disregarding a recent CAG report that states that money for these schemes has already been grossly misspent.
While the campaign is officially meant to highlight various schemes like Bharat Nirman or the Sarvashiksha Abhiyan, the timing leaves no doubt that it owes its existence to the mid-term polls looming large on the political horizon.
(With inputs from Seemi Pasha)
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