Online, radio advertising wins the day for political ads

From creative banners on the homepages of leading websites to huge volumes of spots on private radio stations, the just-concluded Parliamentary polls had an unprecedented presence on the conventionally offbeat media like Internet and radio.

In fact, the very concept of political advertising took off in the country as late as 1984, when the erstwhile Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi felt that electioneering needed proper marketing and communication techniques, and he roped in Rediffusion to take care of the party's campaign that year.

It didn't take long for other parties to follow suit – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), for instance, got Trikaya Grey to do its advertising. This year, the ad spends of leading political parties during the election campaign were pegged at Rs800 crore. ($170 million).

Far from the days of using just posters and street banners, political parties now use digital, SMS, MMS and OOH quite effectively in their campaigns. The internet has more than performed its role in the elections this year. While agencies like Mindshare, which handled the Congress' media planning and buying, refuse to divulge the details of the party's total advertising expenditure, industry estimates indicate that an adspend of crores was allocated for the online media alone. ''The banners of BJP were on the homepages of not only the local, but even some UK and US-based websites a good two months before the polls. And this kind of presence costs a lot of money,'' said a senior executive from a leading Mumbai-based agency, who requested not to be named.

Some of the tech-savvy political leaders even kicked off their own blogs ahead of the polls to appeal to the youth voters. Bharatiya Janata Party's L K Advani, 81, had been updating his account of campaigning, in plodding prose, on his blog. "My party asked me to tour the entire country as a part of its mass contact programme," he kept the visitors to his blog posted.

The Congress ran a smart online campaign, in contrast to BJP's multi-crore extravaganza. There were occasional ads with the hand symbol that turned up on Yahoo and other sites, along with the usual Bollywood-style cutouts of all the main leaders. Not surprisingly, most of the leading media houses – including online media outfits - reported higher revenue generation in the fourth quarter of the previous financial year due to the elections.

Not only political parties, but even other corporate outfits saw the potential in building their marketing message around the polls to good effect. Various private companies launched websites appealing to voters to exercise their franchise. Google India went ahead and set up a full-fledged online elections centre, not to mention the number of websites that created massive online voter awareness like Indian-Elections.com, IndiaNumbers.com, Jaagore.com and IndiaVoting.com.

One much talked-about online campaign was of Pappu Raj of Bleed India fame. Pappu was the typical Indian politician – with his white Nehru cap, long white cotton robes, and his neck adorned with garlands of flowers from admiring supporters. His party, Bleed India, was an internet-only phenomenon, a satire on political corruption and incompetence, designed by a Delhi-based advertising agency Bawa Broadcasting Corporation, as part of a campaign to shake India's young middle classes out of their political apathy. The creative for the campaign was handled by Bawa, an agency led by Cyrus Oshidar of MTV fame.

But probably the most successful non-political beneficiary of a politically-charged campaign was the nationwide Jaago Re advertising campaign, sponsored by Tata Tea. The campaign kept doing the rounds urging the nation to "wake up and vote''. On the Jaago Re! website, people were encouraged to write in with details of the issues they would prefer their politicians to focus on.

FM ran too
As for FM, political parties had to advertise by the card rate, and that too was allowed only on All India Radio as far as the medium of radio was concerned. This time, the major private players in FM-Radio like Big 92.7, Radio City and Radio Mirchi were only too happy to rake in the revenues in these tough times.

For instance, Bhubaneswar's leading FM Channel, Radio Choklate, which has a 70-per cent market share in Orissa registered a 100-per cent increase in revenue from political advertisements in the month of April.

Monica Nayyar Patnaik, director, Eastern Media Ltd, the parent company for Radio Choklate 104 FM revealed that compared to April 2008, revenues in April 2009 have increased by 400 per cent, and sequential revenues for the month of April 2009 over March 2009 have increased by 100 per cent.

Private FM players, both in metros and in Tier II and Tier III cities, have benefited on account of political advertising being aired on the channels in the past one month, say industry players. BIG 92.7 FM, which has one of India's largest network stations in Tier II and Tier III cities like Visakhapatnam saw a substantial growth in revenue - 15 to 20 per cent - from political advertisements.

From national parties like Congress (I) and BJP to regional parties like Biju Janta Dal (Orissa), Prajarajyam (Andhra Pradesh), Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (Jharkhand) and Loksatta Party (Vishakhapatnam and Tirupati) and Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (Maharashtra), they all had a strong presence on the private radio channels.