Brand Advocacy by Indian Youth for BJP in Gen Elections 2019
*Pranay Kumar
Elections in democratic countries like India considered as a market place where political parties act as brands and compete for market share. When country’s oldest political party Indian National Congress party (INC) enjoying name recognition of Nehru & Gandhi Family; Parties like BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party), SP (Samajvaadi Party), TMC (All India Trinamool Congress)& RJD(Rashtriya Janta Dal) tries to get advantage of their regional followers and vote banks. While Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with its lotus symbol has successfully created awareness and long-lasting brand image and communicated well about its unique objectives and effective marketing strategies in this general election.
A visual of party’s logo “Lotus flower” (Kamal) probably come to mind first whenever we think about them. BJP’s brand image has been strengthened very effectively through Social Media Marketing tools this time. It has been observed from various social media posts and reviews that youth of the country are motivated, influenced and done biggest advocacy for BJP during this election.
Today, PM Modi is the only youth icon and more popular than bollywood heroes like Shahrukh, Salman & Amir Khan. Now, Indian youth are more interested to post& share development and national safety issues rather than friendship and romantic quotes on Facebook & Whatsapp. This may be because BJP has built & communicate strong strategies for development, employment and national security by studying and analysing need of hours. These differentiated objectives convinced the public and provided a competitive advantage to BJP. Party has never imitated competitors but closely monitored their success and failures. Party has chosen to launch various employee generation programmes rather than offering unemployment allowances to the public. Party has also used the slogans like “Modi hai to mumkin hai” & “Main bhi Chowkidaar” very successfully. During PM’s first address after elections results, to NDA (National Democratic Alliance) parliamentarians as their leader he included trust factor in party’s trending slogan “Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas” as “Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas aur Sabka Vishwash”.
PM emphases that MPs elected as representatives of public should not differentiate between people on the basis of caste, region and religion. He further added that party is not just focusing on development but also to win trust of everyone in coming tenure.BJP has created good brand voice by taking mission, target audience and prevailing situation into the consideration, party’s voice mainly consists of honesty, development& good governance. Party has precisely analysed the requirement of change and offered which is expected from a good governance system than to offer cookie-cutter. This consistency for development and national safety in their voice has provided an emotional connection with the public and created brand loyalty for BJP which encouraged youth for posting, sharing& supporting contentsin favour of the party.
An NIT graduate from Surat and admin of Facebook page ‘NAMO 4PM’ Ravi Ghiyar stated during an interview that he started uploading and appreciating Modi’s development works on his page from 2008 as that time mainstream media was not interest to talk about and bring out Modi’s vision for development as CM of Gujrat to the public. Ravi can just be an example there are millions of youth supporting, advocating and strengthen the Brand – Modi through various Social Media platforms.
Party is not only enjoying a good brand image among youth but also getting unconditional support and advocacy from them. Party has also picked young faces like Tejasvi Surya who is the general secretary of Yuva Morchin Karnataka for MP candidate in Lok Sabha election 2019. This can also be taken as one of the youth inclusion steps by the party which help them to motivate their young party workers. Young Indian is looking at BJP as an alternative over the traditional politics those objectives, schemes and promises are very conservative and same since decades that appear incompatible with current scenario.
*Pranay Kumar is an Academician, Research Scholar and Management Consultant with experience of working with various Indian and Multinational Corporates, Banks&Educational Instituteslike Axis Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, GGS Indraprastha University, Jiwaji University and University of Delhi.
