BRANDING LESSONS FROM ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

 

Roadshows alone won’t win hearts

State Elections Results 2021: A Branding POV

Every election campaign is a case study for marketers and branding professionals as these campaigns are aimed at convincing a large target audience within a short period of time. At the end of the day both a brand owner and a political party is trying to ‘win hearts’ by promising a value through their product/service.  Verdict of the audience on state elections 2021 is out and here is an opportunity for marketers or brand owners to learn how the winner could reach out to the target audience convincingly and how the losers couldn’t do so. Different states went under elections just now. Maybe what we are going to analyze here is applicable to all the states but let us stick to one state, Kerala, to make the analysis shorter and clear.

Road shows alone won’t win hearts: ATL alone won’t bring customers

All the three major political parties carried out road shows, yathras and mass rallies for the election campaign. But what made the winner smart is that the CPM under the leadership of Pinarayi Vijayan used their entire party machinery to go to the ground level and talk directly with the voters. They meticulously went door to door convincing the voters about their proposition, replying on the spot to clear the doubts in the minds of the voters. BJP and the congress depended more on road shows and yathras and mass rallies to ‘win hearts’. Here is an important lesson for brand owners too. ATL advertising or mass advertising in mass media like TV can make your brand name register in the mind of the consumers but if you want to convert that consumer as your customer, then you have to find ways to connect with your target audience directly through BTL advertising too. All avenues including digital medium will have to be used to connect with the target audience directly, introduce the product/service proposition, reply to their genuine concerns and be interactive. ‘Winning hearts’ is what creates a loyal customer and winning heart is not possible through one side communication but only through interactive communication.

Brand loyalty among your employees and trade partners

Any brand to be successful has to go through different channels of participation from the brand owner, inner core of the team, partners like dealers/distributors, retailers and so on before it reaches the final customer. Only if all these channels believe in your product/ service proposition, will they promote your brand to the end consumer. The winning party in Kerala and its leader did the same with their strategy. They convinced their political partners or allies about their stand on each subject, made them believe they are one for all & all for one and at times they even corrected according to the feedback from their local partners. This resulted in creating a unified voice in their campaign and this in turn made clarity in communication for the voters. This is another lesson for any marketer or brand owner. You cannot go out there and sell your product/service directly to every end consumer. Your distribution channels or anyone who takes your product/service to the end consumer should be seen as your brand ambassador. To do that you have to convince them that they are a mutual partner in your success story and for that you are ready to hear them out and do any corrections if necessary.

Clarity in brand proposition

Any campaign to reach your target audience should have clarity in your campaign proposition. The more positive the campaign thought is, the more receptive the target audience will be. LDF had a very clear slogan as their proposition whereas the UDF and NDA had vague communication platforms. ‘URAPPANU LDF URAPPANU THUDARBHARANAM’ (Sure it is LDF, Sure it is continuity for LDF) was very clear about what they are asking for and it showed the confidence in their approach. ‘naadu nannavan UDF’ ( to make this place better, vote for UDF) is a vague statement that anyone can put forward and there was a need to clarify how they are going to do it. ‘modikkoppam puthiya keralam’ (new Kerala with Modi) is also a vague statement which is not clear about the campaign platform or the brand proposition. Here is another lesson for a marketer/brand owner. Be clear first in your mind about what you are going to propose to your target audience. Create campaign platforms which will motivate your target audience to buy your product/service through clarity in your campaign thoughts and stick to the campaign platforms throughout your campaign period. Communicate in different levels to your target audience on what you mean by your campaign platform and what they can expect from your proposition.

Believe in your campaign platform and stick to it

Once the LDF decided on the campaign platform to have the word “Sure” in their slogan it is interesting to note that every leader, whether from the main party of the LDF or the smallest party in the LDF, tried to use that word even in their local press meets. This is a great example of how your campaign thought can be made popular among the public. The campaign platform should be believed in by the brand owner first and should adamantly try to stick on it during the campaign period. Everyone associated to the brand should be motivated to believe in that thought and they should propagate it whenever they get a chance. A campaign platform should be created after long thoughts over it and once decided has to stick on it rather than changing it during the course of the campaign.

Disclaimer: Pictures downloaded from internet just as reference images.

EXIT TRADITIONAL HOARDINGS. ENTER DIGITAL WALLS.

What it means to Brands down South?

Static Advertising will change to Real-time Interactive Advertising

End of the Traditional Hoardings/bill boards

Two decades back we were amazed by the huge painted hoardings on a highway or bill boards on top of a high rise building. The people who painted such exquisite works were called artists, even the great M.F Husain was one of them. All of a sudden entered flex printing technology and all those artists went jobless and nobody even knows how they survived later on in their lives. Not everyone is a M.F Husain in any way. Every brand moved on to hoarding advertisements using flex printing and the past decade saw huge developments in such hoarding advertisements. Now we don’t know what will happen to business men, both small & big players, in this field. In every field it is inevitable that new technology will replace older ones and that is what happened to the painted hoardings of yester year. Smart brand owners would have easily adapted to the change as they will be always updated about such technological changes. But in our country, especially down South, we never really get ready for changes that come up in future due to changes in the laws of the country. Now the time has come to say good bye to the hoardings/bill boards as we see a huge change in the way the law perceives such huge hoarding constructions. After all though a horse rickshaw might seem economical, environment friendly and a low cost maintenance option, if the law does not permit it on the road we have no other way but to change our mode of transport isn’t it?

Hoardings as an advertising medium 

Hoardings are one of the biggest components of the media mix in South India now. The rise in cost of advertisements in print & electronic media and ineffectiveness of the digital marketing activities due to the absurd handling of the digital media space by spurious digital marketing agencies also have contributed to brand owners spending a huge amount from their media budget for hoardings as part of their OOH advertising campaigns.  Governments, Courts & Environmentalists have time and again warned about the dangers of the flex material used for hoardings and the danger of the huge hoarding constructions itself. While most of the major cities in North India have moved on to other methods of erecting hoardings, here in South India especially Kerala we still go on erecting even unauthorized hoardings and use every trick in the book to sell them to brand owners. Brand owners too seems to be unaware about the changing perception about such flex printed huge hoardings and are going on spending huge budgets on such advertisements. Chennai for instance had banned flex hoardings years back and they have kept such boards out of the city limits for past several years. Now the latest instance of an unfortunate death of a girl in a mishap involving a huge flex board is sending repercussions around the brand owners and the first ones to see the need to change are the biggest spenders on hoardings – film fraternity. Both Tamil and Malayalam industry leaders have come out with statements clearly against use of such hoardings in their future campaigns. Brand owners will have to follow suit not out of the need but out of the necessity to abide the law enforcement agencies.

Now what next?

We South Indians have a general attitude towards change and are well known for being late to adapt to changes most of the times. So what next for OOH advertising should be phrased as ‘what is the present’ in hoarding advertising just because world over and even in major cities in India digital bill boards have already replaced traditional hoardings? Digital bill boards are using digital images or videos to show advertisements. These are environment friendly and at the same time cost effective to both the hoarding companies and the brand owners. Cost effective for the companies erecting digital boards as they can sell same space to multiple companies. Cost effective for the brand owners because they can use a same space to advertise different messages per day or even per hour. 

Change in advertising approach

Digital bill boards are already in and it is going to stay for quite some time though the medium may change drastically along with the progress in new age technologies. For instance we may not have to wait for many years to see digital moving walls and even digital advertisements on moving vehicles as already commercial production of flexible screens have started in more developed countries. A product coming out of a screen and talking to us personally or a brand ambassador coming out of a screen on a street and talking to us about a product are not imaginary concepts any more with the advent of new age technology applications of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. So it is high time brand owners looked at these prospects and be ready to use such new mediums. What this means for your advertising strategy? A change in advertising content is inevitable as we are moving towards a digital, more interactive medium from a still image based content used in flex printed hoardings.

In shorter terms be ready to change your existing static communication content to real-time interactive communication content. This needs a lot more new set of tools & ideas to make your advertising content relevant to such new mediums. If still thinking this is not going to happen in the near future just check how many advertisements in a print medium like a newspaper or magazine you can see at least a QR code which is the basic tool to make a static print advertisement more interactive. This means even the print media which is the most static advertising message tool is adapting itself towards being interactive. Again down South most of the brands use a QR code just to divert the customer to the website or face book only to see the same advertisement displayed there where as smart brand custodians use such tools to make the customer interact with the brand or product and even initiate a purchase directly through that tool. Brand owners will have to be more focused on their idea or the story about their brand and the communication will have to be more interesting to the viewer in future rather than just announcing what the product or the brand wants to communicate. Every disruption brings in the need of new expertise and it is time to think how to adapt to this future challenge.