AD-WARs BJP

If you have attended any marketing lectures, you will know the best about the ideal of marketing. In a perfect world, taking a dig at your competitors would be considered unhealthy and unethical. But then, such people who look upon this world from the haloed spheres don;t necessarily descend down to put some sense. So why bother.

I think most of the people would remember the saga of the Sprite-Dew ads which rolled out a couple of years back till Coca Cola bought sprite and deprived us on some healthy gimmicks. Anyway, one ad in particular by Sprite played out like this:-

( Punk kid with an afro enters the shop and in his funky accent, asks for a dew)

Shopkeeper:- Arey, don't do yahaan, do Jhaadhi ke peeche.

Guy-I want the DEEWww man...i wanna dewww....

Shopkeeper;-Arey, kaha na..don't do yahan, do jhaadi ke peeche

So, this ad is one of the memorable ads which bought out the beauty inherit to the Indian Ad industry. Do you think, if the ad focused more on why I should buy carbonated sugar water by probably having a heroine stick her lips round the bottle neck, it would have made such an impact. No, humans like humour and entertainment, even if it involves two people throwing muck at each other. 

So, let dig into the new BJP's(Bhartiya Janta Party) advertisment campaign. If you saw those ads , you wouldn't only appreciate the humour involved but also the timings. In middle of a world cup match between  India and Pakistan, you have cartoon ads featuring animated characters involving cricket, bantering about political moral righteousness. If that is not character assassination, than what is. 

One of the ads features a toss at the beginning of a Cricket match, with one of the team captains waiting with the umpire for the other captain to come out. It then shows the other captain being absent altogether. Umpire announce "Bina captain ki team kayegi maat...isiliye abki baar...Modi sarkar"...the tongue in cheek expressions aren't just about humour, but a very firm message to the public. This is how you market yourself, because I am pretty sure , pictures of people throwing freebies at people isn't so appealing as Rahul Gandhi envisaged.