May 20, 2014: The Bharatiya Janata Party which achieved a landslide victory in the 16th Lok Sabha elections saw it cornering 282 seats and with this they became the single largest party to take a stake to form the next government on its own. The success of this achievement has been attributed to the campaign that was led by Mr. Narendra Modi who was projected as the Prime Ministerial candidate by BJP. Though it was a collective effort of the team NDA but what struck a chord with the masses was the ‘Ab Ki Bar, Modi Sarkar’ and ‘Acche Din Aane Wale hein’ campaign. Such was the powerful effect of the campaign that millions voted for the party across boundaries of caste and creed.
The most powerful of these punchlines ‘Ab Ki Bar, Modi Sarkar’ saw even kids humming the tune. It was Ogilvy-Mather’s agency Soho Square which created the BJP campaign and the man behind the campaign was Piyush Pandey, Executive Chairman and Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather. The campaign helped Narendra Modi to connect to the voters like no one else and establish the brand NaMo. The agency did 200 commercials, 1,000 print ads in all languages and 100 radio scripts. The punchlines were created after doing a series of surveys and one such survey revealed that Modi had a recall of 56 per cent compared to 37 per cent for the BJP
Piyush Pandey attributes the success of the campaign to a strong product i.e. Narendra Modi. He was quoted as saying in one of the interviews which he gave to Mint, “The clincher of any campaign is the product. No campaign can sell a bad product. This one had a fantastic product in Mr. Modi and that product knew its value and communicated to people what it stood for. Everything else was surround. And the clincher is communication, which started not now but many years earlier by communicating with people through social media, by speaking to people and several other things. It’s a role model experience for any product. If the product is good, then the product must communicate. A bad product with great communication will never succeed. I think engaging people, involving people, and participation is behind the success of the Modi campaign. By which I don’t mean the Modi media campaign, but his communication with the people of India.”
Soho Square did 200 commercials, 1,000 print ads in all languages and 100 radio scripts. But Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director at Ogilvy & Mather, credits BJP’s success to the ‘fantastic product’ that it had in Modi and his ability to communicate with the people. Piyush Pandey wrote ‘Ab ki baar Modi Sarkaar’ and ‘Janta Maaf Nahi Karegi’. ‘Achche Dn Anewale Hain’ was written by Anuraag and Nilesh Jain. The cricket films were made by Manish Sherawat, an animation expert and Shoojit Sirkar made almost 10 films every night. Such was the effort of team at Soho Square that they were producing nearly 125 artworks even single night for 2 months.
