Deepika Padukone and Narendra Modi

Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister, and his party BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) won a handsome mandate and another term of five years. The party and the Prime Minister have been branded as nationalist, and their religious overtures criticized. The Modi/BJP critics miss an important point.

The science of marketing talks about ‘product’ and ‘brand’ as two different concepts. The product offers sensory benefits to the consumer, but not an emotional appeal. We wouldn’t enjoy Colgate in the morning, or be proud of the i-phone in the pocket, if those products were nameless and without massive advertising/marketing support. A company’s brand management analyses and segments the market, identifies the target consumers, and devises brand muscles to appeal emotionally to each segment.

Politics is no exception. Each political party wants to maximize its market share. BJP did a competent market analysis and identified Hindutva (Hinduness) as a brand muscle. It’s not a product feature, but an emotional brand appeal. Kodak used nostalgia to bond with the consumers (Kodak moment) and could charge 20% more than Fuji, an identical film. I don’t think Advani, Modi, or Thackeray gave a damn as to whether a temple existed earlier in place of Babri. But in the BJP marketing campaign, the use of ‘Babri moment’ raised its brand appeal dramatically. गर्व से कहो हम हिंदू है (“Say with pride I am a Hindu”) or मंदिर वही बनायेंगे (“That’s the place where temple will be built” – meaning at the place of the Babri Mosque) were excellent copy-lines developed by copywriters unknown to us. (That some brand custodians went ahead and destroyed the Babri Masjid was a step too far, as far as marketing campaigns are concerned. It’s as bad as Pepsi management putting cockroaches in Coke bottles.)

The same marketing science tells us that brands can’t succeed or sustain their success unless the product is great. Remember Tata Nano? It had everything going great for it. Promised to be the cheapest car in the world, it had the Tata name prefixed to it. Ten years ago, it received worldwide publicity, with an upscale Nano at the Geneva motor show. Where is Nano today? Extinct. Because the concept was great, but the product performance was lousy. It didn’t meet the consumer expectations. In Politics, I would compare Nano to Aam Aadmi Party, great concept, horrible performance.

Which brings me to the Indian voters and product benefits. In the twenty-first century, the Indian voter has reached a level of maturity, where she looks first and foremost for product benefits. How will voting for a particular party improve her family’s well-being? In the case of the Loksabha elections, which party will offer better governance, growth and development prospects for improving her life?

 Saffron flags, Cow vigilantism, Sadhvi Pragya are the marketing tools based on the Hindutva muscle. Similarly, Balakot or a 56-inch test is the ‘strong leadership’ brand muscle. For each muscle, marketing plans and activities are developed to emotionally appeal to different segments of the market.

Once strategy and plans are ready, Narendra Modi, BJP’s biggest Brand Ambassador has to keep to his script and photo-shoots. Modi meditating at the Kedarnath temple was simply a brand endorsement. When we see on the giant hoardings Deepika Padukone drinking Coke or Nescafe, flying in Vistara, eating Britannia biscuits, taking selfies on Oppo, using Axis bank to store her money; do we really think she is the consumer of all these products? Of course not. We know Deepika has lent her image for monetary gains, she doesn’t have to consume any of the brands she is endorsing. Similarly Modi in Kedarnath temple is simply an ad based on the Hindutva muscle of the marketing campaign, nothing more. I don’t agree with people who think this is a sincere Hindu practice. No spiritual person needs to exhibit his spirituality in front of television cameras.

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Congress understood this Hindutva muscle and tried to hurriedly include it in their campaign. Shashi Tharoor published a manifesto book “Why I am a Hindu” (and perhaps thinks that’s the reason he is elected). Gandhi family visited a variety of temples, even Robert Vadra did.

Rahul Gandhi’s marketing advisors came up with a Sholay-like copyline of their own: “ab hoga Nyay”- a scheme whereby 25 crore poor Indians would receive Rs 72,000 per annum from the government. Why did the scheme fail?

Bisleri can explain why. We are willing to pay Rs 20 for a bottle of drinking water because we trust that the bottle contains some sort of processed water, that it is clean and good for our health. This trust is in our mind, based on the consistent hard work done by the Parle group in keeping the Bisleri quality standards high. Another bottle may be offered to us for Rs 10. We would suspiciously assume it to be tap water and not buy it.

The same thing happened with Nyay. Voters had no trust in that product or in the corporation offering it. (My comment after reading the Nyay document: आमचा पप्पू काय करी, असलेलं न्याय करी).

(It is only a coincidence that Bisleri water, like Rahul Gandhi has some Italian bloodline. Fifty years ago, an Italian entrepreneur, Signor Felice Bisleri developed it.)

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In politics, like in food, you have national brands (biryani) or local brands (sabudana khichadi). It’s not easy to turn local brands into national brands. Shiv Sena or DMK are unlikely to become national brands.

On the other hand, marketing history shows that national brands rarely become local, they simply die. The choice for Congress is to revive itself as a national brand, or die. It can’t continue as a Punjab-Kerala party.

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This is where the Modi/BJP critics are wrong in my opinion. They are focusing on the wrong things, wasting their time.

Religion is becoming less and less relevant. The young generation from all religions are worried more about their economic wellbeing. Just like at RSS shakhas, the proportion of young Muslims going to mosques is getting smaller. Only this week, I spoke to two Muslims (an Amazon courier boy and a housekeeper in my gym) who were not observing the Ramadan fast. “I am working the whole day. How can I fast?” They said. Earlier, religion offered a sense of community. For the young, community is now offered by whatsApp groups.

My hypothesis is that Congress or BJP don’t make any real substantial difference to Muslims or other minorities. Congress uses the fear of majoritarianism and BJP uses minoritarianism for political gains, that’s the only difference. (The 200 million Muslims in India is the largest minority in the world).

If Hindutva was such a strong product, why did BJP surrender power from 2004 to 2014? Atalbihari Vajpayee was a true statesman, also with roots in RSS. Vajpayee conducted the Pokhran-II tests, and declared India as a full-fledged nuclear power. On his watch, India celebrated victory in the Kargil war. Why did Hindutva and nuclear power fail to bring him back? Because India wasn’t economically shining except at the top. Voters were focused on their own wellbeing and rightly punished the party in power.

More recently, in 2015, the Delhi voters gave 67/70 seats to the Aam Aadmi party, ignoring BJP (ruling municipality) and Congress (assembly). The Indian voters are willing to try new brands. The brands need to prove their competence, offer competitive products, and also offer good after-sales-service during the five years of warranty.

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Based on my analysis, BJP won because it offered a superior product in terms of growth, development, and economic governance. Little to do with Hindutva. Even voters disappointed in Modi/BJP felt they could trust them more than the opposition.

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s advisors had successfully used the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” to unseat President senior Bush. In most Indian elections, politicians from all parties would do well to remember this phrase.

If Congress wishes to bounce back, it needs to focus on offering a competitive product. It is a declining/dying brand because the product in its present form is inferior.

Communism died not because capitalism was advertising itself better. On the contrary, the Communist propaganda was fairly strong. Communism died because people suffered under it. An awful product with a rich propaganda machine couldn’t survive.

BJP critics focusing on Hindutva make the same mistake. If economy collapses, Hindutva won’t save Modi or BJP. But when it happens, if the opposition is not ready with a competitive product, the voter will reluctantly consume the BJP product once again. After all, if the market has only fiat and ambassador, you can’t buy anything else.

Ravi