How #Chowkidar became a brand

Like the Western world, Indian democracy has also learned to apply the immense power of marketing and branding to achieve political ambitions.

While the BJP has been at the forefront of using social media, this time, it was surprising to see active participation from politicians (who rarely used online channels) such as Mayawati, Rabri Devi, and Mamata Banerjee.

Brands in the marketing world use many strategies to fight for market share. Generally, the fight is among the three brands — leader, challenger, and follower — as these have maximum market share. Applying similar nomenclature, this election had three political brands — Narendra Modi (leader), Rahul Gandhi (challengers), and others (followers).

When a challenger brand wants to fight the leader, it can identify the weak spot and attack it (flanking). For example, when Patanjali launched Dant Kanti, it first focussed on

swadeshi and ayurvedic features to successfully attack the market leader Colgate. Colgate lost some market share and later launched its own Ayurvedic version Vedshakti to handle Patanjali’s assault. A similar idea was started using the backdrop of Rafale to coin the term ‘Chowkidar Chor hai’ . The slogan was continuously raised by Rahul Gandhi during his rallies and in the later stages, even Mamata used it. Now, suddenly, anti-corruption which was a very strong point of Modi’s campaign in 2014 had the potential of backfiring in 2019.

What can a leader brand do in such case? The first thing is to take the battle head-on (counter offensive strategy). A brand can always use its strong image to fight the adversaries (for example, Maggi noodles has done it successfully after the nationwide ban). Modi took this attack on his own, and the twitter handles of ministers were prefixed by ‘ Chowkidar ’.

The wordplay was at its best — chowkidar is a symbol of security guard found in every nook and corner of India. So, naturally it has its own deep-rooted strong image among the people. Moreover, thousands of BJP followers did the same on twitter. Congress did not see it coming and had no clue what to do next! Some of the Congress supporters tried using berozgaar (unemployed) as a prefix to their twitter but miserably failed. BJP supporters were quick to point out that if the likes of Kanhaiya Kumar were unemployed then how were they staying in luxury hotels and using luxury cars for their campaigns?

So, in a nutshell, the communication was contradictory. This brings back the famous negative positioning words — such as how healthy food can be tasty too? Does anyone remember the luxury car Maruti Kizashi? Maruti was all about value for money, so how could it offer a luxury brand? The same psychology ensured the downfall of this idea which in fact made the BJP campaign stronger. So, a typical personal attack devised by someone in the Congress camp completely backfired!

Another nail in the coffin came from the offline world. The Supreme Court asking Rahul Gandhi to tender an apology added fuel to the grand online offensive. This is a typical example of digital public relations where offline news is used to benefit the online campaigns. The traditional print and TV media covered this apology incident and the online links to the news spread on social media like wildfire.

Now, what could the Congress have done? Going back to the concept of flanking, there were many issues (weak spots) which should have been exploited and highlighted before the campaign started. The prominent ones were unemployment, demonetisation, GST, economy, and farmer-distress. If the Congress think-tank had focussed on these, it would have been in a better position. Nevertheless, another issue with Rahul Gandhi was his brand image. What does the Congress and its legacy stand for? The Gathbandhan (alliance) initiatives didn’t materialise in UP and Delhi, but the BJP was quick to build a narrative of mahamilavati (super-adulterated) where Congress was implicitly a part of it. Unfortunately, no one from the Congress counter-attacked this. This also shows the lack of flexibility and instant decision-making from the Congress IT cell. While the BJP IT cell was fast to understand any negative narrative and turned it into a positive, most of the times the Opposition was caught napping.

Using social media is now child’s play. The crucial thing is how effectively one can utilise and harness the supreme power to influence millions of online users. One must be vigilant, flexible, and should understand that what works in rallies may not necessarily work online. That’s why “Chowkidar chor nahi…..brand hai” .

The writer is an Assistant Professor

at IIM Ranchi