OUR BRIEF WAS TO RUN A LOW KEY, EFFICIENT BUT IMPACTFUL CAMPAIGN: SAM BALSARA
BY
Srabana Lahiri
Talking about Madison’s role in planning the media strategy for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign this time, Sam Balsara, Chairman and Managing Director of Madison World, says, “This year, the brief was to run a low key campaign. I think we had an excellent product to sell. The BJP is always very confident that based on what it has delivered to the people in the last five years, the electorate would reward it by voting the party back. It always knew that electorate very well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decisive leadership and several steps taken for the welfare of the electorate such as demonetization, GST, the surgical strike, the various schemes for the poor that actually reached the poor…basically a lot of good work in these areas and in infrastructure had been done. Our brief was to run a low key, efficient but impactful campaign. And that is what we did.”
On what was different this time compared with the 2014 campaign, when Madison was credited with detailed constituency level media planning for the BJP, Balsara refuses to go into any detail, but says, “Although it came out as a very large campaign, and people suggested we spent thousands of crores of rupees on it, the actual number is not even a small fraction of that. The spends amounted to much less than what the party spent last time.”
Balsara is upbeat about working with the party and the relationship that has built up over the years. “Our track record with the BJP is rather good. So far, whichever election that we have been associated with them, we played a small role in helping them win, except the Delhi election,” muses Balsara.
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