The biggest Indian 'account' is up for grabs. As the rumour mill would have it, Pramod Mahajan has a built up war chest to help sweep the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party back into power. And he is seriously looking for partners (read ad agencies) to help him accomplish this mission. Reminding one of the 1980 elections.

1980 - Watershed of Indian Political Advertising
Indian political advertising crossed a threshold in 1980 - when the late Rajiv Gandhi hired Rediffusion to craft a winning campaign. The communication ideated by the Rediff Creative Team (Kamlesh Pandey and Arun Kale) had the ad world in a tizzy. Most important, it helped sweep Rajiv Gandhi & the Congress (I) party into office with an absolute majority in the Indian Parliament !

Although most of the subsequent elections have had uneventful ad campaigns in comparison, the 2004 elections are expected to fire sparks. As fought it will be, on the 'India Shining' plank, with the BJP taking credit for all the good things happening to the Indian economy. Reminiscent of 'It's the economy, stupid' line of the Bill Clinton campaign - which put paid to former President George Bush Senior's hopes of re-election.

Election Advertising in U.S.A.
Political advertising in the U.S.A. was first harnessed by the American Republican Party when it projected former World War II hero, Dwight Eisenhower, as presidential candidate. As is well known, the General won.

But political advertising really came into its own during the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy. It was, as a part of this campaign that JFK's biography was published, highlighting his war hero status as commander of PT-109. (This campaign is best described by Joe McGuinness in his book, 'Selling of the President'.)

This set the trend for successive Presidential candidates. (Much later, Richard Nixon appointed experienced advertising professionals from leading agencies in key positions.)

The Teflon President, Ronald Regan whose attention span was reportedly as short as a whisker and who (also reportedly !) slept through key cabinet meetings, practically left his administration to his spin doctors.

And finally, George Bush Junior, who in the early stages of his campaign had difficulty in naming countries and their leaders won the most powerful position by deft political campaigning.

Dean Who ? Look up the Internet !
At the beginning of 2003 when Howard Dean declared himself a Presidential candidate, an oft-asked question was, 'Dean who?' Joe Trippi his Campaign Manager helped change that. One of the first things he did was to link Dean's web site to meetup.com, the online people organizer. Tens of thousands of (young) volunteers signed up. And almost half the campaign's US$ 25.4 million war chest has been raised online.

By injecting the upstart campaign with the Gen-Y technology Trippi lit Howard Dean on fire ! As Trippi is fond of saying, is "The Internet the perfect storm of democracy". . .

Will the Internet have a key role in Indian election sweepstakes this year?

Indian Election Advertising - Coming of Age
Both Pramod Mahajan (Ruling BJP Party) and Sonia Gandhi (Opposition Congress Party) along with their back room boys (Suman Dubey, Rajiv Desai, et al) will want to make Election 2004 a real fight. As 5 agencies slug it out for the Congress Party account, everybody is waiting for BJP's agency.

The next few weeks will determine the winners. And advertising will perhaps help predict those who will whiz past the post. The spoiler is likely to be the Samajwadi Party whose campaign is expected to lean on the super icon Amitabh Bachchan as ambassador to the electorate.

And without doubt, the communications experts involved in the 2004 Indian campaign will have an action-packed time. Get ready for the 'coming of age' of Indian political advertising !