Advani woos voters via Pak media

By M H Ahssan

A Pakistani website is a rather unusual place to find an advertisement of BJP leader L K Advani campaigning for the forthcoming 2009 Lok Sabha polls. But there he is in Pakistan’s premier English newspaper, Lahore-based Dawn’s online edition, with his slogan: “Advani for PM.’’

The Dawn online advertisement isn’t an isolated example. The BJP is hard-selling the 81-year-old Advani all over the web. About 2,000 sites frequented by India’s net-users have been identified by BJP’s crack IT team. Several foreign media sites have been selected, including Washington Post, New York Times and UK’s Guardian online. Apart from the Dawn, Pakistan newspaper The Nation and website Paktribune also carry the ads.

These ads are not targeted at NRIs. It is a form of new-media target selling where only those logging in from India can view the promos. “Only if you go to any of these sites from India will you see the ad,” explains Prodyut Bora, BJP’s national convenor, IT. Bora declined to comment on the amount being spent on the online advertising initiative. He said that 99% of the sites identified are Indian.

The idea is innovative and interesting, says columnist and trend-spotter Santosh Desai but it’s essentially the same message in a new medium. “Sure it’s novel, but I’m not sure how effective it will be, in terms of numbers or even in terms of shaping and moulding opinion,” he says. “After all, what new will you learn about Advani?”

Using technology like never before, targeting an audience probably doesn’t get sharper than this. The audience defined for the ads, says Bora, is “internet-using voters of India’’. The websites were selected on the basis of online statistics of most-visited-sites accessed from India. The audience is across all strata, ages and occupations. Media sites form a small fraction of the entire campaign, Bora said.

“It’s a question of knowing where you can track voters,’’ says ad guru Piyush Pandey. “Although the number of people Advani is reaching out to via foreign websites may be minuscule, he’s talking to them in their language,’’ he says.

A nice idea, he concedes. Calling it a “supply-side idea”, Desai says following Obama’s successful net reach campaign, Indian politicos would also want to connect with the surfing, clicking, blogging India.