Internet in Indian Political Campaigns – Can’t We be More Sensible?

During the US election we have seen what a pivotal role the digital media can play in political campaigns. A large part of Barack Obama’s success in the US presidential election has been attributed to the massive yet well planned online campaign that they did.

Following the footsteps, LK Advani from BJP has launched an online political campaign. It is definitely praiseworthy to see such a veteran leader like Mr. Advani adopting the digital media for his campaign and I believe this would bring some change to the way political parties in India have been thinking of doing their campaigns.

This is a massive campaign, pretty similar to Obama’s however, this is not strategic – that is the key difference. BJP has been running this campaign through Google Adwords program and while they seem to have somewhat limited presense in the search network they are to be found everywhere in the content network.

Some of you might think what’s wrong with that – it would give them a larger share of voice and gain more eyeballs. Well, how do you think it would look if an ad says Advani for PM when a porn video is being played in YouTube ? What about an Advani ad in Russianbrides.com ? What about an Advani ad in a UK IceHockey website ?

Don’t you think placing ads for a veteran political leader in a not-so-decent website would harm his image ? Do you think a person watching a porn video in YouTube would have any interest ( at that particular point of time) to look at Advani for PM ads or visit his website ? Where is the user engagement ??



I am not sure who is running this campaign for BJP/ Mr. Advani but I strongly feel that a lot of the money that is being put into this campaign is getting wasted and some of this money might even be creating a negative influence on Advani’s candidature.

It’s good that we are trying to take our political campaigns to the next level by adopting the digital media but can’t we do this in a more sensible and strategic way ?

About "" Has 249 Posts

Check out the About SRC Page for more details about Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury.

5 Comments to “Internet in Indian Political Campaigns – Can’t We be More Sensible?”

  1. Sumit Roy says:

    Advani might hire you soon man 🙂

  2. seo-kolkata says:

    that’s the positive side of it, I am afraid that tomorrow I might just get a BJP protest rally outside my house 😛

  3. leon says:

    nice analysis , i was thinking the one who run this campaign is crap and without sense not so mature as the Obama one

    BJP should hire Chris Hughes if they want their online success .

  4. Jag says:

    You can ask Prodyut Bora – The man behind Advani’s online rallies 🙂

    http://www.livemint.com/2009/03/03235432/The-man-behind-Advani8217s.html

  5. I guess it all depends on the guys behind his Internet marketing and the background they come from.

    I strongly believe that guys responsible for such tasks need to be net addicts and deeply involved in social media themselves in order to make impact

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *