Last night, I was alone at home, undisturbed by human company or by phone calls or by the television, which I had refused to switch on.
So my mind went on a wander as I played a mental game of join-the-dots to make sense of what the BJP got right and what the Congress (and, indeed, most of the opposition parties) got wrong.
And what stood out was the ‘connect’ that the BJP seemed to have with the citizens of India – and the disconnect the others seemed to have.
Why was this happening?
As I said, my mind went on a wander, and I went back a few years to Kyoorius Designyatra in Goa and I met Dave Trott for the first time. (I’ve met him a number of times since and will meet him again when he comes to speak at MELT at the end of this month).
Dave and I were talking about the state of advertising in the world and, in a context that I can’t quite remember, he spoke about the wealth of the creative directors being responsible for the slide.
And when I struggled to make the connection, Dave patiently explained why, and he took me back to the 1960s, when The Beatles were born. Dave explained why The Beatles were so phenomenally popular. He showed me, through a few songs (I remember that he mentioned Lovely Rita and Eleanor Rigby) how The Beatles borrowed ideas from popular culture, transformed them into songs and played it back to the very populace they borrowed the ideas from – and the songs became popular culture once again.
And he explained how The Beatles lived WITH the very people that they wrote the songs for.
And wealthy creative directors did NOT live with the people they created ads for – and ads struggle to work.
Which brings me to the just-finished elections, which the BJP has won in a canter, to put it mildly. Their messaging and targeting and the advertising were simple, earthy and easy to assimilate or repeat. Phir ek bar Modi sarkar rolls easily on the tongue and does not need a nuclear scientist to understand. Their messaging focused on security has now proven to have worked in the critical Hindi belt. The ‘chowkidar’ jibe was appropriated with elan and effectiveness, especially on social media. I could go on and on, but I won’t.
The Congress focus on ‘corruption’ and ‘nyay’, largely believing that these were issues.
They were not – as far as the voters were concerned.
Yet, on social media and (English) news TV channels, the Congress seemed to have struck a chord.
So what went wrong?
And I went back to my conversations with Dave and went back to The Beatles.
In their first major concert in November 1963, at the Prince of Wales Theatre for the Royal Variety Performance, with the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret present, John Lennon famously said, “For our last number, I’d like to ask your help. Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And for the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery…”.
And that’s what seems to have happened.
The BJP wrote lyrics for the people in the cheaper seats, the ones who clap.
And the Congress targeted the Royals, the ones who rattle their jewellery.
And the ones who clap outnumber, by many times, the ones who rattle jewellery.
