The Congress’s media campaign for the Lok Sabha elections could get delayed as party chief Rahul Gandhi has sought more options after reviewing a few campaign themes.
Sources say Mr. Gandhi on Thursday met colleagues of the publicity committee — mandated to design the campaign — and asked them to come up with more options on themes to take on the NDA government. Some members of the committee are likely to meet him on Saturday before zeroing in on the final theme.
Unhappy with jingle
Mr. Gandhi is learnt to have been dissatisfied with a jingle that was a variation of the Chak De song from the eponymous Shah Rukh Khan film. Some slogans such as “Sachi Sarkar, Achi Sarkar” (truthful government, good government) too were discussed, but were not finalised.
“The Congress president was not entirely satisfied with the creative aspects of the slogans and campaign. So he has asked for more options, but that could push back the entire campaign by a few days,” a Congress source said. The publicity committee, headed by Anand Sharma, is likely to meet again next week with more themes.
The committee was ready with themes such as vada (promise) versus dhoka (betrayal) to highlight “the gap between what Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised before 2014 and how he didn’t deliver in the past five years.”
From 13 advertising companies, the Congress had selected four — Percept, Crayon, Leo Burnett and Design Boxed — based on their presentations and past association with the Congress campaigns as well as the UPA government.
Leo Burnett successfully handled the Congress’s campaign in 2004 when Aam Aadmi (common man) was the focus.
In 2013, Percept handled the Bharat Nirman campaign for the UPA government in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
More recently, Design Boxed handled the party’s successful campaign in the Punjab, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh Assembly elections.
The companies finally chosen will conceptualise and exclusively handle the party’s campaigns in print, electronic, digital and social media and outdoor campaigns.
Division of responsibility
But unlike the 2014 elections, where Dentsu India handled a major chunk of the Congress’s ₹500-crore media campaign, the party is keen on dividing the responsibility by having multiple agencies to manage the campaign. “Things had slowed down a bit over uncertainty because of the ongoing hostility with Pakistan,” a party leader said.