Case study: The strategy and tactics behind the creation of Brand Modi

According to Y.L.R Moorthi, Professor of Marketing at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, there is a difference between a regional brand going national and a politician going national. He says Modi was known outside Gujarat even before he decided to move beyond the state, just as Nitish Kumar and J. Jayalalithaa, chief ministers of Bihar and Tamil Nadu, respectively, are known. But these regional leaders didn't venture out of their home states in the recent elections. Modi did. And he did it at a massive scale - he attended more than 5,000 events and 470 political rallies across the length and breadth of the country.

Striking a Chord
On February 6, 2013, more than six months before he was named as the BJP's choice for the prime minister's post, Modi addressed students at Delhi's Shri Ram College of Commerce. He talked about Gujarat's model of development. He spoke passionately about the need for speed in government decision-making and about the need to improve skills of the youth to accelerate economic growth. That speech won him many young admirers. One of them is the second-year student Sulabh Newatia, who says he decided to cast his vote for the BJP after listening to Modi's speech. "I see him as a visionary who can take the nation forward," says the 19-year-old from Kolkata.

Modi, an excellent orator, has delivered scores of similar speeches since then. He highlighted slowing economic growth, high inflation and lack of new jobs - issues which immediately resonate with young and urban voters - while blaming the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government for the problems. After the elections were announced, his marketing team bombarded voters with print, television and radio advertisements with the same themes. It reached voters through text messages and Modi's recorded voice seeking votes for himself. It also tapped into social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter - Modi has about four million Twitter followers - to magnify the impact of the advertising and branding campaign.

The impact of this relentless campaigning has been felt across different age groups, geographies and sections of society, says political analyst Manisha Priyam. "I have even heard young children, far removed from such debate, mentioning the word 'NaMo'," she says, referring to a sobriquet for Narendra Modi. The carefully crafted moniker also appeals to the traditional Hindus - the BJP's main vote bank - because of its religious connotation, as the Sanskrit word Namo is used as a salutation reserved for the Hindu gods.

Shaking Off the Stigma
The biggest challenge Brand Modi faced was diverting public attention away from the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims. Initially, Modi's supporters in BJP attempted to engage in public debate and highlight the clean chit given by courts to wash off the stigma. Then, they changed tack. They toned down the Hindutva rheotoric and focused instead on Modi's more recent past and his development record in Gujarat. "He knows that people want a better life and he offers Hindutva with the right dilution," says Desai of Future Brands.

Marketing gurus cite the examples of Cadbury, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola that battled problems relating to brand-taint. Cadbury had fought its way out of a controversy related to worms in its chocolates while the two beverages giants faced allegations of pesticides in their colas. "The best way for a tainted brand to overcome a challenge is to not talk too much, but to acknowledge it happened, and then move on," says Samu, the ISB professor. "The more one talks about, the more the memory for that event gets activated among the target market, and they remember it more. The BJP and Modi did not talk about it. Or if they did, they kept it to a minimum," he adds.

IIM-Bangalore's Moorthi says the weakness of the Congress leadership also helped boost Brand Modi. "When the brands in the domain appear worse, the contending brand might shine by comparison. In Modi's case, he was helped by the tightlipped nature of the Congress leadership and their indifferent performance in the second stint," he says.

While most companies routinely apologize for problems detected in their products, Modi stopped short of doing so. "He did give an account of reflections on the event [the riots]. He seemed to say that he was pained about the event but didn't say sorry," says Moorthi. Veteran adman Prahlad Kakkar concurs. "It does not matter if he [Modi] is wrong. He will never publicly admit that," observes Kakkar, who has been associated with several political campaigns, including that of Indira Gandhi. "But he will, at the same time, take corrective measures to navigate out of it, without ever saying so."

The Ideal Model
Not so long so, the words that could have been used to describe Modi were authoritarian, megalomaniac and communal. The way the creators of Brand Modi dealt with the third taint was by not dealing with it. "What more was there to say [about the post-Godhra riots)? There have been various panels instituted to probe into the matter," says a BJP leader.

Instead, they focused on building Modi's image as self-made, strong, efficient, inspiring, and incorruptible. "He [Modi] created an impression of being a sincere, credible and committed leader. He convinced people that he could improve their lot," says social scientist Ramadhar Singh, Distinguished Professor, IIM-Bangalore. This is the leitmotif the marketing arsenal of the BJP worked to amplify. "No media can help create that kind of consistency," adds Kakkar, the veteran adman.

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Automatically, as if by derivation, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance began to look more and more indecisive and corrupt. "Today, India attributes weakness and failure to Congress," says adman and lobbyist Suhel Seth. "Modi stands for good governance."

All stories about Modi's life in the public domain have consistently fed into this new image. And although questions remain about Modi's ability to perform at the national level and his Gujarat model of governance, his personal branding and marketing strategy seems to have worked and voters across the country appear to believe his claims. "Even if you cut out 40 per cent of what is untrue about Modi's promise of growth...the rest is very real," says Guwahati's Chiranjib Hazarika, 24, who is looking to start a career in banking. "Development is his only agenda and people are following him."

Modi's message has attracted even those disinterested in politics. "I have never been very politically conscious. But it is frustrating to see our economy slide back from the progress it made. So, I stepped out to vote, for the first time, for Modi," says Shankar Narayanan, 28, who works for a multinational information technology company in Chennai. "Modi has a proven track record of governance and growth."

Cut to 40-year-old Manoj Rana, who runs a small guest house in Shillong, and you have the answer to the most central ingredient of Modi's branding: "We are not interested in politics. We want change. Modi can deliver that change. People are sensible, they are not carried away by mere talk," he says. That indeed is the bottom line of any brand's success story. It bears out that Modi's brand is by him, for him and from him. The BJP machinery has served as mere coaches for the branding-led engine of Modi.