NaMo NaMo!

          On 26th May 2014 Narendra Modi took an oath as the 15th Prime Minister of India. The journey from a tea vendor to Rashtrapati Bhavan Oath taking ceremony was tough but not even slightly impossible for a man like Modi. Swaying the world with his unmatched public speaking ability Modi roared his presence and rose to fame in a matter of months. The results were out and as the Lok Sabha Elections 2014 closed down to a notable historic close, the BJP-drove NDA guaranteed an avalanche triumph, winning everywhere across the nation. As results for each of the 543 Lok Sabha seats were reported, the NDA looked set to win 336 seats, not just a long ways in front of the midway stamp yet in addition savoring a triumph whose scale they had not themselves foreseen. For, amazingly, the BJP crossed the 272 check serenely individually, without any alliance, winning 282 seats.
This was the greatest triumph since the 1984 election that Rajiv Gandhi won with 414 Lok Sabha seats. It is likewise the first run through ever in the 67-year history of democratic India that a non-Congress party has won a basic lion's share without anyone else. Furthermore, the explanation for such enormous achievement was BJP's monstrous Advertising and PR battle which was driven by promotion making stalwarts and there is a phenomenal group of men behind it.
Though everything was set and Modi was elected to be the BJP’s face as prime ministerial candidate in September 2013. The BJP election campaign had three major targets to achieve in the upcoming year and that was: 1) Veteran Chief Minister of Gujarat had to become a symbol of National importance. 2) To connect with the youth of this densely populated country. 3) To change Modi’s 2002 anti-Muslim riot image.
The Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP)’s two senior members - Piyush Goyal and Ajay Singh mutually set the creative and media strategy technique for the party campaign. On one hand, while they got Soho Square to make the TV, print and radio commercials, they took help of Prasoon Joshi to compose the Party's anthem and produced it into a music video. They additionally selected a Delhi based advertising kingpin, Sushil Goswami, to make promotional radio commercials and procured three Pune-based graphic designers to make cricket advertisements around Twenty20 World Cup.
Shri Narendra Modi was already a huge brand in Gujarat, to make it national along with clearing his tainted past image the advertising campaign hammered people of the country with continuous and repetitive ads of how Modi is the right person and the only hope for this countries development. To do so the BJP had Prasoon Joshi, Piyush Pandey, Sam Balsara and Ajay Singh. The team’s research found that the popularity rating of BJP was around 35 percent while Modi’s was 57 percent. So, they made Modi central to the campaign with the catchphrase: ”Abki Baar, Modi Sarkar”.
They flagged issues like corruption, paralysis of governance and price rise to be tagged with an emotive line: “Mehengai badhane walo, Janata maaf nahi karegi”.And after drumming this into the Indian psyche, they build hope with the slogan: “Achche din aane waale hai”.
Prasoon Joshi penned the BJP anthem – “Saugandh is mitti ki, main desh nahin jhukne dunga”, to be narrated by Modi with Sukhvinder Singh singing the interludes. It packed in a great deal of passion, patriotism, and commitment to show how Modi was ready to invest his sweat and look into reviving India’s fortunes. Especially, the last line gave a feel- good line,”Har Bharatvasi Jeetega.”
The campaign was growing stronger by day, with ads during the T-20 Cricket World Cup took pot-shots at the Congress by sarcastically hinting that the party did not have a captain! Channel V ads persuaded the young to change the government. Modi’s speeches started making rounds on mobile phones with clips of him talking about inflation, development, and corruption. The online media was used to its maximum potential by the advertising and PR team. The year with 437 rallies, 5827 events and journey of 3 lakh kilometers Modi and his  BJP workers were no less than warriors on the field.
To connect more with the country, the BJP launched a NaMo number where an SMS, Whatsapp message or even a missed call would add you to the BJP database as a volunteer. The number got 13 crore calls. The craze for Modi was so much that over three million people heard his speeches by dialing a given number.
The NaMo effect was so powerful that people actually started forgetting about Modi’s past and instead started accepting him positively. During the entire campaign, Modi never spoke of Hindutva, construction of the Ram temple, the imposition of the uniform civil code and the special autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir. Instead, he spoke of development, economic progress, the Gujarat model, restoring national pride, root out corruption, empower women, engage the bureaucracy, creating employment for the young. All this sounded like music to first-time voters.
The power of marketing, advertising, and PR (public relation) strategies soon started showing results in favor of the BJP government. Grabbing each opportunity was crucial and the BJP did play well by using opposition’s taunt as their gain. When Congress leader  Mani Shankar Aiyar commented that Modi can distribute Tea but never become a Prime Minister, BJP reacted by starting informal tea shops calling “Chai Pe Charcha” in 4000 locations which reached out to 50 lakh people. It mainly focused on Bihar and UP talking about how someone from the backward class selling tea could aspire to become a Prime Minister of the country. This turned out to be a major political gain fading Congress image to struggle more.
The research team found that there were 19,000 villages in UP and 11,000 in Bihar with small populations without any media. The team soon started sending video vans to each of them numerous times talking of MODI and the BJP which made 1,38,900 trips!
SHRI NARENDRA MODI also called NaMo had an upper hand over Congress as Rahul Gandhi was constantly failing to make its mark and convince the people. Dark memes and funny Jokes were getting viral on the internet regarding Rahul Gandhi – Prime Ministerial candidate from Congress and were often bullied for his incapability to address the audience. Thus, sweeping the votes one sided NaMo gathered all from youth to senior citizens to rope for him and vote for BJP.
Interacting with the youth of this country through Facebook and Twitter proved beneficial. Almost 1.97 thousand people started talking about Narendra Modi every month. He even became the most searched political personality on the internet.
“AB KI BAAR MODI SARKAR”, “MODIJI AARAHE HAI”, “JANTA MAAF NAHI KAREGI”, ”DESH KO UPDATE KARO”  to finally “ACHCHE DIN AANEWAALE HAI” were some of the biggest inputs to create  NaMo as PRIME MINISTER NARENDRA MODI by the advertising agencies that worked for BJP. It did launch Modi as a brand and the results clearly show how it worked. Till date, this has been the most expensive political campaigns where BJP has spent around Rs714.28 crore ($115 million) on the 2014 general election campaign, according to the contribution report it filed with the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Jan 12.
The campaign sets a record in itself and belongs to golden history now, It’s been three years since Modi held the chair, few developments are visible but India still has a long way to go. Till then it's NaMo NaMo.
Thank you.