3. Case Study: Advani and BJP Party
When New Media Goes Wrong: Advani & BJP Party
The failed political campaign of L. K. Advani and the BJP party in the 2009 General Elections in India provides an interesting look into how social media, oversaturation, and misreading your audience can effectively doom your candidacy.
Oversaturation of the market with advertising
The Adwords campaign bombarded the web to the point that the market was completely flooded with his advertising. One blogger remarked:
We saw Advani becoming Ad -Vani with his aggressive adwords campaign targeting every indian site. At one point there were only his ads on every site we browsed. The first and foremost reason it failed - We hate Ads.
The intrusive nature of the advertising campaign was not well received by the mass public. By gaming the search results system to the the point that every buzz word or competitor's name automatically made Advani ads pop up, Advani repulsed the public with an inappropriately aggressive strategy.
Wrong target audience
The Advani campaign also failed to target their audience appropriately, which is crucial with the changing new media mediums. Another blog points out that:
Web haven't (sic) yet gone mainstream in India. The ones on Indian web are mostly early adopters, professionals or techies/geeks. These are people with well set principles and mind sets and aren't influenced by biggie ads floating all over the place. And thus, the ads failed to convert.
According to the latest World Bank figures, out of the 1.2 billion people in India, only 3.3% have computers and just 1.1% as fixed internet subscribers. A better strategy would have been to target the 30% with mobile cell phones, which represents 300 million people. In fact, a recent study indicated that mobile users are accessing the internet via their phones almost as much as the traditional web (2.4 days to 2.7 days).
Rather than garnering support from the grass roots level through lower tech means, Advani and the BJP party completely missed getting support from the greater constituency, revealing a huge disconnect between the party and its mass base.