Piyush Pandey, Prasoon Joshi And Sam Balsara To Helm Bjp’S Rs 400 Cror

[Spartan]

MUMBAI: The Bharatiya Janata Party is lining up an A-team of advertising professionals to execute its election campaign. Sources close to the development told TOI that celebrated lyricist and adman Prasoon Joshi and media planning veteran Sam Balsara have been mandated to handle the Rs 400 crore election account of the principal opposition party.

The creative duties, which involve making television and prints ads, may be split between a few players including a little-known WPP agency, Soho Square. Joshi, who leads McCann Worldgroup here, may be involved with the campaign at an individual level as a lyricist, sources close to the matter said. The media-buying duties, which entail putting the communication across different media platforms like print, radio, TV and digital, have been given to Madison Media. Lodestar UM and WPP's Group M were also in contention for this coveted account.

Besides, Joshi and Balsara, the BJP has also managed to rope in Piyush Pandey, executive chairman and creative director (South Asia) at Ogilvy & Mather (O&M), albeit indirectly, to spruce up its advertising campaign. Pandey's O&M, also a part of Martin Sorrell's WPP group, is likely to oversee the work which will come out of Soho Square, industry sources said.

O&M could not take up the account as the agency on record due to a strict global guideline which does not allow group agencies to work on election campaigns. Pandey has been working with the Narendra Modi-led Gujarat government and sources said that on the chief minister's insistence the adman was brought on board. The hotly contested pitch for the BJP election account had several leading advertising and media agencies in the fray as reported earlier by this newspaper in its January 28 edition.

With its prime ministerial candidate Modi leading from the front, the BJP's communication will be digital-heavy, said sources.

The ruling Congress party had reportedly handed out its Rs 500-crore account to Japanese agency Dentsu and Taproot while its public relations is being handled by Genesis Burson-Marsteller. The Rs 500-crore advertising budget, however, was denied by Congress. The party officially started its mega campaign with Rahul Gandhi taking the centrestage last month in a controversial tagline, "main nahin, hum (not I, we)".

Joshi did not respond to text messages and calls from TOI, while O&M's Pandey said he had not been mandated by the BJP for the campaign. Madison's Balsara could not be reached for a comment.

Modi, who has been one of the first Indian politicians to take to social media platforms, boasts of over 3.4 million followers on micro-blogging site Twitter. "They are expected to use the digital media aggressively and innovatively," said a source in the bJP who did not want to be quoted as the party has not made an official announcement yet.

The BJP's communication around the elections has been picking pace online, although no agency has been formally appointed so far. The party put out full-page advertisements in leading dailies on January 25—National Voters day. The saffron party has been pushing the Modi brand through various social media channels. The party has also been promoting its 'Mission 272+' volunteer initiative online.

Besides the Rs 500-crore ad blitzkrieg which the Congress has planned, the ruling United Progressive Alliance is parallely running the 'Bharat Nirman' campaign. The Rs 100-crore campaign, being handled by ad agency Percept/H, is run from the budget of the information & broadcasting ministry headed by Manish Tiwari.

[paampachak_1]

400 crores lo kaneesam 1 crore aina worthy aa ?