Throw away the Kotler, Kejriwal is here. The results are out, and even Rahul Gandhi has acknowledged the need to learn from the AAP. The BJP has been mixed in its reactions, but I wouldn’t think it’s very different.



I am not a political analyst, and everyone and his aunt has an opinion anyway, but what is of special interest to me is the AAP’s use of Digital.

To start with, the one single thing they got right early on was the STRATEGY. It was very simple, and did not need a suited gent from an ad agency with a 100-slide PPT. I would assume it was this: ‘We are called the Aam Aadmi Party. What can we do on Digital that will mobilise the power of the Aam Aadmi?’

This would have happened more than a year back, at a time when the BJP’s online army was all over the place (they still are).

When we say Digital, most of us automatically think of Facebook. The AAP started with old-fashioned mailers and databases to collect funds. A very aam aadmi move, and we know what the result was.

Next, they used mobile in a huge way – I read somewhere that at any given point in time, there were 100 AAP supporters making blank calls to Delhi-ites, asking them for support. 500,000 phone calls were made through ‘MyOperator’, a toll-free IVR from VoiceTree Technologies.

Yes, there was Facebook and Twitter and Google Hangouts (especially with NRIs) too. I’ll tell you how this started – AAP, about a year back, was convinced the mainstream media was boycotting them, so they decided to use social media more aggressively to talk to the aam aadmi directly.

I’m not sure I agree on the paranoia, but in hindsight (it’s always hindsight, isn’t it?:) it was a brilliant move. As the months rolled on, I saw AAP profile pics overshadowing BJP/Modi profile pics.

More importantly, the social media campaign gave me the feel of ‘real time’, unlike the BJP and Congress campaigns. Which is how social media should be used.

To be fair, all social campaigns were negative at some point, whichever the party – mudslinging, muckracking was the order of the day. But I think the AAP crested the wave of public support very well, while also mudslinging – they stuck to the basics. Whatever support they managed – I don’t have the numbers.

To get back to where we started: What can challenger brands learn from the AAP, digitally?

Here’s a snapshot:

1. Does your brand have a social core, in the first place? Is there a ‘social connect’ with your current or prospective fans? If you don’t, stay away and revise your overall strategy. Or you’ll be reduced to using social media as a broadcast channel, like TV – which is anti-social. Which is what 99% of big brands do. (They all claim they are successful though, because of the no. of fans. Till date, after many years in the digital business, I have not understood the real value of a fan. I understand the value of the ‘action’ that a fan takes though, an action that helps the brand in some way.)

2. What is the objective? There were multiple objectives the AAP started off with, including fund-raising, mobilizing volunteers, and bypassing the so-called ‘media ban’. The objective was not ‘awareness’, to use the cliché. It was engagement with a clear RoI, not engagement for engagement’s sake.

3. What is the strategy, and is it cast in stone? Looking back, the AAP did not have a cast-in-stone strategy. In fact they had multiple strategies, and I won’t go into details, but they seem to have approached strategy with a ‘Let’s try this and see if it works, if not we’ll dump it and try something else’. The strategy was always evolving. My feeling is they tried 20 approaches, and only 5 worked – but worked well.

4. Finally, what technology/platforms are you using? How out of the box are you thinking, beyond the same-same Facebook, Twitter, Google+ that everyone is using? Is mobile part of the plan? What does your website do to involve your visitors, besides being a copy of your corporate brochure?

A word of caution: If you follow exactly what the AAP did, it will be disaster. The AAP, fundamentally, ran a guerilla campaign. Disruptive, as some call it. A brand that’s playing for the long-term cannot depend on a disruptive approach all the time. There is a certain middle-of-the-road balance your brand will have to seek, even at the risk of seeming ‘traditional’. Or you might alienate a lot of people.

Never forget we are fundamentally a country that likes harmony, not discord. People want to fit in, not stand out. But that’s a separate discussion.





For the time being, there’s a lesson to be learnt here – and I hope I made some sense.

If not, feedback welcome. As always.