india

Updated: Mar 02, 2019 07:35 IST

Congress president Rahul Gandhi is likely to take a final call next week on hiring advertising and public relations (PR) firms to handle the party’s outdoor and media campaigns and draft slogans for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, a party leader aware of the development said on Friday.

The leader said Gandhi was unhappy with power point presentations made by some agencies on Thursday and asked party leaders to get campaign design suggestions from more advertising and PR firms.

The Congress chief had been expected to finalise the agencies this week. The presentations were stopped midway on Wednesday soon after news came in about the Pakistani jets violating Indian airspace and capturing an Indian Air Force pilot. They continued on Thursday. An internal tussle between senior leaders also delayed the process, another senior Congress functionary said.

A party panel shortlisted four from at least 25 firms that applied to handle the Congress party’s outdoor advertising, print and electronic media and social media campaigns. The amount the party plans to spend on this isn’t known. In August 2018, Gandhi formed a publicity committee, headed by senior leader Anand Sharma, to look after the party’s communication strategy.

The other members of the panel are Bhakta Charan Das, Praveen Chakravarty, Milind Deora, Kumar Ketkar, Pawan Khera, VD Satheesan, Jaiveer Shergill, Rajeev Shukla, Divya Spandana, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Manish Tewari and Pramod Tiwari.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Congress hired Dentsu India, a Japanese advertising and public relations company, and Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm, to handle its outdoor and social media campaigns.

The Rs 600-crore ad campaign by the Congress, however, failed to match the Bharatiya Janata Party’s communication strategy handled by advertising industry heavyweights Piyush Pandey, Prasoon Joshi and Sam Balsara.

While the Congress was reduced to its lowest ever tally of 44 of the total 543 Lok Sabha seats, the BJP became the first political party to secure a majority on its own in 30 years by winning 282 seats.