How the Congress lost the media war to BJP and AAP

New Delhi: Barely a day after the country comprehensively voted out the Congress, knives are out in the party over the poor handling of its media department. There was never any doubt that Congress had lost the battle to both the BJP and the AAP on the media front even before the election campaign started. Despite knowing that, the whole strategy of their media experts seems to have fallen apart during the almost two month long election campaign. “The party only seemed to be reacting to statements made by Modi and other BJP leaders instead of having a clear plan. Action and reaction meant Congress had already given the advantage to the opposition,” says a senior leader on condition of anonymity. The lack of ingenuity only added to the party’s share of problems. [caption id=“attachment_1530243” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Reuters[/caption] Despite giving a youthful face to the media department under former cabinet minister Ajay Maken, the strategy seemed out of place most of the time. The biggest factor seems to be the sudden induction of non-political faces in the team. Out of the top 19 spokespersons on their list, 10 were contesting elections, while others like Anand Sharma and P Chidambaram could be seen in guest appearances. Others like Mukul Wasnik were totally out of the media radar. Only Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Randeep Surjewala and Shakeel Ahmad were the credible faces left in Delhi to counter the BJP. With the entire media already singing paeans of Modi during the campaign, it was left to the likes of Sanjay Jha, Salman Soz and others to defend the party. Some like the Poonawallah brothers (Tehseen and Shehzad) who were giving a spirited fight to the BJP were never given importance. The Pune brothers were not even drafted on the panel of official Spokespersons, yet they could be seen on screen defending the Congress. But they were up against the likes of Shahnawaz Hussain, Nirmala Seetharaman, Prakash Javdekar, Ravishankar Prasad and Sudhanshu Mittal. The BJP’s team looked well oiled and had a good mix of seasoned politicians familiar with the key issues dominating the 2014 election. “Their campaign started too late in the day compared to the BJP. Despite access to the best technologies in their war room, Congress couldn’t figure out how they wanted to take on Modi” articulates Ishan Russell, Managing Partner, The Image People and social media consultant. “Their campaign started too late in the day compared to the BJP. Despite access to the best technologies in their war room, Congress couldn’t figure out how they wanted to take on Modi” articulates Ishan Russell, managing partner, The Image People and social media consultant. BJP knew their strategy and planned everything to the tee while the Congress was slow to react on key issues. When the ‘Damaad Shree’ video was released by the BJP on 27th April where the party targeted Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra on the issue of shady land deals, the Congress did not even have wind of it. It flustered its way to a press release in defence only by the evening. Since it was a Sunday, all news channels went hammer and tongs against Vadra while no spokesperson was available to counter the allegations. “People like Sandeep Dikshit, Kapil Sibal and Manish Tewari hardly got to brief the press. Only the favourites of Ajay Maken were promoted disproportionately,” says a member of the Media Department who refused to be identified. The other major goof up was on the issue of Rahul Gandhi skipping the farewell dinner for the outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The party later clarified that Rahul had met and thanked the PM for his support and hard work a day before on 13th May before heading abroad for a couple of days, Rahul was back on 16th May (counting day). If that was the case, then why didn’t the media department clarify the same at the very moment? Instead, there was no information forthcoming from the party till the next day. So much so that senior journalists lampooned the Congress on social media site, Twitter. “Yet another example of Cong’s poor communication skill-instead of deriding the media, why couldn’t they tell us when RG met Pm on Saturday” tweeted Pallavi Ghosh, Political Editor, IBN7 on 15th morning. Though Maken was not available for comment, he had earlier admitted that the party’s media strategy had failed, blaming BJP’s money power. “BJP had much more resources than us, there was no way we could have spent so much money on the ad campaign,” he had said. It takes no rocket science to figure out that Narendra Modi-led the race as far as “airtime” was concerned on various news channels. According to CMS Media Lab (independent research organisation), Modi got over 33% of prime time coverage as compared to AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal (10.31%), Rahul Gandhi was a distant third at 4.33%. “There is no such thing as not having a good strategy. People look for mistakes when things go wrong” counters Akhilesh Pratap Singh, National Spokesperson of Congress. “If we had won, everyone would have been praising our team, especially the media department” he lashed. This is what happened despite the Congress handing out a hefty contract of Rs 500 crore to Dentsu India with the concept of “empowering the common man”, with Rahul Gandhi projected to deliver on common man’s aspirations. The big hit in 2014 election clearly shows how the heir apparent was “insulated” from ground realities. He was seen smiling at the humiliating loss when he arrived at the party headquarters on Friday. Social media ridiculed Rahul for it, it’s time he and his party took the art of managing and engaging TV/social media seriously before time runs out.