BJP calls for a creative pitch for LS polls

Senior leaders of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are currently busy finalizing a creative agency for the Lok Sabha Poll campaigns.

afaqs! has learnt from reliable sources that the party is armed with an ad spend of Rs 150 crore for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, scheduled for May this year, and the pitch is specifically for the elections.

The first round of presentations was made to Sushma Swaraj, a senior leader of the party, and also a former Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting. Swaraj is also the chairperson of the party’s 19-member campaign committee for the 2009 general elections.

For the first round of presentations, the 15 agencies submitted creative presentations. Following this, 10 agencies were shortlisted.

Talking about the creative needs of the party, sources reveal that that the party broadly wishes to focus on two areas — one, being the Advani inclination, and the second criterion was that of positive publicity, in which the party wishes to talk about development. Traditional advertising media would form a significant portion of the media mix.

On a competitive note, Crayons Advertising and JWT are in charge of the creative duties for the Congress party. Crayons had also worked on the campaigns for the assembly elections that began in November 2008. Interestingly, Crayons has, in the past, worked on the campaigns for the BJP — it handled BJP’s account for the assembly elections in 2003, while in 1999 and 2004, it was in charge of the party’s campaigns for the Lok Sabha elections.