Date:14/04/2004 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2004/04/14/stories/2004041402610100.htm

Back BJP, Congress to raise their poll pitch on TV channels

Nithya Subramanian

Departing from the normal practise of deferred payment, the broadcasters are asking political parties to pay up in advance before airing the ads.

New Delhi , April 13

THIS summer the advertising slugfests may not be restricted to cola wars or other consumer durable companies. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress party are likely to step up advertising on television channels with the Supreme Court permitting political parties to advertise on the electronic medium. The Election Commission (EC) will, however, vet the ads before they go on air.

So if the Presidential election in the US is a huge advertising event, broadcasters in India are expecting General Elections 2004 to be a money-spinner. The advertising industry is expecting revenues of at least Rs 50-60 crore from political parties in the next few weeks. At market value, advertising tracking agency Adex India, has estimated the ad spends on TV during February and March to be over Rs 8 crore.

While the Congress party has already started airing ads urging voters to vote for the party, the BJP is expected to unleash its nationwide advertising strategy shortly. The BJP, which has been silent so far and has released only a few surrogate ads talking about the foreign origin of Ms Sonia Gandhi, has set up a special cell comprising Mr Pramod Mahajan, Mr Arun Jaitley, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, Mr Sudheendra Kulkarni and Ms Sushma Swaraj to spearhead its advertising.

According to sources in the party, "The BJP has not yet appointed any advertising agency and is managing its advertising internally. It has already started advertising in Karnataka on local Kannada channel and will release its national campaign shortly."

Broadcasters too confirmed that top leaders such as Mr Mahajan are directly negotiating with the channels. The Congress, on the other hand, has hired Orchard Advertising, Leo Burnett's second advertising agency to work on its campaign. The news channels and the general entertainment channels are likely to be the beneficiaries of political advertising. Departing from the normal practise of deferred payment, the broadcasters are asking political parties to pay up in advance before airing the ads.

"Even though political parties will have only few days to advertise, we expect them to buy up all the available inventory. A large portion of the available airtime for the current month and the next have already been sold out," said a senior official in a leading television channel. Also, channels have not reduced their advertising rates as they see this as a once-in-five-years opportunity.

Hence, "We do not expect all these buys to be the most cost-effective buys, since very little inventory will be available. News channels are likely to be full since these are the highly watched genre of channels during elections," said Mr Ashutosh Khanna, Chief Operating Officer, Grey Worldwide, (India).