“Advani for PM”; it will be highly improbable that an average net user has not come across these words in the last two months. Yours truly sees it everyday at places ranging from news websites to education websites to technology websites. So how and why the octogenarian is doing this net campaign. According to Economic Times newspaper BJP is targeting 2.5 Crores of net users in India who are above the age of 18. The campaign is powered by Google and it is believed that BJP has bought more than two lakhs keywords which also include words which are not even remotely related to politics and India. Anybody can tell you from whom his or his party’s campaign managers’ inspiration has come. It is none other than American President Mr. Barack Obama. His success with the online campaign is encouraging many around the globe to imitate him or as they say ‘do an Obama’.
But how effective will be the campaign? Will it reap him success similar to Obama’s or will it backfire like BJP`s ‘India Shining’ campaign last time. It is good for BJP that they are able to project for themselves a Prime Minister candidate without any clutter unlike their opponents. This fact should go well with the target audience. But there is also the apprehension that they are overdoing it with Advani’s name popping out almost every five minutes infront of an average browser. The essence of Obama’s campaign was the influence he could cast on the youth through social networking sites. It was the emotional connect which he was able to establish with his peers in the network which enabled his success rather than volume of advertisement his party put on the websites. His speeches used to instigate the youth to demand a change and become the cause of the change.
But Advani is neither advocating a change nor will his age and background permit him to do so. The internet users are mostly a generation who are indifferent to current Indian political system. Many of them don’t even exercise their voting power also. Such campaigns will not make them do vote unless it is well presented with elements of change and energy which BJP will find difficult to promote with Advani in the forefront. In addition to this the young internet users are ticklish and the moment you try to oversell something it can create a negative impact. I hope Advani and his party know what they are trying to pull off and his dream to become a PM comes true this time.
