How BJP went high tech with OOH campaign this election

Even as OOH emerged as a go-to medium for political parties during this election, especially for the winning party, the BJP, it is pertinent to note that outdoor monitoring in particular played a key role. Also, the way the party’s outdoor campaign was planned and executed is worth a study.

The BJP’s recent campaign was designed with such absolute planning, magnitude and fool proof execution that it could give a tough competition to any corporate led marketing campaign. The agency integrated a highly organized and accumulative third party monitoring system in their head office to facilitate nationwide monitoring of the outdoor campaign. For this, the party roped in LOCAD, an independent monitoring firm, to ensure that the plan laid out for the OOH campaign achieved the desired target.

A complete monitoring and real time progress of the campaign was carried out on LOCAD platform. All agencies, media owners, BJP execution team, and senior party members etc., could analyze the real time execution and monitoring via their platform. Also 3rd Party audits were carried out based on LOCAD’s platform data thus ensuring a complete end to end solution for the BJP.

The campaign included 6 major media formats for the entire pan India Lok Sabha Election campaign 2019 on the monitoring platform; namely: OOH , Auto Branding, Cab Branding, Wall Painting, Digital Wall Painting and Retail Shop Signages.

Charting a new course

The national party approached the LOCAD firm right before the execution of the OOH campaign in March this year to get a good understanding of the platform and solutions offered by the third-party monitoring firm. Post that, LOCAD was asked to participate in a pitch session by the party where BJP's entire OOH execution team under the leadership of Dr. Anil Kumar Jain and Rituraj Sinha, along with Harit Pant and Kunal Kumar from Audience Connect (pan India OOH campaign planning agency) evaluated their platform.

The BJP sought some customization in the plan to meet the requirement. “During the meeting certain customizations were discussed which we had to incorporate in less than 12 hours. Our team worked throughout the night and was able to provide much more than what was expected by BJP. Next day when they saw the customized Monitoring Tool they were blown away. We had laid out the India map at constituency level and PHASE wise (7 phases in total) indicating clearly the real time progress of the entire OOH campaign. Every time there was a site installed there were little visuals resembling LOTUS flowers that were progarmmed to ‘bloom’ across. Upon further zooming in, they could be seen at street level with the exact location and picture of the site. All pictures have date, time stamp and latitude/longitude mentioned on them to ensure complete transparency and accuracy of information,” shares Rishabh Mehta, Founder & CEO, LOCAD.

Commenting on their association, Rishabh said, “Such an integrated OOH campaign is unprecedented for any political party or for that matter any corporate client as well. This sends out a loud signal that the party wants to not only bring in transparency and efficiency in its working but also make sure that the guidelines of PM Narendra Modi regarding adopting technology and digitization are strictly followed and bring in innovation across different verticals.”

Since the monitoring aspect was critical for the party, a complete war zone was created at BJP HQ on the 2nd floor wherein Live Digital Screen Wall displayed real time installation of all types of media on a constituency and street level basis. The site was designed to provide a complete synopsis of total number of OOH sites ( across all formats), performance indicators on constituency level, performance matrix of agencies, state wise performance and city level performance 24x7. “Unlike doing post mortem on the performance and effectiveness of the campaigns for the first time BJP looked at real time progress and made changes to the campaign as it moved along. This not only increased the campaign effectiveness by 1000 times but also provided instant alerts about issues so that corrective steps could be taken right away,” explained Rishabh.

Besides working round the clock for the entire duration of the Lok Sabha Election Campaign out of BJP HQ, there were no real challenges faced by LOCAD and it in fact worked in their favour. As Rishabh shared, “It was heartening to see such a wide adoption of technology by all stakeholders. At the time of start of the campaign there were some questions about the robustness and scalability of the platform as a lot of agencies had not used the system. But as they went on everything rolled out smoothly and successfully. All stakeholders realize how important and effective a tool our platform has been and have now signed up with us for their regular internal use as well. For LOCAD team also, it's been an amazing experience and validation that our platform LOCAUDIT is indeed the most secure, scalable and advanced OOH Campaign Management & Monitoring Tool.”

Summing up, he further added, “The entire execution team including the top party members has really appreciated the platform. We are thankful to all them for trusting in us and having given us the opportunity to showcase and be a part of this hugely successful and historical campaign. They have loved the platform and understand the value that it brings so we are definitely exploring a deeper relationship moving forward.”

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