Congress will announce mega publicity campaign soon

New Delhi: The Congress Party is expected to announce a mega publicity campaign on April 4-5, including an official tag-line, top sources said. The campaign will focus  exclusively on digital and online mediums as evident by the latest one launched by the party on Sunday which trended on social media as #EkHi-ChowkidarChorHai.

The campaign came as a riposte to the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) publicity blitz of “Main Bhi Chowkidar” (I too am a Chowkidar).

The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi had tried to swing the narrative by using this slogan in response to Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s “Chowkidar Chor Hai” jibe while claiming corruption in Rafale deal.

It might be recalled that in a similar strategy, in 2014 Mr Modi had used Congress leader Mani Shakr Aiyar’s “Chaiwala” comments to his advantage. The latest Congress campaign can thus be seen as an effort to offset any such damage.

Meanwhile, top sources told this newspaper that the party has this time decided to focus on digital and online campaign as it wants to use money judiciously.

Sources said that the publicity campaign strategy which was finally approved by Congress President Rahul Gandhi himself after much debate among members the publicity committee of the party would also focus on the election phases as well as winnable seats.

This means that the party would unleash it might on seats it considers constituencies where it has a lot of stake and focus on seats phase-wise.

The party has already finalised three companies to handle its publicity which are DesignBoxed, Nixon Advertising and Silver Push.

“We decided to engage three companies instead of one big one as we have to work with limited resources. Also the decision to focus on digital ads and campaign was taken as youth is our target this time,” a senior leader of the publicity committee told this newspaper.

Early last week, the Congress chose Sam Pitroda to lead its campaign monitoring committee. Other members of this committee include Congress leaders Pawan Khera, Rohan Gupta, Praveen Chakravarthi, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Divya Spandana and Manish Chatrath.

On asking about his view on the publicity campaign, Mr Pitroda said, “It has been decided, but it is not public yet. It will be made public very soon. It is the privilege of the Congress president to make it public”.