May 17
Whatever be, it all comes down to this. They faced a total failure. Things didn't turn out as it was expected. The AdWords campaigns, made the media to compare it to Mr. Barack Obama's election campaigning system. But, in the end, it doesn't do any good.
Why ?
Web haven't yet gone mainstream in India. The ones on Indian web are mostly early adopters, professionals or techies/geeks. These are people with well set principles and mind sets and aren't influenced by biggie ads floating all over the place. And thus, the ads failed to convert.
But, in US, the web is already a part of life and thus ADs will do their job and get the results right.
Thus we see, it was just a matter of getting the right audience, which is possilbe in US, but not yet in India. But, thing are changing very fast and soon web will be a part of everyone's life in India too.
That's a strong point there, Ankur. Very true. That, coupled with the absence of general public on web turned against them.
AdWords and BJP. Why it failed.
The Lok Sabha elections in India just got over with the results published on May 16th. The party, BJP, created news by their aggressive AdWords campaign. The ADs were all over Indian sites and was shown to all users who were recognised as from India. They were too shrewd that they even, configured the parameters such that, their ADs are shown along side the search results for a strong competitor of theirs. They claim to have got about 5 million hits within 6 months.Whatever be, it all comes down to this. They faced a total failure. Things didn't turn out as it was expected. The AdWords campaigns, made the media to compare it to Mr. Barack Obama's election campaigning system. But, in the end, it doesn't do any good.
Why ?
Web haven't yet gone mainstream in India. The ones on Indian web are mostly early adopters, professionals or techies/geeks. These are people with well set principles and mind sets and aren't influenced by biggie ads floating all over the place. And thus, the ads failed to convert.
But, in US, the web is already a part of life and thus ADs will do their job and get the results right.
Thus we see, it was just a matter of getting the right audience, which is possilbe in US, but not yet in India. But, thing are changing very fast and soon web will be a part of everyone's life in India too.
Comments (3)
May 18, 2009
Ankur Banerjee said...
I think the problem was more about the negative campaign that BJP was running, and not with the fact that very less people have access to Net. Of course the intention was not to reach out to people on the other end of the digital divide; the intention was to bag urban, online voters. Yet, they failed because of pathetic 'Bhay Ho' and similar campaigns along negative lines. Always 'Congress is bad' rather than 'Why NDA is good'.
May 18, 2009
Jerin George said...
I agree to your view. The web needs to be more popular in our country if things like campaigning should make use of the web. Majority of web users never look on the ads while doing web.(I don't, because I'm new in the web). Being modern and stylish is good, but they had to think twice before doing it.
May 18, 2009
Aravind Jose T. said...
@AnkurThat's a strong point there, Ankur. Very true. That, coupled with the absence of general public on web turned against them.
@Jerin
Yeah. They were featured in news and media for having done something too cool or geeky, but at the end of the day, it all failed !
Also, what Ankur said above is true too.
