New Delhi: A video of Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is going viral. In the video, while interacting with a woman during an event announcing his 500-rupees-a-cylinder scheme Monday, Gehlot asks her whether she has cows. The lady says, “Gaaye nahi hai, mitthu hai (Not cows, I have a parrot).”
Gehlot laughs and enquires about Mitthu’s health. “Tell Mitthu that you told the CM about him and let me know what he says,” the chief minister tells the woman.
This video does the CM several favours. It helps him build on-ground connect, makes his words memorable and him seem more accessible.
Hence, this is the moment that Political consultancy firm DesignBoxed — hired by Gehlot to run his campaign — has been playing up on social media.
As the Congress in the state finds itself in a ‘will-he-won’t-he-stay’ situation with Sachin Pilot — Gehlot’s adversary in the party — the Rajasthan CM has taken a leaf out of his Karnataka colleague D.K. Shivakumar’s book and roped in DesignBoxed ahead of the state polls in December.
Led by Naresh Arora and Gunjeet Kaur, DesignBoxed plans to run a “positive” and “public welfarist” campaign for the Congress in Rajasthan, just like they did in Karnataka.
“In Karnataka, we proved that if you stick to public issues and put the might of the (party) cadre behind it, it works,” said Vinayak Dutt, Head, Research and Media, at DesignBoxed.
In Karnataka in 2021, when DesignBoxed was brought in, Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah had been engaged in a factional fight. However, according to DesignBoxed functionaries, the strategy adopted then was to shift the focus towards welfare schemes. The party’s decision to prioritise its 5 poll guarantees — its main electoral platform in the state — was a step in this direction.
“It was our idea to introduce the term ‘guarantee’, which we had first used when we were doing the Assam campaign for the Congress. We are not engaging in Hindu-Muslim polarisation (in Rajasthan) because we have seen that a public welfarist model helped us win highly-polarised seats in Karnataka as well. We are trying to create a narrative around public welfare instead,” said Dutt.
ThePrint reached the Rajasthan Chief Minister’s Office for comment via email. This article will be updated if and when a response is received.
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A ‘positive’ force
DesignBoxed was hired by Gehlot right before the state budget in February this year. The Budget session was preceded by a PR blitzkrieg. Its theme — “Bachat, Rahat and Badhat (savings, relief and growth)”.
In April, the government started the ‘Mehngai Rahat’ camps in order to expand the reach of its schemes.
Under Mehngai Rahat, anybody with a Jan Aadhaar card can register themselves to know which of 10 government welfare schemes they are eligible for. Thereafter, they can register themselves for the schemes at the camp.
“The Mehngai Rahat camps are turning perception, helping cut down anti-incumbency. It is especially finding resonance among women. We believe in the concept of positive campaigns, as opposed to retaliatory, negative campaigns. We have seen that it helps get the swing voters on board because, at the end of the day, they ask what they are going to get,” said Dutt.
A source at DesignBoxed also said that there is a daily tracker in place that tracks the numbers for the camp, along with changed choices of voters.
According to some of the top executives at DesignBoxed, who spoke to ThePrint on condition of anonymity, their two biggest learnings from Karnataka were to not advise “one-upmanship” and to focus on “simplistic, one-on-one communication”.
Gehlot’s viral “Mitthu” video, said an executive, is a good example.
“We were smiling when we were editing the video, so it will of course have a similar impact on those watching it. Such kind of one-on-one communication helps people think that the leader is accessible,” said the executive.
“We don’t think social media campaigns or any kind of communication campaign can work without the leader being on the ground. Then we try to swing our narrative to that and ensure that the in-fighting is not highlighted. We have found that only people who are politically aware look at issues like factionalism. Others only care about what they’re getting from the government,” the executive added.
Another DesignBoxed executive said that neither Gehlot nor Shivakumar asked for a personal campaign. That is why their focus has been on establishing not just the person, but the party as well.
“Positive campaigns get votes. Negative campaigns get headlines,” the executive said. “If you see, the ‘acche din’ slogan worked because it gave people hope. Its theme was positive. It told people that something great was around the corner. That is the kind of communication and messaging we believe in,” he added.
Working with the Congress ‘difficult’
Both Gehlot and Shivakumar’s decision to hire DesignBoxed is significant considering that the Congress already has strategist Sunil Kanugolu’s Inclusive Minds working for it.
In fact, while Kanugolu, now a member of the Congress, has worked with parties across the spectrum — like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), among others — DesignBoxed has only ever worked for the Congress in its 11-year journey.
Unlike other political consultancies like IPAC or Inclusive Minds (previously MindShare Analytics), DesignBoxed started off working for individual clients — candidates looking to be MLAs. They weren’t affiliated to the party.
Their first big project was when former Congress leader Amarinder Singh brought them on to handle communication for the party in the last month of the Punjab campaign in 2017.
After that, in 2018, the consultancy went on to work in Chhattisgarh, where they were roped in by then Congress Legislature Party leader T.S. Singhdeo. After that they worked in Rajasthan for the Congress in 2018, the last election, when Pilot was the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president.
In 2019, the AICC, directed by the late Ahmed Patel, hired the firm for the Haryana campaign. DesignBoxed then worked for the Congress in the Assam elections of 2021 and Meghalaya in 2022 and, of course, Karnataka in 2023.
Most of these campaigns have been losing campaigns, and the team says it is because of paucity of time. Secondly, they said, Congress is a more difficult client than most.
“We had two years in Karnataka and we delivered. We had nine months in Chhattisgarh and we delivered. We had just 30 days in Haryana and 72 days in Assam. In Meghalaya, where the TMC (Trinamool Congress) had poached our entire party and IPAC (Indian Political Action Committee) had been working for months, we only got 24 days,” said another DesignBoxed executive. “Yet, if you see the results of these states — in Haryana, we got 33 seats when AICC was expecting single digits. In Assam, we got 29 seats, up from the last time. In Meghalaya, we tied with the TMC.”
“It is also a lot more difficult to work with the Congress because there are multiple bosses and there isn’t one single chain of command. Secondly, we also haven’t signed ‘winning’ campaigns as such. Our goal is to deliver results in the time we have been given. In Rajasthan we have nine months as well. We are hoping to win it for the party,” the executive added.
In December 2022, when the Rahul Gandh-led Bharat Jodo Yatra was in Rajasthan, DesignBoxed was briefly working with Sachin Pilot, sources told ThePrint. However, they parted ways soon after.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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