Sunday, October 6, 2013

Modi to share ‘Brand India’ vision with advertisers and marketers

Narendra Modi will attend a special dinner session at the global marketing summit of IAA on 30 Sept
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First Published: Fri, Sep 27 2013. 12 10 AM IST
Modi is not the only political leader who is scheduled to speak to members of business fraternity. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is also scheduled to meet industrialists on 28 September, according to a  newspaper report. Photo: Mint
Modi is not the only political leader who is scheduled to speak to members of business fraternity. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is also scheduled to meet industrialists on 28 September, according to a newspaper report. Photo: Mint
New Delhi: The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate for Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, will get a chance to interact with leading advertisers and marketers from India and overseas this month in the run-up to a raft of state polls before the party faces off with the ruling Congress in the general election next year.
Modi will be attending a special dinner session at the global marketing summit of the International Advertising Association (IAA) on 30 September. He will share his vision of ‘Brand India’ with the IAA, which is celebrating its platinum jubilee this year worldwide, the IAA said in a statement.
According to the organizers, people wishing to attend the entire day’s event will need to pay between Rs.8,400 and Rs.12,000. Close to 400 people have already registered for the conference.
The association described the dinner with Modi as the highlight of the conference, where speakers will include Wally Olins, chairman and co-founder of Saffron Brand Consultants, UK; Sanjeeb Chaudhuri, global head of marketing at Standard Chartered Bank; and Tyler Bryson, general manager of marketing and operations at Microsoft SMSG India.
Ashley Benigno, director, creative expression, global brand strategy and marketing creation at Nokia, and Will Platt-Higgins, director, global account partnership, Facebook Inc., will also be in attendance.
For Modi, the interaction offers another opportunity to plug to an influential audience the themes of good governance and the so-called Gujarat model of development he has focused on in the run-up to state polls that lead to next year’s national election.
But brand consultants also point to a shift in the Modi narrative in the lead-up to the elections.
“ Modi has over the past 2 months positioned himself as someone who thinks about forward looking issues. So, his branding is changing from a Vibrant Gujarat to one that is representative of new India”, said Santosh Desai, managing director of Futurebrands India Ltd.
His 45-minute speech will give him a chance to spell out where he wants to take Brand India, a brand that has in the past two years lost some of its sheen because of slowing economic growth and corruption scandals.
“The view which Modi seems to talk about is a pro-business view of the world which helps business corporations, this is very different from a free market view of the world,” said Desai.
Modi is not the only political leader who is scheduled to speak to members of business fraternity. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is also scheduled to meet industrialists on 28 September, according to a report in Business Standard newspaper. Mint couldn’t independently ascertain this.
“These coming elections will be crucial in that the middle class will play a far greater role in them. A large part of this new middle class is connected in some way or another to commerce and business, so when political leaders speak to the business community, they are indirectly speaking to this new middle class,” said Siddharth Singh, associate professor of Marketing at the Indian School of Business.
Both the leaders have in the past reached out to business associations such as the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). Gandhi addressed the CII in a speech in April while Modi addressed FICCI as well as the CII in April and June, respectively.
Who comes across better?
“The business community likes clarity, Modi has been clear in messaging, it doesn’t seem to appear that the audience knows what Rahul Gandhi stands for,” said Singh.
 
Chandan singh 3Sem PGDM

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