For the two main parties — the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress — cyberspace is the new platform for the general elections, expected to be held in April and May. The BJP was the first to click the mouse. A site dedicated to the party’s prime ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani — called lkadvani.in — was launched a month ago. It includes an interactive section, a blog and links to YouTube as well as social networking sites such as Orkut and Facebook. There’s also a slew of online advertising initiatives.

The Congress is still to log on to this medium, but plans to do so in a big way. “The Internet and mobile phone technology are powerful media and cannot be ignored,” says party general secretary Digvijay Singh, who’s overseeing the campaign strategy.

Certainly not. After all, close to 72 million people in the 18-30 age group are on the voter list, according to the Bangalore-based non governmental organisation Janaagraha, which runs the ‘JaagoRe’ campaign to fight voter apathy. And many of these are bound to figure among the 50-60 million Internet users in the country.

It may not be the end of traditional campaigning —bouncing along the dusty countryside in open jeeps, large public rallies, door-to-door canvassing, advertisements in newspapers and, recently, on television and radio — but Election 2009 is going to see extensive use of interactive communication through technology. The inspiration is clearly the American presidential election where Barack Obama used the new media to full effect. “Traditional channels of advertising can’t be used to effect any more,” says Swapan Seth, chief executive officer of Equus Red Cell. “Parties need to use the new media much more.”

They’ll also be using professional marketers and advertising agencies, though their ability to swing elections has always been a matter of debate. In 1989, the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress’s “my heart beats for India” campaign (designed by an advertising agency) couldn’t stop the party from getting routed by the National Front, which had only V.P. Singh’s messianic drive against corruption as its weapon.

Packaging pays: (From top) L.K. Advani, Sonia Gandhi and Mayavati

But things have changed since then. An 81-year-old Advani needs to be packaged to a young country, notes Amitava Mitra, director, Delhi, of Percept/H, just as Mayavati needs to be repackaged as someone going beyond Uttar Pradesh if she is to play a larger role on the national stage. While earlier, one message would do for the entire country, regional nuances need to be factored in now. “We are in the 21st century,” says Singh. “Parties can give a political message but there has to be professionalism in the means and manner of communication, which has become a highly developed art today.”

Perhaps that’s why both parties have lined up huge advertising budgets — rumoured to be Rs 150-200 crore each, a number neither Singh nor Arun Jaitley, who’s handling the BJP’s campaign strategy, will confirm. The Congress has already commissioned the Delhi-based Crayons Advertising and JWT, Delhi, while the BJP is still in the process of finalising its agency. Both Singh and Jaitley are tightlipped on the line their parties will take, but the buzz is that the Congress will continue its focus on the ‘aam admi’, while the BJP will seek to put the government in the dock by highlighting issues such as terrorism, the economy and foodgrain price increases and promise a decisive government.

The branding game will be tougher this time around, say advertisers. Sushil Pandit of The Hive, which has done several ad campaigns for the BJP and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, points out that most elections before 2004 had one overarching theme. Corruption was the main issue in 1989, stability in 1991 and Kargil in 1999 —all welding the entire nation into one mindset. Right now, though, the country is beset with myriad problems — a slowdown in the economy, terrorism and domestic insurgency, growing and violent regionalism, religious and cultural fundamentalism, all of which affect different groups differently.

“I suspect there is no pan-Indian branding any more. It is difficult with the polity having fragmented the way it has,” says Pandit. “It has to be a totally different story,” stresses Prathap P. Suthan, national creative director of Cheil India and the man behind the India Shining campaigns (when he was working for Trikaya Grey). “The country is looking for leadership, stability and honesty.”

Both the national parties are expected to have individual branding problems. The BJP, once a strong counterpoint to the Congress, is fragmented, points out Santosh Desai, managing director and chief executive officer of Future Brands. “Its problem will be to find weaknesses in the Congress and see how the party can gather that and give a unified voice to the party.”

Advertisers advise the party against a purely negative campaign focusing on the failures of the government. Mitra points to the complete failure of the ‘Mehengi padi Congress’ (the Congress has proved costly) campaign of the BJP during the Delhi assembly elections, which saw the return of the Congress. “People are tired of bad news and want optimism and a positive outlook,” adds Seth. Jaitley concedes the point only partially: “There has to be a campaign that is critical of the government, but it must be accompanied by a promise for the future.”

The Congress, being an incumbent, is expected to have a tougher time. “Merely gloating over its performance in government is not good enough. That is subject to different interpretations. Its challenge will be to find an emotionally resonant theme,” says Desai. Singh doesn’t agree, though he concedes that the anti-incumbency factor is more pronounced now with the reduction in the voting age. The situation in the country, he argues, has created a situation where people feel the need for a strong national government to deal with national security and the global economic crisis. “The track record of the Congress in both has been proved over the years.”

But are such huge spends on advertisements justified, given the uncertain returns? After all, the India Shining campaign that played out across the print media and television, highlighting India’s economic boom, didn’t get the National Democratic Alliance back to power in 2004. Nor did Amitabh Bachchan intoning “UP mein hai dum, kyunki jurm hai kam (UP has strength because crime is low) prevent the Samajwadi Party from getting thrown out of power in Uttar Pradesh in 2007.

Advertisers nitpick about the ads themselves. The India Shining campaign, they point out, was a government advertisement which was not converted into a political message. The Bachchan ads, coming at a time when crimes in Uttar Pradesh were hitting the headlines, were seen as peddling an untruth. “No product can be sold on the basis of lies; consumers cannot be fooled,” says Pandit.

The blame for the failure of his own ‘Mehengi padi Congress’ campaign is squarely laid on the BJP’s over confidence about winning Delhi (since the Congress had already done two terms there) and consequent neglect of traditional canvassing. He contrasts it with the success of his Jeetega Gujarat’ campaign for the BJP during the 2007 Gujarat assembly elections.

The campaign, which depicted all opponents of chief minister Narendra Modi —even those within the party —as being opposed to Gujarat, was clever but not decisive, he says. Modi won because the state BJP had its back to the wall and fought back ferociously. “A campaign cannot reverse a process, it can only add more velocity,” says Pandit, “and an ad agency can only be a catalyst. For a catalyst to work effectively, the ingredients have to be right.”

That begs the question —why have advertisers at all? “Political ads are irrelevant; they are just a parlour game of a few,” sneers Desai. “It is not a meaningful pursuit currently.”

Maybe hitting the dirt trail is the best option after all.