23rd May 2019, Election commission of India started counting votes, and 1.3 billion hearts started skipping the beat for the result. By the end of the day when the world’s largest democracy got the next ruling party. National Democratic Alliance (NDA) fetched massive 352 plus seats, and Bharatiya Janata Party alone won 303 seats where 272 seats needed for the majority. If you analyse closely, this 2019 election has taught many lessons to all the sectors, and even corporates.
I think corporates can learn seven key lessons from this election:
- Never forget to update your strategy by the time
We are in 2019, and not in 1970. Indian National Congress is one of the major national party governed India for more than 70 years. But if you closely observe in 2019, the political strategy of the party is still centred around pro-poor (Garibi Hathao). Time has changed, and this is the digital era. Most of the people now have access to information, and literacy rate has also gone up compared to the old days. When the time has so changed, how can the age-old strategy be effective?– So the party had to upgrade the strategy, which didn’t happen.
On the other hand, Narendra Modi led BJP, focused on development agendas, & patriotism, which fetched massive victory to the party.
The lesson is – Understand the trends and update your strategy
2. Choose your leader wisely – Having the right leadership
A leader is a person who keeps the team motivated towards the goal and pumped up the energy to achieve it. He is the person who has a clear vision, plans, and right team to achieve it. His leadership is accepted and respected. Narendra Modi’s leadership was aligned with these things. He kept his team motivated and focused.
On the other hand, the Opposition was not clear on – Who is their leader until the last moment’. It kept the team scattered and not focused. People could not trust them mostly because they did not have the unique leader identity.
Lesson – Choose the right leader who has clarity in the vision, plans to achieve it, keeps the team motivation high, and his leadership is accepted and respected
3. Know your customer segment well
If you observe closely, Narendra Modi chose to give speeches more on pro nationalism and not on the development. For many of us, this was a point of criticism. He started with ‘Pro-Development’ strategy and shifted to ‘Nationalism’. It was a choice because he had understood India’s people very well.
He could have centred his speeches on development. Government has done a commendable job in the last five years, but it would have become a point of debate. Indian mass majority of people are emotions driven and not statistics-driven. It would have been very difficult to convince people as the opposition could twist the numbers to give a different picture of the facts altogether. India’s majority of the population is pro national. We love our country more than anything, and that becomes the key strategy of Narendra Modi’s speeches. His every single speech started with ‘’Bharat Mata ki Jay’’. The result is in front of us.
Lesson – Know your customer segment inside out and then build the strategy
4. Develop a 360-degree marketing strategy – It should reach the last person of your segment
Marketing is key to grow your business. It is nothing but communication with your consumer through different mediums and different ways, which ultimately brings the consumer to your product or service. Narendra Modi has built a great marketing strategy. ‘Mai Bhi Chaukidar’, Modi hai to Maumkin hai’ these campaigns reached the last person of the society. And these campaigns were born through the opposition only. Narendra Modi utilised all the social media channels, banner ads, and not only audiovisual advertisements but also word of mouth was used to reach out to every single person which he intended.
On the other hand – the Opposition was lagging here. Their marketing strategy could not reach in the way they wanted to communicate
Lesson – Effective Marketing strategy is the backbone of the success
5. Work Hard to achieve the goal
Above all, the most important thing is to work very hard to achieve the goal. There is a very famous saying –‘’Successful people are not gifted, they just work hard then succeed on purpose’’.
There is no option for success without hard work. At the age of 68 years, Narendra Modi did 142 rallies in just 51 days. He gave numerous interviews and parallel he was taking care of the office bearing activities. His colleagues also worked very hard, and that was is resulted in the success of 23rd May 2019.
Lesson: There is no alternative for hard work with proper planning
