MAM
Marketing lessons a la AAP
MUMBAI: The recent-concluded Delhi elections, took everyone by surprise when Aam Admi Party won 28 seats. We take a look at what one can learn from the new entrant.
When it was formed less than a year ago on 26 November, 2012, little did the Aam Aadmi Party imagine it would make such a big splash at the polls.
Winning 28 out of 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly elections on 8 December, the AAP came a close second to the BJP which won 31 seats, pushing the ruling Congress to an irrelevant third position. What’s more, three-time Congress CM Sheila Dixit suffered defeat at the hands of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal. Before the elections, the now ex-CM of the national capital, didn’t think before making statements like, “Arvind isn’t even on our radar.” Dixit probably forgot the legend of David Vs Goliath.
For a fledgling party which emerged as an offshoot of the larger ‘India against Corruption’ movement launched by activist Anna Hazare -where people took to the streets to protest the many ills plaguing the current administration – this is no mean feat.
And neither is the fact that AAP – registered as a political party with the Election Commission (EC) only in March this year – has successfully met the EC’s criteria to become a state party.
So what did the AAP do right to banish all the scepticism its broom-wielding members met with from seasoned politicians who dismissed the party, at least initially, as ‘chillar’ or worse, a group that made a lot of noise but had no real impact.
Looking at the AAP’s historic win from a marketing perspective, we at indiantelevision.com believe brands may do well to take a few lessons from the party’s promotional strategy:
* Strong USP
Each brand need to have a very strong USP which helps position it in the minds of the target audience. AAP’s USP is that it gives the common man a belief, a hope, that there is going to be a better tomorrow, and that it has been created by the common man who is fed up of the politics of politics, and will hence deliver on its promise.
*Be consistent
At the heart of the AAP’s party manifesto is its stand against corruption – which cuts through classes. And it has not deviated from that. It has refused to ally with either the Congress (I) or the BJP, despite there being a possibility of it occupying the seats of power in Delhi.
Brands need to stick to their core premise and promise and not try to ride fads.
* Marry your brand USP with the brand mnemonics
The AAP has always had one agenda – the aam aadmi, and it has stayed true to it ever since inception. Party members are common people who have volunteered and are unpaid. They come across as common people; they dress up like common people; they move around like common people. Even though many of them are well educated.
And during this election campaign there was none of the largesse distribution or ostentation that the general political parties generally resort.
The choice of name and the symbol in the case of the AAP was also crucial. The name says it all -Aam Aadmi Party. Then the symbol was the killer: what is the one thing that is still common across all homes in India, even in middle-class and upper class homes and hutments – it is the broom. Using the broom as the mnemonic meant many things: it will be used to sweep clean all the dirt in the political system, while it helped identify the common man with a tool that is used in his/her home every day.
* Know your customer; make him your network and your ambassador
The AAP needed to connect with its customer: the electorate of New Delhi. Almost 130,000 volunteers all over the world, some of whom descended on Delhi before the election campaign became both the best focus group and research agency anyone could ask for.
Some executives even took leave from their high paying jobs in India and overseas, housewives found time from their day to day chores, young college students, technicians, labourers, cable TV operators – everyone pitched to connect with the consumer and pass on what troubled the common Delhi-ite – crucial information to the central headquarters of the AAP. And they then propagated that further themselves to the electorate.
With millions of products overflowing on shop shelves and online, brands need to know what their customers really want, when they want it and how they want it, and in the process make them your ambassadors and messengers.
* Choose the correct medium at the correct time
AAP had little financial resources at its disposal; some say less than Rs 20 crore. That’s probably what’s spent by politicians on a couple of constituencies. Once again volunteers stepped in to build the buzz.
Twitter, facebook, online, print, and television. AAP went the whole hog on all the mediums. But not to splurge; just to have its message heard. The media were relatively complying: did not the common man also work in media? It hooked the middle class and the upper middle class through social media.
And what about the man on the street? Well it used direct selling: volunteers went door to door to the electorate in Delhi, connected with the common man. In trains, in buses, on auto rickshaws, in jhuggis, in bastis – there was the huge poster campaign, and it was the educated folks who went where they normally would not.
Brands have to be careful about the medium they choose and utilise it to maximise impact. Brands too have to keep themselves in people’s mind through various activations/campaigns especially in today’s market where the sharks are ready to rip apart any competition.
Artificial intelligence is a topic that is frequently discussed in terms of “spectacle,” and this means that people tend to think about the images that have been produced, the voice that has been generated, and the predictions that have been made about the potential of machines replacing the jobs of creatives.. In reality, one of the most interesting shifts is happening in a less obvious part of the media world. AI is changing the hidden labor behind entertainment content, the practical work that happens before a story, promo, clip, or campaign reaches the audience.
That shift becomes easier to notice when looking at the daily routines inside production and marketing teams. A streaming release, celebrity interview, music launch, or television promo now has to live across many formats at once. Visual preparation, fast editing, asset cleanup, and image adjustments all matter more than they did a few years ago, and this is where tools connected to remove background fit naturally into the conversation. They show how AI has moved into the background of media work, where it helps shape the speed, consistency, and visual language of modern entertainment.
The Entertainment Industry Runs on More Than Big Creative Ideas
The end product that the public consumes is the finished product. They see a poster, a small image, a brief promo video, a still image, or a social media post. They don’t see the behind-the-scenes labor that goes into the preparation of this content. They don’t see the many different versions of the image that have been prepared for different websites, different mobile interfaces, different streaming interfaces, and different press kits.
This is when the practical application of AI comes in. It supports the repetitive visual tasks that used to absorb a large share of time. Background cleanup, subject isolation, formatting assistance, smart resizing, and automated enhancement may sound like small actions on their own, but together they shape how quickly a campaign can move from rough material to public release.
That matters because entertainment now works in overlapping cycles. A trailer leads to social clips. Social clips lead to stills. Stills lead to articles, banners, and platform previews. The same content needs to look strong in many places, often within very short time windows. AI helps teams keep up with that pressure without turning every routine step into a bottleneck.
Why the Real AI Story in Media Is About Volume
One of the least discussed pressures in entertainment media is volume. Teams are not simply making one good piece of content. They are creating families of content. A TV series launch today may require a homepage image, a vertical promo, a YouTube cover, cast portraits, article art, behind-the-scenes visuals, and platform-specific variants for regional distribution.
This is where AI has changed the economics of attention. The issue is not only whether a team can create a polished asset. The issue is whether they can create many polished assets without losing coherence. AI-powered assistance gives production teams more room to handle this expansion.
A few examples make the shift clearer:
● entertainment editors can clean and prepare supporting visuals more quickly
● promo teams can adapt image assets for multiple formats in less time
● digital newsrooms can publish faster when visuals need light processing
● branded content units can prepare sponsor-ready materials with fewer delays
This does not remove the need for designers or editors. It changes how their time is used. Instead of spending long hours on repetitive prep work, they can focus more on visual priorities, campaign tone, and platform fit.
That is one reason AI feels especially relevant in entertainment and media technology. This industry runs on deadlines, but it also runs on repetition. Any tool that reduces friction inside repeated tasks can affect output far more than it first appears.
AI Is Influencing Editorial Packaging
There is another angle that deserves more attention: AI is influencing how stories are packaged, not just how they are produced. In entertainment coverage, presentation has become almost inseparable from editorial reach. A news item about a show launch or creator deal may be accurate and timely, but its visibility often depends on the strength of its supporting visual format.
This means packaging is no longer a secondary layer. It is part of the editorial strategy. This is when the practical application of AI comes in. It is when the “packaging” of the content becomes easier because of the assistance that has been given in the preparation of the images.
The effect is especially strong in areas such as:
● OTT platform announcements
● celebrity and talent coverage
● music releases and promotional campaigns
● television show launches and event-based content
In these spaces, timing and visual readiness often define performance. This is why AI is useful: it helps close the gap between editorial intent and publishable execution.
This is also why AI is becoming part of the normal conversation when it comes to news promos. The discussion is no longer limited to futuristic experiments. It now includes ordinary questions such as how quickly a team can prepare artwork, how many visual versions they can test, and how consistently a campaign can be carried across channels.
What This Means for Smaller Media Players
Large entertainment brands have had access to more people and more production capability for a long time. AI is changing the game for small publishers, small studios, individual producers, and small entertainment brands. It’s providing them with something that will help their output compete from a visual standpoint.
That does not guarantee equal reach, but it does reduce some long-standing disadvantages. A smaller team can now handle certain visual tasks with greater speed and consistency. That makes it easier to maintain a strong publishing rhythm, support stories with polished assets, and react to trends before they fade.
This may be one of the most important consequences of AI in media technology. It opens room for more players to look prepared and credible in environments that once favored only the most heavily staffed organizations.
Still, there is a limit to automation. Taste remains human. Context remains human. Editorial judgment remains human. An AI-assisted asset may be technically clean, yet still feel generic, awkward, or tonally off. Entertainment audiences are sensitive to presentation, and poor visual instinct becomes obvious quickly.
That is why the strongest use of AI in this space is selective. Teams benefit most when they use it to handle structure, repetition, and first-pass execution, while keeping human attention on style, meaning, and consistency.
The Future of AI in Entertainment Will Feel Ordinary
The most lasting technology shifts usually stop feeling dramatic. They become normal. That is likely what will happen with AI across media production and entertainment publishing. Rather than being talked about as a novelty, it will be part of the normal infrastructure alongside editing suites, scheduling systems, media libraries, and content management systems.
The point to note is that AI is already affecting the labor that goes into modern entertainment. It is helping teams deal with scale, speed, and visual fragmentation. It is making it easier to transform one core idea into many usable assets. It is giving production and editorial teams more flexibility in moments when timing matters most.
From the outside, this may seem like a technical adjustment. Inside the industry, however, it is an even larger concept. It alters the way work is distributed, the speed at which ideas are pushed through the system, and the number of finished versions of the story that can exist at any given time. In an entertainment media environment that is characterized by constant publication, such an evolution cannot help but catch the eye.
The conversation about AI and technology in media and entertainment often veers into the realm of hyperbole. Perhaps the most telling approach, however, is the small print. The real revolution is happening behind the scenes, in the workflows, in the preparation of assets, and in the packaging of the work itself.
