MUMBAI: Image is everything. Especially during election time. If an American presidential aspirant Al Gore hired feminist author Naomi Wolf to help him project an alpha male image during the 2000 elections, both George W Bush and John Kerry have their spin doctors strategists think tank in a tizzy today, what with their cowboys-let-loose-in-a spaghetti western act. A peek through the looking glass of Indian politics shows that our netas are warming up to the idea of building an image, backed by a pro-active communications strategy, albeit on the hush-hush.

If Arun Nanda was one of the first politico image builders, with his issue-based driven campaign for Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress party in the ”80s, the upcoming Assembly elections will see some new image makers for our politicians.

Dialogue 21”s Rahul Bage, an MBA with MNC marketing experience, is handling the portfolio of a senior Congress leader from western Maharashtra and says that a politician can be marketed like a product, using management principles.

“You have to create a brand out of a person — draw on his strengths and weaknesses, and target the media campaign according to his constituency.” His plan for his current client includes suggesting what issues he can address, focus on his forte while creating his image.

Often, the message is in the image. Bage gives the instance of telecom guru Sam Pitroda who came in to the last Lok Sabha elections with a completely different, ”emotional” spin. Pitroda”s brief was simple, says Bage. “To make clear that it was the Congress which set off improvements in infrastructure and not the BJP who were taking credit for. He came in on an emotional note to remind people of Rajiv Gandhi”s vision which was now becoming a reality.”

The BJP is said to have given designer Shaina NC an image brief — that of a young, educated, south Mumbai candidate to pull in the upper crust votes, while the grapevine says that former CM Vilasrao Deshmukh is also headed to the spin doctors for a make-over.

“This concept is just three elections old,” says Dilip Cherian of Perfect Relations which handled communications strategy for the Congress and the BJP in the previous elections. “Increasingly, politicians the world over are being viewed as a product of the overall brand that is the party.”

While Bush and Kerry go all out, dredging up Vietnam war records, using blogs, and documentary filmmakers to make and break each others” public images, Indian politicians prefer to peddle their image discreetly. Balakrishna Pillai of Spin Communique, who”s handling communication for a Congress MLA, underlines the possible reasons for the secrecy.

“In the last assembly elections, Pramod Mahajan led an aggressive campaign for the BJP with voters being bombarded with emails, forwards. It was felt that the BJP lost because of this kind of open campaigning. So politicians are wary of it.”