 Anurag Bhatra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Exchange for Media and Business World Group to say a few words here, sir. Morning. It's my honor and privilege to be here. First of all, I'd like to acknowledge my friends who are also stalwarts, pioneers, and in some way the creators of this domain, you know, because they're pioneers. So I'd like to welcome somebody who really doesn't need any introduction to this community or in the business and the political community in India, Mr. Dilip Serian. Please give him a big round of applause because he's been an icon and a role model for a lot of us. I keep telling him when I grow up I want to be like him. See, I'm trying hard. Dilip, we have our keynote speaker who's come specially from Singapore and he's from Kachem. I would like to, I'm trying to get your name right, Mr. John Bailey. Welcome, Mr. Bailey. Please give Mr. Bailey a big round of applause. Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody. I was just reflecting on the, on when I was on the way here to Delhi yesterday. It's actually a little over 20 years since I first came here for a business reason. And at that time I was working with, in the airline industry, helping airlines with crisis communications. In other words, protecting their reputation. And the big challenge at that time was not social media. It was 24-hour rolling cable and satellite TV channels, CNN. Nobody had even thought about social media at that time. Today we live in a very, very different environment. Now my day job, as you've just been told, is I run a PR agency in Singapore, that's Kachem. But I also spend a lot of time working with airlines with hotel groups and other clients on defending reputation. Thank you very much. It's good to be here in Delhi after some time from Australia. Now we've just heard a great opening address by John Bailey. And I think some of the things which we'll be talking about is already touched upon on things like crisis management and brand reputation. Our guests here are sort of accomplished speakers and thought leaders in the industry. So I will just open the panel very quickly. Last month at an event in conference and P&G has the largest budget. His single point message to us as communicators was storytelling is the key to effective brand engagement. He's not the biggest fan of advertising any longer. And he gave, he put forward certain examples of how great content and great storytelling in the internet world or in the digital world actually created better engagement and better outcomes for his business. The other thing that spreads pretty fast online is funny stuff, right? Now I don't say that that particular video you can respond to with a funny comment, but there is much fake news which is patently wrong about brands that can be tackled, I believe, with a healthy dose of humor. And that's going to get far more velocity than a very plain Jane Vanilla, you're speaking, saying I'm sorry. So say the sorry but then put that out. So I'll end with that. Thank you. What enhances real intelligence? So a lot of us tend to mistake tools for what the progress actually is. So what artificial intelligence does of any kind, and I'm going out on a limb to say this, till we reach the third generation of artificial intelligence, which is when cognitive technologies start speaking to each other and ignore all of us, that fortunately is not likely for the next three years. I think, you know, the old days I used to believe the forex trader was the only one who would get burnt out really quickly. But I think in our industry that's happening too, because the pace at which we need to run and the diverse sort of opportunities that we need to chase are just multifold. And I find the younger people are able to keep pace with it. I mean I'll just talk about in terms of a technology industry, a few years ago, job specs were written as good as product specs. Has to be efficient, has to be productive, zero downtime, has to have a backup. So it sounded like you needed a product made in a factory and not a person. I think across various functions, whether it's trade marketing, whether it's brand management or even digital managers, obviously. I think everybody needs to be aware of the basic minimum of how the ecosystem operates and how you can make a story go big. You know, that basic understanding of what marketing entails. And the other would be culture. You know, I don't think you can be a marketer today. And you know, I hear from some people, some of the marketing people that we don't watch Hindi movies. And I'm like, what? How do you market in India unless you understand Bollywood? So that cultural sensitivity and knowing your consumers and what makes them buzz and take is essential. So these two, I think, culture and digital. So, Nandini, honestly, when I look at hiring someone, to my mind, skills are there, but it's really about the attitude. Because the reality of our lives today is that what technology is cutting edge today, a year down the line, you know, it will be passe. So at the end of the day, you've got to have somebody who's constantly, who's curious, who's willing to learn, unlearn, you know, constantly keep up in. I would actually put it two ways. One, today, it's all about omnichannel. It's no longer one channel, retail, digital or brand or marketing. It's actually omnichannel. So I constantly, I keep seeing how it's from online to offline, offline to online. And there is no such boundary which exists today. Now, of course, we've heard in the morning about fake news. What I would like to ask each one of the panelists, just in a few words, what is each one of their company that they've seen do to try and help? Fake news is something that everyone's trying to counter. What we're missing, of course, is that unlike something like New Yorker, which has a huge desk of fact checkers. And I think, I guess you can make out the importance of tracking fake news from the factory. I think, look, the question that you have raised is a, to my mind, it's a very stereotypical question. And the reason why I say that is that we are now in the world of post-truth, as it's often described. Truth is, is it based on facts? What are facts? You know, I may choose to say that this bottle is half full, you may say that it's half empty. Journalism 101 takes care of about 95% of the filters that you need to ensure that, you know, fake news does not get, go through your platforms or your channel. Facebook and what is that? Fang of Amazon, Netflix, Google, whatever. No, you can say that branding would have changed for many of these eminent writers. Who would say that, you know, we need a reason to put a version 2, a version 3, a version 4, a version 5? And we have heard about branding 2.0, branding 3.0 may come up. These are all terminologies, but if you go to the essence of branding, I don't think branding's changed. So, for example, I find the CEO today is also the chief marketing officer of his style of brand working in a corporate environment. And I find that to be quite interesting because there are, you know, CEOs out there who are not on social media that often. But I see, especially in Australia, that CEOs are talking about their personal philosophy, which is actually in sync with the company they work for. In some ways, I believe, brand's not changed. But I think now, as a marketing person, as a CEO, or in general, I believe now the brand has so many more moments in which it has to be true. So, imagine like a 10-year-old, if a marketing card delivered on performance and mileage, that's the brand it built. Today, imagine for him, his brand ambassador may go out and tweet something, you know, which is not in his control eventually. So, the number of times a brand now needs to be true across social media, across content, across PR. She was a reporter, she worked extensively in the media, she has friends in the media, and she crossed over to politics. So, she understands our domain, she understands journalism, she understands communication. She joined the Ahmadmi Party and now is the spokesperson for the Bhartiya Janta Party. Gansham Tiwari, again went to a top-notch business school, one of the IIMs. He's an Edutech entrepreneur and he's a Samajwadi Party spokesperson. And last but not least, Mr Khan, because I don't know you well, I know Shazia really well, and I know Gansham a little bit, so I can talk to them. Are there any channels that are biased? Well, is there any channel which is not? So, tell us the names of some of the biased channels. No, I think we have a fair idea of channels which turn to one side of the spectrum or the other. But I think this whole idea of journalistic bias, the reason that there has to be objectivity, I think remains very utopian. Because I have been a journalist, I passed it from a film school, and there are certain biases you live with. And if you really believe what you do, if you've been indoctrinated or been trained to think a certain way, you do vilify one side and not the other. So true objectivity can be totally utopian and difficult to achieve, can be very elusive. Having said that, there remains a responsibility for every input head, reporter, correspondent, producer to present both sides. Relating to two questions, one discourse, other is channel bias. I am not worried about bias of channels, biases emerge from life experience. What I am worried about is agenda setting. And when television becomes a media where agenda is not of the people, each television channel has its own loyal audience, and then some floating audience. When the agenda does not respond to people, the platform loses its credibility. As a spokesperson, I have believed that in the last two, three years, there was a concerted effort to ensure that television as a platform loses credibility for public debate. You know how we do research in the Congress party? We have a very streamlined cell over the last four years. Our cell has become extremely professional and amazing. Now, for example, in the BJP or in the Samajwadi party, channels get... So you have a troll brigade too? No, we don't actually. You don't have a troll brigade? Nobody has a troll brigade. No, at least we don't. It's for Shazia ji to say whether her party does or not. No, I didn't refer to their party. But I'll tell you something. Look, research, I believe that discourse, which is purely based on rhetoric, comes with an expiry date. And the women do it really well. If you look at it professionally or homemakers or tier two which Neha touched upon, or what Paroma said about breaking stereotypes, it is very important for us to remember there are three things that drive women. It's strength, it's knowledge, and it's wanting to be prosperous. Women today are not here to do what others can't do. And I'm not talking about men. It's about what others can do, can't do, women achieve everything possible in today's world. So the commission is working for the first time in the history of the nation. We have a commission which is at least trying, which we are really trying hard. I'm very proud to say that we are the only commission in the country which functions officially on Saturdays, unofficially we are working on Sundays during nights, while my predecessor for eight years handled only one case. In three years we've handled more than 55,000 cases, attended over 2.16 lakh calls on our 181 helpline, done 75,000 grassroots visits, assisted 36,000 sexual assault survivors in various court cases, 11,000 counselling sessions, over 200 recommendations to the government. I think this is a very good opportunity and you won't be able to meet me again in one of your rooms. But there is something, when you pay so much attention to digital, in the age where you know that a lot of people, 90% of the people that you see have content on YouTube and everywhere. They've got paid likes. It's a real world, right? Let's face it. You don't even know the likes of half of them. So how do you, as an agency, like for example the PR agency, how do you decide on which business to go? When you know that, for example, there is a radio or a print or television, there are their ratings or whatever. And you know on the other side of the digital, and I'm not pointing fingers, I'm just paying devil's advocate here because I also create a lot of digital content. But how do you decide on which to pay so much attention? Because you know, it might just be a bubble which might burst one day. What do you feel? One thing I'd like to add to that, you asked about confrontation. And I'm talking in English because this was a lecture in English. We've all heard of Shekhar Kapoor. He's an amazing film director. He is the one guy who, there's actually another film director like him, who's an Indian who's made Hollywood content, films that have been his success story, and also Hindi films. This was three years ago in Goa at Film Bazaar. He was giving a talk and he spoke about the fact that Variety, and this is three years ago, Variety Magazine had done this survey, not in India but the rest of the world, and had found that the Millennium Bacha, that's children born from the year 2000 onwards, who do they respect, who do they acknowledge? And what they found was that any child born after the year 2000, this is a big generalization, all of their heroes were not Hollywood, sports or people who wrote books. And people actually became quite angry about this. And then he started naming them. People had never heard the names. These were all YouTubers. But today, I'm sure if he's speaking exactly the same thing, there won't be that sort of reaction because now people are waking up. Today is to look at broadcast technology we have talked about, search engine optimization techniques, social media marketing techniques. Good question. I think technology is changing the way we communicate. And like I mentioned earlier, I think first and foremost, you need people to write content in a different way, in a different format. Today, insights and analytics are going to play a major part as we tell new stories. And to understand insights analytics, you need to understand a lot of the technology behind it. Original content. Original content is what you have seen from your own eyes. So personalization is very important over here. So I think non-media reputational work is very important for B2B audiences. What you can do with advocacy, what you can do with industry groups, what you can do through the government, through a campus, with your entrepreneurs. So similar things where you can actually spread your message or have long-term policy impact, through a variety of engagement initiatives, which are not necessarily media-driven. So I would just say stay focused. Stay focused as to what you want to do. And be really very good at it. Because a lot of young people ask me, particularly communications people, that, you know, I don't get a seat at the table. My CEO doesn't listen to me. What have you done to make your CEO listen to you? Be really, really credible in what you do. The advice you give, the value you bring to the table. Unless and until you have credibility. Nobody is going to listen to you. So be very focused. Work really hard at being good. And be credible. Welcome to the 90th edition of the India Pinout and Corporate Communications Awards 2018. I think 2019 is going to be from the year of consolidation to the year where private equity and management buyouts hit our industry within holding companies. My prediction for this is I predict Helen Moulton is going to be taken out of WPP and is going to be bought by private equity or be taken over by management buyouts. WPP is ignoring its PR assets. It's underinvesting in its PR assets. It does not have the money to continue to invest in intellectual capital, to invest in clients and invest in people. I think it's terrible. I think the future of our industry, marketing communications, marketing services is privately held companies because we have smaller expectations from margins. We can invest in intellectual capital. We can invest with technology. We don't have to pay attention to quarterly earnings. We can play a long-term game. I think marketing services is a long-term game. So welcome private equity into the industry next year going after holding companies. Prediction here is Helen Moulton taken out of WPP by private equity or by management buyouts. Terrorism has no face. Its value is only money. And our duty is duty. Is the Range Rover evoked from Land Rover? Redmi wants to spoil its customers with a lot of auction. They have offered the Redmi 7. Here I have the phone with myself. Watch Living Cars and Check at this time on NewSex. We will ensure that we have a much more simplified GSE system, not the drama-prone, error-prone, chaos-prone GST with Mr. Modi on these terms. And we are certainly not going to do any damage to the economy like demonetization. I can't believe that people still give them any credibility after what they've done to India and to our economy. BJP, which is currently at about 273 seats in parliament, it probably dropped about 170 or even 150. They thought that Pulwama, the hair strikes, the nationalism will get some purchase. And I think that initially for years died down. Congress. 70% BKP has been done. How much corruption is there? It's related to MCD issues, isn't it? Earlier we used to say that MCD is corrupt. It's not all corrupt. MCD also has good rights. You have made a curtain laser. From the streets of India, there is a time. One more time, we need Modi. The heart of Delhi is of India, Modi. Chopra, whatever you have achieved. It has such a brilliant award, I would say. Thank you so much. My recognition and I think platform like this are very important. This overall excellence is PR professional of the world. I would love to hear your opinion. I would again like to thank all of the partners who have been part of these awards. This award is presented by ATHAC, ATHAC is PR topics, children communications and co-powered by media sponsor, MSN, Puperses Groups, Public Relations and Integrated Communications Network. Co-volve partners, Archison, Indian Rebusiness, children communications, PR partner, Urban Mobility Partner, Neewa, Lifestyle, Lifestyle PR partner, and the media partner, Creative Partner, Weber Shanwick, Digital Media Partners, Media Value Works, Serving, Enterprises with P2P Communication Leads, Knowledge Partner, PolicyBazaar.com, Compare, Buy, Say, Academic Partner, Pearl Academy, Associate Partner, Codeswage, and Co-Partners, 600, Wired, Different, Puperses, Communication Council, and Mune. The TV Partner is Music's Advertising Partner, Impact Advertising, Visibility Online, and Skydive, Every Partner, BioEye, Weather, Live Web, Press Partner, 24 Frame, Digital. For the last award, under the category of Overall Excellence, which is a Lifeline Achievement Award, is Mr. Madhav N. One, so many wonderful awards today, are the Mahindras, are the Vedas, are the Indra Jals, are the So many of them, the ortho-gambrics, aspects, are the State Bank, the Access Bank, and we can keep naming them or the Vodafones, or the Samsons. I can, I mean, it will take me one hour to just become all the names or current names, and many of them have been five years, seven years, ten years of journey. So they enrich you. And of course, the folks at Advertising, we are.