 So we have with us Raazul from Shimaru, Pavan from Nagio and Jastruta from Photoselcare. So now as I sit here with these domain experts from the marketing and advertising, communication industry, I'm reminded of this one quote which goes something like, you can change your world by just changing your world. And that's exactly what this industry has been doing all these decades, shaping, polishing and if need be, even airbrushing the communication of brands. So what are we here to discuss today? The new age marketing and communication. So let me start with asking a very basic question to our panelists here. You know what is that one sweeping change that the advent of digital has brought about in the communication and marketing industry? Let's start with you Jastruta. Sure. One broad sweeping change that I can talk about is that I think it has thrown out as a rulebook what as a brand and communication professionals you were told which is you have the power to build your brand narrative. So a brand is no longer what we tell the people it is. The brand is now what consumers tell one another that it is. I think that is a broad change and that has happened with the advent of digital especially social media where there are no walls. I think it's been the most disruptive thing that has happened to any industry in the last many, many decades and it's definitely for the good of a lot of industries especially if we talk about communication it gives us so much opportunity to reach out to consumers where they want to see what they want to see. You can hyper-target and reach out to a very specific niche audience what you want to tell them and not just a one-way communication but have a real two-way communication with so many of your fans across the globe and take feedback and continuously improve what you're trying to deliver to them. So I think I'll speak from the perspective of the industry I represent. So Shimaru actually is a media and entertainment company in India. One of the oldest media and entertainment companies in India and about a year and a half ago we sort of changed our brand imagery to become more relevant to consumers. So being in the content industry what digital has done actually is digital has made the consumers themselves create content now. So it's not just the role of content companies like us to create content that has given a lot of conversations and which also helps us to up our game and the content we create. So what I think Bhavan spoke about is the two-way communication which is happening. It's happening in various forms. It's happening either with the content being put up by a user. It's happening but unlimited two-way information messaging happening. So digital has been disruptive for a lot of us and actually it's blurring the lines between marketing and PR very strongly. So I'd just like to add here that I'll spoke about content. So it also gives you so much more to do with your own content. I'll give you an example. A couple of years back we launched this show called One Strange Rock with Will Smith as the host of the show and that was a 10 episode series which was going to be launched across television screens across the world but we partnered with Instagram and they saw the merit in partnering with us in launching a new service on the Instagram platform called Instagram TV and we hosted the first Instagram TV content globally live which was a live chat between Will Smith and the astronauts on International Space Station and that became such a viral moment. So the format was that Will Smith is going to be doing a live chat with these astronauts but at the same time the people on the platform could send in their questions to Will Smith and interact with the astronauts and really create content right from that moment. So while we were promoting a show which was a totally different thing we ended up creating a new service with a platform like Instagram. Another thing I think digital has done and I hate saying this as a journalist is to reduce the dependence of brands on journalists. Now you have different ways to communicate with the user directly and while it's good that you can get the response real time it also works in a different way, you can get trolled just as much. Mr. Ghosh was here and I remember this one example by Indigo where a user also put up this video of this Indigo crew bashing up a man handling this passenger and it went viral and it really was a PR disaster. So how do you in such a case handle this double-edged sword called digital? I think you rightly said it, you accept the context that it is a double-edged sword. So the way that it was democratized the whole landscape is a good thing because now there is no concentration of power with a few people. So there is no concentration of power if you borrow from Rajiv's example in the keynote address that there is a Mr. Ghrilal Jain who seems to be the only guy who has a direct line to let's say the PM of that. Today everyone who follows a political party or a leader a Twitter handle has a direct line to it. So this whole democratizing of the space, bringing down the wall and this concentration of power to decentralization of power where everyone has a voice is a good thing. I think it's a good thing for everyone. It's a good thing for consumers of course. It's also a good thing for corporations and for people such as ourselves that's a check, that's a check so that we don't become heavy so that we are not drunk on power so that we don't think we are any more important than we are. So I think all good in that space. But as you mentioned it's a double-edged sword. It's a double-edged sword especially for few industries so if I can speak about healthcare it's very difficult to lose a loved one. And when you lose a loved one the first thing is to go on Twitter and say hey there was medical negligence and the kind of vandalism there's a lot of personal angst and a lot of mob mentality so how do you control that is also very very difficult. And I think the basic tenets of crisis communication and crisis containment whether it is digital or not still hold good. The only thing that has changed is the alacrity and the speed with which you respond. So listen to what's happening. I would say put out a hold to all your other promotional communication going on because if it is crisis then you don't want to talk about hey buy this or go there. And at the same time put a real narrative and if you have some people third party who can sort of I think endorses not the right word but at least say that yes I know for a fact or I have seen this for a fact or I've witnessed it or here's the other side of the perspective if you can put that out and be available don't switch off your phones do not be available don't switch off your phones and do not say I will not respond to the negative narrative. All of us are not just brand people we also consume us you know if you want to go for a holiday I'm sure everybody goes on TripAdvisor I for one am very critical of a brand which has only positives for it. Somebody's been you know doing something at the back end and you know nobody likes double smart people today. So a healthy balance of negative is also right as long as you've acknowledged it and you've responded it. So let's next before I let my other colleagues come in be responsive as a brand be responsible as a brand be sensitive to the negative out there don't be a troll yourself and I think eventually sense will prevail. Yeah I think if you have to talk about this really truly a double it's worth it while it is a problem and I think troll armies are everywhere now you have to be really careful what you're putting out there especially on the digital platform but at the same time it's also an opportunity for a lot of brands like I can talk from my personal experience on natural graphics so we have a very dedicated fan base if I can call them that right people who really believe in the purpose of for the brand and it actually goes down to the basics of communication that be consistent so we've been very consistent on what we stand for and that's the reason that we have been able to aggregate a community of like-minded people and if someone has a has an issue or someone raises something negative then we have cultivated that community to come and rescue us or respond on our behalf because they know what this brand stands for we have enough and more touch points with them and we have been consistent in our messaging throughout the years and we're talking decades and decades of communication through different platforms so that we have created those dedicated fan base that they will come to your rescue so you don't have to in our experience we luckily enough we don't have to really go out and defend ourselves we've had those brand ambassadors or fans who help us rescue from those situations firstly did not come wrapped in a plastic cover in India this was just one market where the magazine was distributed by a licensor in Brazil where the magazine got sent in that plastic wrap so of course it was again one of those moments where literally if you go down scroll down to your timeline to that moment you will not see an official response from the brand and you will see thousands and thousands of people talking about that it's what the message is that matters it's not what the... because they know that National Geographic is not the brand that is going to preach something and do something else they know that the intention is right that we are trying to raise up a very relevant issue and we all know that when we started this conversation back in 2017 from there till now we have like really come a long distance we've got a lot of government involved we've got a lot of business leaders involved into the conversation so it just shows that because we were true to the purpose of the brand this is what we stand for so it doesn't really matter if you really slip or missed on one or two points here and there because we had the support of our true believers our brand fans they are the ones who actually were responding on our behalf what you raised about digital now being our government towards especially in the comm space I think personally for me I think I sleep better because I don't have to wait for the next day paper to know what's happening to my brand conversation we attack in the brand 24-7 we pretty much know exactly what direction we are heading towards there are tools which actually have been built AI to even predict where your combination would go on digital so you know you essentially keep mapping your so in my mind brands don't go viral emotions go viral so you keep mapping emotions essentially and you take opportunities to convert negative to positive at the right time it could be done with compassion, humor many many ways and those combinations really have a larger impact than most marketing messages do when you actually address the right you've got love one how do you handle it the way you handle it the person is yours for lifetime so for me I think the double S4 is a good thing to do like you mentioned if you handle it the correct way the brand the customer is yours forever probably something like what Zomato did even the delivery boy that tweet was put up and they said food has no religion they really won everywhere you were with that one so I think that works or when they said that even our delivery boys could be hungry or when Vistara just said that even our crew they work the day and night round and they have a right to say so I think even as brands when somebody is fooling you everyone has a microphone in their hands for whether it's a emotion or it's the values that you stand for whatever you stand for your purpose taking a stand is also very good because that shows you as a human inside it just humanizes the entire brand conversation another product of the digital age is influencers while there's a lot of debate about fake followers and all of that how good do you think are influencers for the brand or multiple things do you think they lose their credibility in the process so again it depends on what your brand is trying to do if you're looking at a reach metric you're on the stage when you want to reach out to more and more people you want people to just know about your product great you can use as many influencers as you want people will see what your product is they may not form an opinion as early they just know about your product but the stage when you have to actually create that emotion again when you actually want them to move the triangle and actually look at the brand more than saliency at that stage choosing the right influencer and the medium because influencers exist everywhere it's just not limited to digital you have influencers even on television so choosing the right medium and the right influencer is very very critical so I will still stick to the fact that it's about what your KPI is at that stage and then you choose your right so influencers are very I think important tool in marketers arsenal in today's day and age I have seen a lot of brands use it in a very powerful way and if I talk specifically about what we have done in the last couple of months on 2nd of October this year we thought that we will just make the plastic conversation really big again and I know that if we would have just relied on our brand handles and our marketing support we won't have been able to actually reach out to a much larger base without spending the kind of money but what ended up happening was we just actually got in touch with certain Bollywood celebrities and of course it was a messaging on plastic they were happy to partner with us and we started actually created a campaign where we started tagging political leaders through the Bollywood select and what it did was a ripple effect of conversations and people taking up notice who generally would not have been a part of my conversations around plastic but on that particular day we had a potential reach of some 0.8 billion impressions within a span of 24 hours and what we did was we asked people to come and take a pledge that they are going to reduce their plastic consumption on a daily basis on our website and within a span of 24 hours some 25 million plastic items were pledged and it was all on the back of just an influencer campaign we didn't really did facebook ads, we didn't run any video commercials, we didn't even create a communication around it and messaging that influencers put out there So I can elucidate with the help of an example mental health concerns are very widespread today so we did this campaign which is hashtag unmute yourself and that is just to say that when you are suffering from any sort of psychological issue you feel that your voice is muted, that your feelings are muted so hashtag unmute yourself there are two sides of influencers that we sort of employed for it, one is people who have gone through that experience themselves so these are influencers not because they have reach, not because they have influence but strip it down and to the basics these are people who have faced that problem so nobody can better articulate it and therefore in terms of the whole word of mouth thing where you want to go to somebody who has experienced your product or service so to say speaking a marketing language you have gone through it and therefore are the best people to speak about it, so those are one set of people that we employed secondly we tagged those Hollywood celebrities who have spoken up against or running an NGO for that and then you don't have to say that I am going for the A category you have to go for people who feel for that cause so therefore as long as we keep the conversation authentic I think it is a great point to have in a marketer than a communication I spoke touch briefly on the fake followers part of it I was doing a story on influencer marketing and I rang up this one company and the going date for about 10,000 likes and 10,000 followers was about 7,000 rupees and it fledged business in India by the way so if that is the case how do you weed out the real influencers from the other then is that why the micro versus micro influencers the date has come into the picture do you prefer going with people who have like 1,500 followers as opposed to you know the lax and laxer followers which is exactly the point that I was trying to make that I think we don't get swayed at least in the healthcare industry and I can speak for the industry by just the reach it's not some mad numbers that you're showing it's the impact that you have and therefore keep it authentic and relevant which means if you have gone through a mental health concern yourself then I don't have to make that tweet and give it to you and I don't have to run the risk of you just copy pasted some stupid content and have through that you've gone through it and you're the best person to articulate it and somebody who's facing the same issue will resonate with you when he or she reads about it so therefore for us I think it's more important the impact that you have and not the reach and if there is a question between the two toss up between the two we always go for impact because that keeps the conversation authentic and relevant and not a reach with influences and everything I'd like to like you to answer do you think there's a problem of plenty in the sense there are too many mediums out there there are too many different platforms Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook where all do you tap your customers a big problem but at the same time there are two sides to every coin so this is a boom for a lot of new age brands who may not have the big budgets and deep pockets to establish their brand in a way short span of time we have seen so many new brands like let's say Oyo even before they would have started marketing themselves Oyo was a brand in millions of hearts because of these new platforms what these new brands get an opportunity to reach out to the right segment audience and create a meaningful conversation be it news outlets or be it influencers or be it social media platforms or just video platforms nowadays if you are able to if you understand the value proposition of your product and your brand and you really know who you want to talk to you can really create a meaningful conversation and engagement out of these mini platforms or mini communities out of these social media platforms and at the same time for bigger brands which would earlier consider 500 GRB as the mark for any launch or any new campaign it becomes again a double sort sometimes we feel that we have to compete a lot to invest a lot more in trying to make the message cut through to the right audiences but at the same time what it also gives opportunities if you understand what you are trying to do what you are trying to communicate then you can go to that right medium and have a much more people and meaningful impact basically you don't miss the good old days of just television radio and print of course I miss it because being a television network we of course miss all the money that was just parked for our network but now it's divided amongst a lot more players but from a marketer when I put on a marketer that I see there is a lot of advantages also of having so many platforms I think it's a great medium but I also from my experience we only go to influencers when I have a campaign I think influencers should be used, utilized and you know you should have a sense of co-working with influencers on a long term basis to see benefits coming out if you do it very sporadically you just do one influence the campaign and it's appear you go on TV, you go on radio then you come back to influencers again you essentially miss out on the benefits you can reap from actually having a longer association with influencers so in a way they become your grand ambassador so I firmly believe that you know having a long lasting relationship with influencers is a better way, it sort of helps your brand with the right boost you know a basic campaign I think here you can please have it marketers is that they feel they don't value them enough the kind of work they do gets reflected long term you don't really see immediate results for a PR campaign so do you think in this new age there are better ways to measure the ROI and you know measure its PR campaigns that way do you think it's evolved on that side so again I take a leaf out of what Rajdeep was saying in his keynote address that I think so far we've operated in this silo and we've spoken at each other not with one another so I think this conversation is happening now these silos are sort of disombing and so it's a good conversation happening with the advent of social media you can look at how many people engage with a particular story even if you put out something on online PR you know how many people that you've reached which is certainly better than just somebody telling you 10 years back that this is the circulation figure into 4 or 5 formula this is your readership number so these many people might have had the opportunity to read your story okay at least today I know that on the page when I put out a piece of content how many people have liked it, shared it, commented on it any other network this is certainly better but have we reached a stage where for every brand manager it is part of the brand track you know we haven't reached that stage so I think it's a journey and it's all moving in the right direction so I feel that of course there's been miles and miles that we still have to go but we've come a very long way in terms of putting a number or putting a metric to what is working what is not working I think that right now we are in a space that there is a problem of plenty there are a lot of indexes there are a lot of metrics that a brand manager is thrown at and you definitely don't know the right benchmarking you don't know okay is if an article is shared 1000 times is that enough or does it have to be 10,000 times or if I'm getting 5 comments is that well enough on this issue so what the need is to actually there are enough and more data points out there but really create the right benchmarking for the right conversation which is going to define that okay what should one expect out of campaign so but at the same time we've definitely come a long way in terms of identifying some kind of putting a number to whatever you are doing now someone to tell you if that number is well enough or not one last question time is up I see Rahul I'd like you to answer that would you say that PR and marketing today are lines are blurring between them more and more overlap is happening yeah I think it's very evident actually so traditionally marketing would enable sales and PR would sort of enable your imagery with the stakeholders with both of them sort of joining so closely I think I don't see many companies which keep a very big distinction between comms and marketing a lot of times actually especially for Shimaru because this is underwent a recent brand fresh a lot of initiatives actually are PR driven which then get marketed out so we find through the reverse right now that you're very very PR focused and it's working very well for us so comms is the main step for us so I hope I can safely conclude that you know by giving a very lame metaphor I just sort of PR and marketing were initially like Parle G and child but now it's more like that solid that dissolves at the bottom of your cup they're inseparable so I hope we can thank you so much thank you Thank you