 economy revival. In this edition, we will be addressing the changing role of marketing and communication. Eminent leaders from the public relations and corporate communication industry will mark their present at the event where keynote sessions will be delivered by Mr. Jagdish Mitra, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Growth, Teck Mahindra, Mr. Maxim Bahir, CEO and Chairman of the board, M3 Communication Inc. Dr. Meena Nizari, Executive Board Member, PRN Communication Researcher, WCFA. Ms. Marwa Kapoor, Group Head of Marketing and Communication, AI, MSL. Mr. Ashwani Singla, Founding Managing Partner, Astrum. And Mr. Asim Sood, CEO, Impact Research and Measurement, Private Limited and Chairman, AMEC. Later in the evening, we will be celebrating, acknowledging and felicitating the contributions and achievement of various agencies, brands and individuals from communication industry at IPRCA 2022. So ladies and gentlemen, let's get started with our day with new learnings, excitements and knowledge sharing. Once again, extending a very warm heart and welcome to each and every one of you to the 13th edition of Exchange for Media, India PR Incorporate, PW, India Group, Teamwork Communications Archetype, PR Pandit and ATDB Communications, Lifestyle Partner, Acti Media PR and Digital Associate Partner, Brand Communications, Pochina PR, Analytics Partner, Concept BIU, Social Change Partner, On Purpose, Co-Partners, Gray Cell PR, Gray Matters, Mavericks, VSPIC, Samillations PR, ComVisor, Distribution Partner, Business Wire, India Measurement Partner, Impact Research and Measurement, Private Limited, Strategic Communication Partner, Critical Edge, Influencer, Marketing Partner, Chachi and News Partner, News X. Well on that note, our social media contest today is live in order to participate and win exciting hampers every hour. All you have to do is follow us on LinkedIn. As you can see, we have a QR code on your table. Simply take out your mobile phone, scan the QR code and follow us on LinkedIn. Also share your experience using the hashtag E4M IPRCCC. I repeat hashtag E4M IPRCCC. And post it across your social media platforms, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and please do not forget to tag us. Also I've been told that there are extra points for posting pictures and videos. So let's get cracking. And now, ladies and gentlemen, to deliver the opening remarks and to officially welcome you all, it is time to invite the man of the hour. Please welcome Dr. Anurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief BW Business World and Exchange for Media. Thank you, sir. Good morning. It's my honor and privilege to be here. First of all, I'd like to acknowledge the presence of many people who have helped us get here. Of course, Karan has put it together for the last few years. So Karan, Sherbasti, Ruchika, the complete E4M team, thank you for putting it together. Mr. Ashwini Singhla is in the room. I don't know where he is at. I remember, I have said this story many years, many times that we started Exchange for Media 22 years back. You don't know we wanted to be a marketplace for the media industry. We're buying and selling of media time and space happened. I think in 2023 and 2024, we'll attempt it again. We believe the time is right now. We were ahead of time. And we started a newsletter in 2001 to kind of evangelize what we are doing. It became popular and we started breaking stories and we became what we are today. About 19 years back, one day I called Mr. Ashwini Singhla and I said, I want to do a PR and COPCOM tab on the site. I want to start a section on PR and COPCOM and then I want to start an award in the conference for the PR and communication domain. And really, Ashwini was very kind. He met us. I used to have hair then and we were very young. We were very small in our impact. He helped us put together. He was the chair of our first year's jury. You were very much there and really my gratitude to him as I'm growing older. I believe gratitude is the most important thing. Health is the most important thing. Relationships are the most important thing. Money, business, fame, all that. It's secondary. So really, Ashwini, my gratitude for starting this revolution and being among the top leaders in this country. Ashwini continued to reinvent himself in the business. Faisal, I forgot to take your name. That's the problem with taking names somewhere. But I see you so I remember. Faisal is a lot of my colleagues are there. Some have directly contributed. Some have indirectly contributed. Chetan is walking in again, a friend of mine for almost two decades. I had a good pleasure of meeting him last week at a get together briefly. So thank you, Ashwini. Shaileshji, I remember I called you 12, 15 years back. I can't be sure and said we want to do more regional content. At that time, I used to run E4M. I don't run, Naval runs E4M. I'm here because Karan's event is here and it's a community that is very important. So really, we've come a long way. I just want to say that contextualizing what is being discussed today. A lot of people in the editorial domain asked me, so what's happening to your business? What will happen to editorial businesses will chat GPT take away our lunch, so to say. And last week, I met a very senior professional from the communication domain and she asked me, what is the impact of technology on PR and communication businesses? And I said when I'm coming here today, I must address that. I see a lot of friends. I can take everyone's name. Chetan, thank you for being here. I made some new acquaintances today. Now, I must say that the year 2022 was one of the reckoning for business across the world from tackling the fallout of geopolitical conflicts to inflation and adopting emerging technologies. A lot has changed in the last 12 to 15 months. Most companies cautiously rolled out numerous marketing campaigns and pure play digital marketing emerged as the leading tool for market years. And really, if you looked at India, the digital spends grew by almost 50% and it's a large base now. It's not a small base. Whether you look at the pitch Madison advertising outlook, which we've done for last 18 years, or you look at the e4m densuages network digital outlook digital is growing leaps and bounds. It will like in next three years, it's likely to be between 35 to 40% of overall spends for marketing communication and marketing. So parallel to this growth in digital marketing was the growth of online journalistic landscape. I mean, many, many journalists who left mainstream started their own platforms either on YouTube and every week seasoned editorial leader launches something which is of some impact in the domain. Now, this has set tone for the PR narratives and for communication professionals. Market peers began focusing on a PR a lot more in 2021 and 22 because they also economize on their marketing budgets and PR became an even more important tool from an ROI standpoint for market care. The trend has continued. Also, the last six months have been tough in terms of some categories. Let me take education. It is coming back and it is given, but education dumbed down its own expense. Real estate is coming back again because of RERA and many other things over the last two, three years. Real estate industry saw seismic shift. But the positive thing that happened in the real estate sector was the fact that today the real estate demand is much more than it ever was before COVID and it is demand from users. So the real estate advertising real estate marketing spends are coming back. Third is the startups. In the last three years, four years, most of the communication budgets apart from mainstream large FMCG companies and large Indian corporate startups were bullish about the future. They understood digital. Some of them were digital only businesses. So clearly their focus on digital was big. But as they grew, they realized that if they want to build mainstream brands, they need to focus on communication PR in a holistic way. So clearly in the last three years, especially marketers have become focusing on PR a lot more than they ever did. And clearly there are many reasons, but the top six reasons are the credibility in the organic reach PR brings, the cost effectiveness as compared to non-organic spends, the ability to control your message, the ability to be able to multi-platform your message. Fifth is the ability to be able to create a two-way communication in some cases of communication, which may not be traditional PR, but initiatives where all these stakeholders engage. And sixth, very importantly, when the marketing budgets became lesser, PR was called in to keep the communication going with all the stakeholders. Also, one big shift that happened in 2022 and it continues in 2023 is a shift from quantity to quality. I think quality matters even more than it ever did. And really, let me now address the question of what will happen to the PR industry because of the rise of AI, chat, GPT, technology. I must say, even in journalism, when Buzzfeed let go 12% of its workforce, its stock price went up by 15, 18%. But eventually the copyright issues and the nature of AI, and AI is evolving too. It's not that AI static, they are trying to figure out everything, they haven't perfected. So it's growing, so it's a dynamic thing. But the fact is, most editorial platforms have realized that the content that chat GPT gives you is by definition from past. There's nothing new. There are copyright issues and the beauty of writing a story. So journalism is not under danger and technology is a collaborative tool. AI and chat GPT are collaborative tool. Similarly, in the PR and communication domain, the ability of human beings to interact with each other to strategize on what is needed for the brand and the business to be able to bring a qualitative dimension to the discussion and as the output is not going to go away. There is in PR, if I may divide in communication, there is regular PR, which can be done through digital journalism and disseminating press releases, then there is crisis management. And third, I would say strategic PR, which is about long term brand building the role of professionals in strategizing and in disseminating information is likely to undergo a change, but the core of it is not going to change. The role of PR is going to grow. In fact, I'm part of many communities, legal community, hospitality community, and there is always this question, when will the CXO from these domains have board positions? I think the time is coming where more and more corporate communication professionals will sit on the board of companies because if reputation of brand is not important, then what is more important than that? So really the Indian PR domain is growing. It is more vibrant than ever and I must say the next 10 years of India are going to be glorious and that is with or without the government. Of course, government can play a positive role. It is playing a positive role, but India's own trajectory is such because of large domestic consumption that we will continue to grow at a pace and brands and businesses will need communication in a very competitive landscape for the three things that businesses need, talent, capital and customers. So the role of PR professionals will only get nuanced, even more specialized and even more important. So I think we are doing the IPR CCA at a time when the role of the communication professional is much more important than it ever was. You will see more and more communication professionals in the boardroom and being involved in strategic launches, in acquisitions and more importantly, not just being there in a reactive mode, but working proactively with all stakeholders and the board to be able to achieve the strategic communication objectives. I want to end by saying that PR as an industry in the last two decades has come of age. I think the next decade will grow this industry to a level that we haven't imagined. There are large PR firms that are doing turnovers which are more than media companies. Their profits are more than media companies. So I just want to say that you're in the right industry, add more skills to yourselves. A lot of PR professionals can grow by adding the role of marketing to themselves, the role of media planning buying to themselves. Sometimes people who are in marketing CMOs, they come to me for advice and they ask me how do we, and I said to them, take a PNL role. And they have taken PNL roles and I know of three instances where my very close friends and mentees are younger than me, have become CEOs taking, I mean it was their destiny. But the idea of taking a, they were CMOs of they are taking a role which is PNL was possibly came from me and they did take the PNL roles in a small way initially and eventually we can the CEO. I think more and more PR professionals and communication professionals should have this ambition of being CEOs of companies. Just being this head of communication, head of PR, head of marketing is not good enough. So I think that's the ambition I'd like to seed. I believe in the power of conscious and subconscious thoughts. Whatever I've imagined, mostly I've got closer to that. So I tend to think right and big these days. So think big for yourselves, think big for your clients, think big for your industry. Look forward to seeing you at the award that will be a full house. There were 300 plus people at the awards today. So look forward to celebrating all of you and your industry and God bless you keep doing great work. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Bhattra. And with this ladies and gentlemen, we kickstart the conference with the first panel discussion of the day. The session will deliberate on the topic of new era of AI in PR. How it is challenging conventional PR methods and reshaping modern ones. I must request you to all to offer a very enthusiastic chair as I welcome our panelists. Joining us ladies and gentlemen is Mr. Sudeer Paul, executive vice president or a funder. Please welcome Ms. Bhavna Singh, vice president corporate communications, Bharat sirums and vaccines limited. Please give it up for Ms. Ravpreet Ganesh, chief integration officer, the Mavericks. One hand this way, the other one this way. It's super easy to clap this way. Super easy. Come on everyone. Let's welcome Mr. Pradeep Vatva, founder and principal critical edge. Please give it up for Mr. Shailesh Goyal, director simulations public affairs management services, private limited. And now completing the panel. Let's welcome the moderator for this particular panel. Please give it up for Ms. Rishika Jha from exchange for media. Allow me a moment before we begin. Thank you. Good afternoon to everybody present here. Good afternoon to all my panelists. So, to begin with the session, I'll start with the very basic question that is how does AI affect PR strategies and I would like a one minute remark from all of you. Mr. Paul. Morning. Delighted to be here. Yes, the judge EP and likes are helping the industry communication industry to bring in acceleration. They're bringing to accuracy. They're bringing to a lot of efficiency probably in the routine and mundane work we do and also the intelligent. But what is missing is the emotions and ethics, which I feel will not be able to know what you will be able to do. And that's where the major challenge will lie. So effect. Yes, it is affecting largely what is bringing in efficiency. It is bringing in, you know, the primary compilation of the, what we call as content generation and also into the data. And it's the media monitoring the, the populating the, what we call as the target media and universal. But yes, the human interface and human interaction one until it is able to read the human emotions. It won't, it won't be a major challenge for us. Mr. Wadba, your words. So I think all of the PR professionals are either using or at least reading about AI. So my sense is that the impact will be transform, transformative and imagine life before mobile phones. I think a majority of the people here have were born after the mobile phone came so they may not be able to imagine it. But imagine your life without or before mobile phones and now. So AI has this ability to change our life. And I'm not talking only about PR industry, obviously PR industry is going to change across the board. So today we are at a cusp. It is going to completely change. And as Shalichi was saying that it can help us reach to more audiences because obviously it helps generate a lot of content at a very fast pace and also currently cheap. It is cheap, but we don't know how the costs are going to evolve over a period of time, but it will help us reach out to more audiences. Get more personalization because personalization is something is extremely extremely important both from marketing and public relations perspective. The more you can personalize the more you can connect and you can you are able to receive a better response. So response could be anything you know response could be you want to like make them like something you want to make them purchase something you want to change their mindset. So all of that will be better if we have better personalization. Then PR industry hasn't gone through that, but a lot of industries have gone through automation. Automation of you know, the ability to product processes. I think AI will help us also automate a lot of the processes. And there are several things I think you had given me one minute if I'm above you can stop me and I'll pass on. You can complete a sentence. So we'll also, you know, things like measurement, things like understanding an industry, things like connecting your impact to the results. All of those can be, you know, the positive impacts of AI. There is a, I think there is at least two, three minutes or five minutes. I can speak on the negative impacts also, but I think I'll give it to the next panelist and in the next round I'll talk about that as well. Thank you, Mr. Wadhwa, Ms. Ganesh. Good afternoon, everyone. I think first and foremost, couple of changes. It's here to stay. So we might as well become friends with it. I think there's a lot of fear and anxiety. No technology is going to replace any human being. I'm a firm believer of that. It's a technology developed by us. So fundamentally, what it will definitely do to any professional, not just PR professional. It is going to force us to upskill ourselves. We need to understand how to use this technology in a more collaborative fashion. It's here to make our lives, I believe easier, more efficient, take out the inefficiencies from a lot of our processes, be it research, be it simple fact finding conversations. What I love about chat GPT is that the void itself, it calls out, it says that please do not take these facts at base value. These are facts which have been, as Dr. Bhattara said, it's the past, it's not the present or the future. And as professionals, our job is to impact the present and look out at the future. And that's where we and the AI can work together. I believe that with AI, you're only going to become better at what we do. Definitely more credible, definitely more helpful in adding values to our partners. So I'm actually looking forward to what AI is going to bring next. From November to now, all we've seen is every new day there are new news, whether it is the biggest creators of AI is being called out to White House today as we talk probably to figure out what the legislation around the development is going to be, or how we generate the work using the current avatars. So yeah, I'm looking forward to what AI is going to bring to all our lives. Thank you, Ms. Minesh. Missing. Good morning. I think the disadvantage of sitting away from the moderators that I have nothing new to offer, other than the fact that I think this room more than anyone else. We are strong believers that I think PR can work with the three hours. And for me, the three hours are one is reputation. One is responsiveness and the other is relationships. And that's what, you know, we were taught when we started off in PR, more than more than two decades back, that you know relationships are important with your stakeholders. And we talk of AI and of course technology only challenges us to to be a better version of ourselves in our jobs as well. And I think that's what it's going to do. But AI after all is artificial intelligence and humans have what's called emotional intelligence also with us. And especially in an industry that I belong to, you know, it's highly emotional we are into health. And I guess there are only two industries where people are very emotional about their decisions one is health and the other is finance. So when it comes to health, while AI has positively impacted many areas, which includes is management, which includes understanding more about research, of course, will it replace communication skills which are basic, which is what all of us have. I don't think it'll replace but it'll definitely augment and make us do our things better. Thank you, Missing. Mr. Paul, you're in my. Yeah, good morning and thanks for having me over here. I just like to contextualize a little bit of this conversation. AI MLN LP all been around for very long. 2023 was touted as a year for AI because you know chat GPT brought content generation right into the hands of all of us. Right. Last I checked there were about 4500 AI tools that you could use, which was just not on content generation, but across productivity design email personal assistants you can go on. But to contextualize it a little more for you how AI is going to change with the way we operate. You know, I was coming here for this talk, and you know just as everybody would do. I told one of my young, you know, executives in the firm said why you go look up as to what my talk point should be. My young executive spent maybe four to five hours, putting together a small piece of paper with some top points and proof points to substantiate the conversation and I looked at it and I said, I don't think this is something that I can take to this conversation today. Guess what I did. I went and asked AI. So I asked AI in less than three seconds I got my top points for disclosure. That's what I'm going to use today. And guess what further questions in terms of asking about ethical use about measurement in PR and communication substantiated with hard data. So for me what I think AI is going to do is really kind of help us become smarter. I've always maintained that knowledge ever since the search and smartphone advent has become a flat world. Everybody has access to it. I have always defined what makes good to great is our ability to connect those dots of large amounts of information and start making sense of it and apply it to the work that Guess what, here's now a natural program algorithm that's out there that's collecting those large amounts of vast amounts of information, connecting those dots and giving you even more pertinent insights. So if the knowledge economy has become a flat world, I just made it just that much more flat. And I'll open it up, you know, to you to take the conversation forward. Thank you, Mr Paul. So my next question would be for you only actually with the introduction of charge epity like we discussed right now in what ways do you think the PR professionals will, sorry, the operations will evolve for the PR professions. So yeah, when you just like I was alluding to earlier when you're researching a topic when you are. Okay, I'll try to put it a little better. When I came into this profession, I wasn't a qualified communicator. But I joined this profession, and I was dependent on people either above me to kind of show me or guide me in terms of how I should be, whether it's writing a press release or researching a particular topic or looking at a particular company understanding what it needs to what what it does and how it needs to be communicated. Certainly there were no templates or all of that that was kind of readily available. You know, a lot. We used to look to for people around, or perhaps somebody else who's done it before. Look at something on online see if you can make sense of that. Today, what is going to do for you is it's no longer a blank sheet of paper. It's going to give you thought starters. It's going to give you points that you probably would not have thought of. It's going to give you structure to large amounts of information again that you perhaps would not think of. So certainly for people like us who are knowledge economy workers. This is going to be a change. Again, it's about adapting to it's really early to say how this is going to evolve. But if you're smart, if you're intelligent about how you can derive the most and the best out of it. This is a long, long, you know, it's a long journey ahead of us. But an exciting journey also in terms of what it can do for an individual who's starting out in communication. Thank you, Mr Paul. Mr Goyal, I would like to know your views from a regional PR perspective that with the introduction of chat GPT what ways do you think the operations of PR professionals are going to evolve. So it is the next stage which I feel will evolve after some time because the working on the language versions of chat GPT is evolving probably. But what is important is that the customization it needs in terms of when it comes to the reaching the regional audiences is very difficult actually because the psyche of the audience, the psyche of the people we are trying to reach is differing especially in a country like India, you know, where they say that every 100 kilometers of the language change, the people, psyche change, people lifestyle change. So when we have to reach out to those reasons, I think the role of traditional will still come. Yes, it can throw you a lot of data can give you analysis can give you trains. But somebody has to read that and that's the human mind and customize it and make it relevant. That's where we thought our role will continue to be built. Thank you, Mr Goyal. So my next question would be for Mr. Adwa that in your opinion, how relevant are the traditional or conventional PR methods in today's digital world, how are they relevant still. See, we have to evolve with the changing times. So if you ask me that how relevant is today radio and television in the overall advertising. This thing similar question is this for PR. So the relevance comes from the fact that bear is my audience. And what are they reading what are they doing, what are they consuming and therefore am I actually reaching out to them in the in the language that they understand at the time that they need and with the messages that will resonate with them. So similarly, the basics of marketing haven't changed the basics of PR haven't changed. What is changing is that we are getting more as in a digital world we are getting a much more distributed time. So, you know, we want it is distributed. Second is that we are getting a lot more technology to help us aid us today. We can reach out to micro segments. We can reach out to we can God what is the intent of our target audience. We can, you know, see and reach to them with the right messages we can test those messages much faster. Let me give you example of traditional advertising. We would give an ad in the newspaper and then it was like, okay, now God is willing it is going to reach out to the right target audience. It will resonate or it will not. Today, when we do digital marketing campaigns in a few thousand bucks, we can find out whether, you know, our message is working or ad is working or not. What should we change the headline. So, and we can create different campaigns for different and several types of target audience. So we can slice and dice in numerous ways. Now, if coming to artificial intelligence, I think that will add up a new layer of giving us better insights. And therefore, it is incumbent upon us to be able to use it for reaching out with with better messages with better personalization. And that's where the key lies. Are we in a position have we elevated ourselves to be able to take advantage of what lies ahead. So it is not about beating AI, what it is about using AI for all. Thank you, Mr. Baba. Miss Singh, I would like to know your view from a communications point of view that how relevant are the traditional methods still in today's digital digital first world. So always believe that communications is all about a good story and what's a good story without any emotion without any feeling. So I'll just read out something to you all I found it interesting so I took a photograph of it. No points for guessing what the story is because you'll get to know of it. But I'll just read it out. A beautiful Cinderella dwelling eagerly finally gains happiness, jealous, finally gains happiness, inspiring jealous skin, love magically nurtures opulent prints, quietly rescues, slipper triumphs, uniting very wondrously, zennial youth zealously. This was the output that was given when the input in chat GPT was explain the plot of Cinderella in a sentence where each word has to begin with the next letter in the alphabet from A to Z without repeating any letters. So I don't know whether this is the Cinderella we have heard of, but it's Cinderella nevertheless it's got the message of the whole story. But again, I mean, we are storytellers. So it depends and like how all the other panelists said it's, it's not one versus the other. It's how we use it. And everything has its own use. There's no doubt anybody can challenge digital social campaigns being effective. More engagement, more two way communication, rather than what he said, which was earlier one way. Nevertheless, nothing can tell you a story better than you. So I think I these are my views on this. Thank you, missing. So, Miss Ganesh, my next question would be for you that since AI is making things very easy and convenient for people. What are some of the possible challenges that one can face when AI enhances further laziness. And if we become lazy that then then that that's the doomsday right so that's the fear we should really be articulated. As long as we don't have that because fundamentally, you know, as Bhavna said, we are all storytellers and nobody tells story rather than movies. So AI is going to help us to give what I believe is all of your IQs. Okay, so it'll give you your facts, your insights, your data all at one place super quick, all perhaps in a better format than the story we've just heard. But layering off it with our own intelligence our own understanding to create a story that is engaging that is relevant. That is unique. And as AI can faster AI develops and gives us better versions, better products, better tools. I think as long as we understand these are tools and it's incumbent upon us to deploy use them to continue to tell those stories, which is what we've done so far right. The combination of this EQ that you and I bring to the table and the IQ that AI will get to the table is what is going to create better stories, and we are here to tell stories, stories that can genuinely impact the consumer. So consumers not devoid of this site. And please appreciate that whatever story that AI throws that Cinderella story is not going to wow that small child who's possibly the consumer of that story. And that consumer is at the center of the reason why you and I heard this in this room. So if we are not going to be able to figure out what that consumer wants and that AI cannot tell me I can tell me how that consumer has behaved so far. So appreciating that input and packaging it and then of course a very relevant point that the deep made that where are we going to tell the story. Right, so all of that combined is what is going to help us to be better value creators for what we do. So, I should develop and I think should develop really fast. Who knows this free world of AI that exists or the so called free world some of the tools are free when they get monetized what avatar is it going to take. We'll see, but I think the relevance and upgradation and upskilling and our own understanding of this technology and keeping ahead of the curve is what's going to help all of us. Thank you, Mr. Nish. Mr. Paul, your view on the same. How what are the possible challenges that one can face when a enhances further. Challenges I'm not so I'm not going to take a view on saying that this is going to be really challenging for us in future. It's going to take on a role of its own it'll be interesting to see how it develops, but what it can do technology enables what it can do to enable people to do their jobs better to perform better to understand communication in a where I can do sentiment analysis topical modeling come out with predictive analytics performance matrixes and use AI tools within them to be smarter sharper stronger will just bring me that much closer to the customer or the mandate that we're serving. I also wanted to add another thing of you know content which is chat GPT but the AI tools out there creating visual design creating better photography for us creating I don't know all of us use Apple right. Apple's been using an AI tool. In your photos, you take a photograph. If you go immediately open up for graph you suddenly see the photo brighten up on its own. That's the software that Apple's been using in order to enhance its own photography and capability for every end user without the end user even knowing about it. But these are realities. I mean, it's already there. It's just making it the world a more beautiful place. Are we to be threatened by this? I don't think so. It's too big a animal that's been let out of the bottle that can be put back into the bottle. It's not going to happen. We need to embrace we need to adapt and you know every change that comes along there these questions that are thrown up in the air. But guess what somewhere down the line we figure it out we move on and we make sense of what was what that changes. We adapt to it we evolve with it and guess what we are here for the better so I really don't see many challenges coming about. It's about taking our own abilities and saying how do we embrace it to better serve what we do. Thank you so much for support. I just wanted to add a point here when severe was talking and like like how he said it's not so much a challenge. But I think you know. And I think Salish also mentioned that the need for ethics and the need for a framework, probably a guideline on where what needs to be used is something that in terms of privacy in terms of many other things, which is evolving. And that's something that we also need to take into cognizance when we start adopting this in our field of work. Thank you so much. I would like to say that chat or sorry AI is not a devil but it ain't no saint either. And why I say that is that you know all the issues about data privacy and you know accuracy and a lot more. The point is that governments have failed in industry after industry to come with regulations ahead of time. So be it a right healing service like over Ola or you know social media. Now we know that social media started with like a revolution and connecting people lost and long lost friends etc. Now it's become an kind of a pandemic or you know youth are really suffering and there is no debate. So governments and lawmakers are living like 20 years behind. Now with this AI coming up very very fast. Are they going to globally and in several you know different countries be able to come up with regulation which protects the users as far as data privacy as far as you know copyright IP issues are concerned. So those are the things I think we need to look at which is not for the practitioners like us but we can play a role in helping the governments you know take a more educated and you know improve their understanding to that. And second is we also have to be cognizant that we are not deliberately or because we do know we lack the knowledge are jeopardizing our in the interest of our clients. Are we actually inputting data and information of our clients into the software where it can get leaked or are we informing the clients ahead of time that we are using. That's why I think yeah. Thank you so much. Ms. Venesha concluding remark. Thank you so much. I think fundamentally just kind of taking off from where Pradeep left it is that remember the credibility part of it the organic part of it which is what has been out of fashion we get to the table. That role we will still continue to need we need to play more so in the context that Pradeep has just highlighted a couple of days back there was a video which got circulated Satya Nadeela nobody with AI you can't tell whether it is fake or it's real. Right now those are evils which exist with this as with any other technology right it's new. There's a lot of excitement around it I don't want to label it as fear, but I think fundamentally the strength of our storytelling is the credibility the facts that we all check before we responsibly put a story out the the organic life that the story, the ability that the story has to take their organic life. So as long as we mindfully use it as long as we have mindful of all the challenges that something like this could potentially bring to table. I feel this can only help us to do our jobs better. Thank you Mr. Nesh and thank you to all the panelists for joining since we're running out out of time. So let's get it. Thank you so much for your time. Ladies and gentlemen let's give a huge round of applause. So may I please request you all to kindly come up front for a group picture. And also to present a small token of appreciation on our behalf please welcome Ms. Shipra Biswas E for M team. I request the panelists to kindly stay back on the stage with us, as we have Ms. Biswas presenting a small token of appreciation on behalf of exchange for media. Thank you very much. What a fantastic start to a fantastic day ahead with this ladies and gentlemen we come to the second session which is the first keynote address for the day. Our keynote speaker will be shedding some light on the changing role of PR and marketing for brand. Ladies and gentlemen join me as I welcome Mr. Ashwani Singla founding managing partner as from repetition advisory. Can you hear me the audio clear. All right. You know when four of the five panelists who preceded me happened to be my colleagues in my in somewhere in my life tells you how old I am. But great thoughts for the everybody who are part of this panel. Thank you very much. And of course, my generous thanks to Dr. Bhattra for his very, very kind and generous remarks. How are you for the way he has honored me by saying what he did. So thank you very much. I thought there are enough experts through the course of the day to talk about the or pontificate on the benefits or evils of technology and how the world will change as technology will shape itself. And the chat that I wanted to have with you and this is a conversation and not some not some pearls of wisdom is around what's really changing in a world or is there any change at all. Right. It's great to talk about technology and the influence and the change that technology will bring to our lives. And when I juxtaposed that with a simple question to eight out of the 10 young associates either in the salting world, or in the in the corporate communication world as to what your day looks like. Then I start to really wonder, is there any change, or are we going to do more of the more of the same. So aptly, I've titled my conversation is about change is a question about how you want to look at life. And how do you want to embrace or not embrace that change to your advantage. Right. So that's that's really the the first context to the conversation and this is a conversation that we are going to have. What Dr. Butra said, gladdened my heart simply because he wished well for each one of us, who is in this room a young professional or or a seasoned communicator, because he said that one day or very soon or now. We have a seat on the boardroom table. And over the years. Now, what makes astrum unique or my journey in public relations unique is that over the two and a half decades close to two and a half decades that I have spent in this profession. I've talked about the use of science and the use of data and evidence and insight to drive decisions. What a surprise to me when you think about the founding fathers of a profession in the early 1900s happened to be all psychologists behavioral scientists or sociologists understanding behavior is fundamental to the pursuit of a professional forms ethical influence in whatever way you call it. So from a from a standpoint preference or reputation is undecided leave is a sustainable advantage because people will not choose to work for you and that's the percentages are all here. People will not choose to work for you if you have a reputation problem. And in the age of e commerce reviews and ratings decide decisions to purchase or not to purchase, which is obvious because peer reviews matter to us not claims made by products or service providers today increasingly. And if I was to ask Seema or anybody else who's tasked with the company's reputation, they will tell you reputation risk is their number one priority. So in the end and it's little wonder when a phone call or a phone camera are connected to the internet can cause a shit storm. In a few seconds to a few minutes, it's little wonder that reputation risk protection or risk mitigation is going to be a very important consideration for either the CMO CEO or CCO, whatever C sweet title, you want to give them. If reputation today is going to become central and advocacy of reputation or protection of reputation is a critical task that we as professionals have. So what is it that's changing in our world or not changing in a world that we can play to our advantage. So let's go a question to, to wonder. And, and given the fact that I'm a big advocate for data and evidence and insights. I thought I'll use these 15 minutes with you to bring to attention because I have a wide audience here of people who are veterans in this industry who will probably say, Hey, this is the most obvious stuff. And we've got young professionals who are entering this profession who may want to know a little bit more. So let me just share some, some critical insight, it's outside a, a survey that was conducted by PRCI and, and my team worked with the deeply and her colleagues to really bring out some very important nuggets out of this sort of unstructured to structured to structured conversations that we had across with decision makers in the communication industry. So there are about 28, 28 heads of consulting companies, medium to large to about 28 chief communication officers head of corporate communicators. And then of course across a range of industries to be able to to synthesize a few nuggets that I want to present to you today or share with you and then we can have a conversation about it. And obviously we we also did a lot of second research around some of the publicly available data that is available to in the register of companies annual report filings etc to be able to submit it. What's the good news. The good news is that our industry has delivered a consistent double digit growth so congratulations to all of you. Because that's a great testament of the work that you have done to be able to drive the fact that the industry is consistently outperforming the economy. Good news. Now, the other, the other part of the, the news here, if you look at which is here, which is about 2100 cross or about about a hundred million odd here is something that we are touching now. So we have a substantive industry today, growing at a steady double digit growth. And what you don't have here is who's driving this growth and the mid firms, or the mid sides firms are driving this the fastest. Right. What's the other good news. People who are in the client side chief communication officers and others will tell you today that they have the attention of their CEO chairman founder, whatever role that you have, which means reputation. If it's the central most important task advancement or protection of reputation, then the fact that we're starting to see communication heads have a seat in the boardroom is a great testament for the importance. And these are people putting their money where their mouth is. So what Dr. Betra said about being in the boardroom is not a pipe dream, but a reality for people. And consulting firms will naturally follow with clients. If they're in the boardroom, I would assume that they will have their firms also in the boardroom. If not, that time will come also very, very soon. What's the, what's, what's the good news here. You're starting to see the share of spend in the overall budget also steadily increase so that sort of again reinforces the fact that if you're going to spend more in the pursuit of public relations, the pursuit of reputation, then obviously that's also the, the, the function that's also fueling growth. Right. So for an industry that's increased centrality of its impact on business, seeing good outcomes in terms of growth is all good news. Now they may be some, some, some challenges here in the consulting world about people fighting in the small pond and trying to distribute the fish and therefore creating an inverse proportional relationship to value and price, but that's something for the industry to worry about as not the subject of the conversations that we want to have today. The, the small quotations that you see at the bottom of my of the slides, ladies and gentlemen should just tell you the actual words and phrases which I have paraphrased out of the conversations that I'm representing before you. So that's the good news here. Right. Now, it's a change here at all. And, and what got us here. Will that get us to where we want to go. Let's look at that. Again, based on these conversations. One thing's clear that the share of spend around online reputation is going to grow. And that's your now next year, and you're three, that's over three years. If you want to look at this, this part of the spend which is ORM digital going from about 26% one fourth to about one half. So that's going to happen, which means what we do online or in the space tomorrow with the way digital was going to become important. Right. So that's obvious now whether AI takes us there. And, and I think I want to just qualify and what we said is right is being AI has been around for a very, very long period of time. There are things in the room here and we founded impact 20 plus years back and LP was a language that we were experimenting with at that point of time, which is the base of AI. What we are seeing today is generative AI, which is your ability to generate on the fly of things that we want to whether visual pictures or or content. So we're going to start to see regulation for the spoke about the fact that legislators are maybe a step behind two step behind his pen 20 years. I don't want to be as bold as him, but certainly is our legislation in lockstep with the way technology will all I don't think there's any government in the world, which will be able to keep lockstep with the disruption and the pace at which technology will wall. So clearly, the ability to create convergence between what the interest of the business is, and what the interest of the policy or legislators would be would be an important skill set. And that's a growing need in the industry to be able to find the convergence between policy and progress. That's the second piece. And then of course content employee engagement was gladdening my heart to be absolutely sure is the growing share on a very small base of industry starting to now invest in research analytics and data. There's a lot of senior executives talk about use of data insights analytics. Frankly, I think there's a lot of talk. There's small walk in islands, and I like to see whether this walk will become a lot more mainstream, because I can tell you the entire business of Astrum is found in the fact that insights and data is the key to growth. And I'm glad to see Suvi who spent many, many years with me is pursuing the same passion through RF thunder. So more power to use to read congratulations well done. So, therefore, if that's what's going to happen. And that's what's changing in our world, we see what's required from us. So, are we ready for the skill sets that are needed to deliver the goods crisis public affairs internal communication, and all that is I think going to be the skill set that you're going to need so are we ready for it. Dr butter also talked about the the cycles of the sectors some sectors are up sector down here at the top industry versus industry or the industries fueling our industry in terms of size so pharmaceutical healthcare education, all of them will continue it will continue to feel I think it somewhere 63% and startup 10% gets merged. Therefore, a large part of it will also be I think the unicorn to the startup ecosystem that's coming in. So that's really the, the, the, the question is, is that the dawn of the new era, or if you look at it. Are we going to do some same and some right so as digital increases traditional media will pivot and you will start to see the centrality of media but maybe towards pivoting into more digital online formats and what you see here as the number of human beings, that's eight out of 10 people are telling you that they will be spending less around, or using less around media relations but still want to be about 50% that's significant, and clearly, as, as India becomes more literate as penetration increases and free the career said, complementing Mr ambani in his post in, in his, in his op ed in the Washington post he, he termed the geo as the second revelation revolution fueling the growth of India. So you're really obviously going to start to see penetration in regional markets start to increase that sort of substantiates the trend, and of course fake versus fact. We'll start deep fakes, all of those. And clearly, are we ready to deal with the fakes as good as we should be. I'm not to show. Let's look at the, the, the next piece. Technology will certainly play a role. The question that I leave with you. Is it going to be technology versus talent or technology with talent. But one part out of automation, automation intelligence is going to certainly drive talent technology will drive talent, but at the same time, the talent has to play a very smart, very important strategic role in the pursuit of what we need to achieve. Last, in terms of the, the credentials, the proof of the pudding is always going to be in eating it. Right. So what's going to drive progress is people these ladies and gentlemen are the top four matrices of evaluation of talent. And from there, as you start to think impact and impact and results are going to be critical. You know, I always believe that fashion is temporary. Classics are timeless. Right. So quality, ladies and gentlemen will be timeless. Ask any client, ask anybody that will tell you, and I'll leave with you the four critical quality parameters that in my 25 years of consulting have been the standard differentiators to success. So thank you very much. My time's up. I appreciate your time for listening. And should you have any questions are remain available for you to have a conversation. I appreciate the time you have. Thank you. I must request you to kindly stay back here on the stage with us. I cannot let you leave without asking the audience to bring up a very enthusiastic chair for your very lively presentation. And to present a small token of appreciation on behalf of exchange for media group, please welcome Mr. Thank you. Good to see you again. Thank you. Thank you. Before I introduce our next panel, I would like to remind you all about our life social media contest. In order to participate, all you have to do is simply scan the QR code and follow us on LinkedIn. The QR code is available on your tables. Please do not forget to tag us and use the hashtag E for M I P R C C C and our three C's in there. And as I've been told, there are extra points for posting pictures and videos. Exactly. But this we move on to the next panel discussion and the topic at hand is Industry 4.0 and its effects on PR. Ladies and gentlemen, join me as I welcome our panelists. Please welcome Miss Abhilasha Gupta head global corporate communications and public affairs tech Mahindra. Please give it up for Mr. Bhanu Arora senior vice president corporate affairs and communications metro cash and carry India private limited. Mr Arora. Mr Arora. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a huge round of applause to Mr. Bhanu Arora. Please take the work. Thank you. Please welcome Miss Laveena Gujral C O O Kanda communications. Please give it up for Mr. Pranav Kumar managing director Allison and partners. Let's welcome Miss Sayantani M Roy chief strategy officer PR Pandit. In Hindi, they say that GST does not apply to Tali. Tali is tax free. And completing this eminent panel, please welcome the moderator, Miss Shrabasti Malik, exchange for media. Hello everybody. My panel needs no introduction today. As MC has already done, we have a stellar panelists, and the topic we are going to discuss today is Industry 4.0 and its effects on PR. The industry 4.0 refers to the current era of connectivity and advanced analytics, and that has been transforming industry and businesses for quite some time now. So my first question would be, how would you describe Industry 4.0 and how do you see it as, and I would start with Miss Roy. Well, Industry 4.0 is nothing but digital transformation. We've seen that in PR. When we started about 22 years ago, we used to deliver press releases by hand. Now we are checking press releases on WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a tool and a technology. The entire digital and the technology and the previous panel also spoke a lot about it is there in our day-to-day lives as we go on working on our operations. What I would say is if we were to apply the principles of marketing, which is the basic Philip Kotler of product place promotion process to this, then the technology is all pervasive. There are products today, when we are researching data analytics, which helps us do our job better. Are we in the right place for digital transformation? Well, yes, PR is one of the professions which has a direct access to corner room. Very few other professions actually have that. Promotion, are we promoting it right? Well, maybe not. We are talking about technology and transformation in this close group of communicators. But when you go out to digital transformation and other symposiums, is there anything that is being discussed on PR there? Maybe not. We could certainly, certainly promote it better. So overall, my sense is it's there. It's there for us to embrace its taste. It impacts all aspects of how we do our job. But it is not technology versus people. It's how we make it better for ourselves. How do we deliver better for the companies who partner with us? Ms. Kuchral, from a corporate communications point of view, how do you see or would like to describe the industry 4.0? Well, just as a correction, I'm a PR agency person, not a comp person. But regardless, I do work with a fair number of technology companies. I think industrial revolution 4.0, whatever you want to call it, industry 4.0, essentially started with, like you said, digital transformation, but driven by new technologies like cloud computing, IOT, robotics, automation, all of these things. And so when we hear terms like AI, ML, and all these are nothing but these, you know, just tools of these kind of, you know, that are used for digital transformation, primarily for the core industries of manufacturing, etc. But now we are seeing its adoption across various sectors. And we see that with our clients, regardless of the industry that's functioning in, regardless of the size and scope of their business. So it's happening everywhere. Basically, the, so what is the need of this, the need for this came in, you know, for primarily for increasing efficiencies for upgrading talent usage for saving costs for more demand, etc. So we're seeing all of these things. And that is what has been primarily the change from the way businesses were conducted earlier to those that are being conducted now post this digital transformation era. How it is affecting PR is that now, you know, regardless of whichever sector a PR professional works in, whether it's lifestyle or it's FMCG or it is tech or education healthcare, you need as a PR professional to be able to understand and appreciate these technologies, and to be able to build them into your messaging for your clients, because every sector today is technology driven, whether you know you are promoting a coffee brand or a lipstick or, you know, you are buying an iPhone or whatever it is that you're talking about. That's I think the crux of the matter. Every PR professionally, professionals should be technologically well versed should have an understanding and should be able to weave that into a communication narrative. Thank you, Mr. Kumar. If you could tell us if the industry, the PR industry is ready for this revolution and in what ways is it ready. That's a great question. Do I know the answer? No, but maybe I can make some assumptions in that sense. So I think as my co-panelists rightly pointed out that industry 4.0 automation has already been around for a while. And I think in some sense, I think, you know, maybe about 10 years ago or so, we've really started to embrace, you know, social digital online, more and more. So I think knowingly or unknowingly, you know, we've been compelled to embrace all of these new platforms tools. And I think we're certainly well on that path to evolution because that's the demand of, you know, modern day PR and modern day corporate communications. So I think certainly, you know, there are steps being taken, you know, we're all using, you know, social media monitoring tools, we're using media monitoring tools, we're using, you know, CRM tools like HubSpot, for example. We're using tools like Brandwatch, for example, to really be able to use, you know, elements of industry 4.0 ML and AI to give us, you know, insights data that we're then sort of used to really create compelling campaign and ideas for the clients. But of course, you know, I think industry 4.0 or 4.0 as a concept has been around for a while. I think it only got a bit amplified with the induction of chat GPD 3, which was I think in the tail end of last year, that's when because of the generative AI capabilities that it cannot write and create text and imagery. I think it sort of compelled PR folks to sit up and take notice that actually we can use these tools, you know, more and more. Is it a threat? Is it enable the juries out there on that. But I think everything that I've read and seen about the fact that, you know, we have so much of technology at a disposal now. There's also talks of the fact that, you know, well, for tomorrow's job is do we need PR practitioners like us? Of course we do. I don't think we have to be defeatist about it. I think we have to be more bold and sort of embrace the fact that, you know, there is always the human element. You know, all of these tools are great at, you know, creating content. You know, the good with the grammar, for example, but they definitely need for the iterations, you know, with human intervention and for content and messaging that actually strikes a chord. Right. If you ask chat GPD to actually create a piece of content for you is going to be rather planned. Right. So I think we need to add a layer of, you know, that's where we come in. So I think it's definitely an enabler. Are we ready for it? Probably not because, you know, it's a very fast evolving space, which is happening at the speed of light. We are all sort of grappling with it. And as our clients and as our, you know, broad organizations also many industries outside of PR have actually banned, you know, chat GPD and AI banks, for example, are citing security and compliance concerns. So have they figured it out? No. Have we figured it out? No. Right. But we all have to sort of be very open about it and how we can effectively harness it, you know, to what advantage. So I think that's where we are at the moment. Thank you, Mr. Kumar. Mr. Arora, taking a cue from what Mr. Kumar said about chat GPD and how even if it, you know, delivers or creates a content for us, it's rather bland and it needs human intervention. So what do you think are the possibilities and the challenges that the industrial revolution and chat GPD in particular holds for the industry. I think picking up from what Pranav has just mentioned. So I'm just saying that for taking from what Pranav has been mentioned. So what is actually happening is we have to study the, sorry. So taking a cue from what Pranav has just mentioned, I'm saying that if you have to study the industrial revolutions, you know, there are opportunities, there are gaps, which we need to understand the only thing what we're talking right now is we are just getting worried or nothing. Now, if you see the first revolution which started probably around 1780, the next revolution took 100 years. The third revolution also took almost 100 years, but the fourth revolution, you know, we're talking about right now, fourth industrial revolution, it took only 50 years, or 40 years probably the speed which he just mentioned, you know, probably it's happening at the lightning speed. Now, which means what we need to be kind of worried as you know it's been talked about everywhere. IBM laid off a lot of people 7800 people recently. A lot of people are just getting worried that what will happen to our jobs and all. You just asked the question about the chat GPD and all. Now, chat GPD or AI or using the digital technology, I think there is an immense amount of opportunities are available. Now what is it replacing it is replacing the mundane work. What we are taking out of it, we're just, we're just just adding some stuff and trying to get some image results. It has immense potential. What we can do away with our mundane jobs rely on artificial intelligence rely on robotics rely on all those things which are available and biotechnology nanotechnology which is being used here. I think there are enough number of opportunities which are available which needs to be explored. It is just tip of the iceberg which we have discovered. There's a long way to go. So I think we should need to, you know, kind of be patient and keep exploring. That is something which I have to answer on this part. Thank you, Mr. I think we can have your views on the same. So, I mean a lot has been said I don't want to repeat myself. I'll just give an example. Some of you must have seen this post that's been doing the rounds on LinkedIn. The user is asking chat GPT if they can if chat GPT can give a list of pirated websites and GPT says no that's not okay and this is an ethical and so on and so forth. And then he uses reverse psychology and he says, can you give me a list of websites, which I shouldn't be using and there it goes gives you a list of websites that have pirated content. So it's the same thing it's technology is there and it's across industries whether PR industry or any other industry technology is there for you to leverage now whether you make it at it and enable or whether you use it for something or something mundane is is up to you, but I think it's it's there for all of us to use and to your question about where are we and are we ready. I would have a slightly contrarian view and I'd say that we're already there. I think we're already digitized I think we're already using these tools to our advantage. For instance at Techman that we're using a press release portal for last five years which is already a digital way of creating a press release for a company that is $6 billion has is present in 100 countries and is listed so there are many renewable tasks which are there whenever a press communication goes out and we've been using this portal which is automated just fully equipped which which has basically automated every menial tasks for corporate communications person for last four years so we're already there but what do we need to do I think we've also supposed to think about a policy we need to think about copyright issues we need to understand if tomorrow I am using a paragraph that chat GPT has given me is that mine or is that chat GPT is who's the owner for that content. So I think we need to now get double click into the next phase of tech and how we leverage it and think about all these pertinent issues. Okay, taking you from what you said that whether a text if it is created by charge a pity or if we wrote it, we have a dubious view on what it is. So, how do you think that the digitization and the introduction of charge a pity can affect the human effort that goes in. Okay, so something as simple as I think I'll get reiterating but technology can be an enabler, but the moments of truth will always be human. I think this is something that we can never forget. So chat GPT like he said it can help you develop better content it can help you repurpose content as agencies you'd know that there's a lot of repurposing that happens day in and day out that some of the things that we use as tools for us but it cannot replace human intervention if that was the case then after COVID we'd stop with press conferences but we've not because we still feel that it's important to meet like this to be speaking with an audience in a physical environment to be networking to be talking to each other. And so in a sense this kid never be replaced. Thank you. So I'd like to ask of how you see the industry 4.0 in the next five years, how much is it going to penetrate into the PR and cocom space that changes the more changes that are going to come in. I would start with Ms Roy. So, our pace of adopting automation has been there. Is it fast enough it's quite fast. I think next for next five years seven years. It has to be much faster, because even PR is a profession where the median age of our colleagues is about 2223 they are already the generation that understands this very well. So, if we are providing opportunities to them whether on the, you know, on the consulting side or on the other side, it has to be much, much faster. It provides us an opportunity to technologically upgrade ourselves. Look at products that are there in in the market with products that we can create on our own, see technology technology democratizes. So there is the disparity between a function of a marketing versus a PR versus an advertising. If some of the things are available at a click off a button, then those specializations are overlapping. There are four seed changes, and that has to be really really fast, where we adopt. And, you know, along with us thing you know we are the industry so it adopts together. Mr. Kumar if you could have your view on the same. I mean, I think as I mentioned earlier that we've already adopted that, and we are already growing with that whole evolution. But I think the next step would be to see how the tools we use evolve right there already some tools out there like profit and there's one more to let that I forget the name of the using AI to create help you create better storytelling, how to pitch better, you know, when you create a pitch for a journalist for example if you're trying to get a story out. It sort of takes inputs from the external world out there takes those data sets and helps you be more targeted, right. So I think we will see a greater development and usage of those kinds of tools, which are using, you know, chat GP AI automation ml, which is sort of in the broad purview of industry 4.0. And I think that also poses a lot of challenges, you know, in terms of the ethics of it. You know, copyright issues have always been there for a long time and with AI and automation they've only increased over time right. So I think that's something we have to look at. But there are also lots of questions to be asked. So as an agency we've actually globally created a Allison AI team, which is looking at, you know, with the adoption and growth of generative AI, what are the implications for us as an agency, because the implications in terms of, you know, local rules, data compliances, best practices, local considerations right so we are we've created a sort of a steering committee that is gathering inputs from you know all regions around the world to come up with some sort of you know guidance tools and you know things like that for our colleagues, because obviously, there is a lot to grapple with, and you know we don't know all of those answers as yet. So I think there is certainly we're in the early stages of you know laying that foundation and sort of really pulling it all together. But yeah, I think the future is definitely right in terms of you know automation and AI being more of an enabler for us. And then there is always you know the consideration of the fact that you also need you know season PR practices to come in and you know, give clients you know true counsel, you know in terms of the issues around reputation of AI, you know how our clients using AI what are its implications and, and things like that. So I think there is just a lot to be learned and done over the next few years but I think it's all heading headed in the right direction. Thank you Mr. Kumar. Ms. Gujarat if you, if we can have your view on how you see the penetration and how the industry 4.0 is going to aid PR operations in the next few years. Sure. So to my understanding, I think industry 4.0, you know, generally, if we talk about it beyond PR was driven by, you know, the ultimate objective of giving a better product, better experience to your customers. And to reach that, they use, you know, industry 4.0 is using tools like analytics like data like predictors and all of that. We need to as a PR industry start reflecting and adopting similar techniques, similar, you know, strategies. So we have data because of the so many tools that we have because you know, there's a lot of automation that has come in our monitoring tools have become better our measurement tools are better. So the data is there. Point is how are we using that data to derive better analytics for our clients. How are we using that data to arrive at various different, you know, predictive situations and how are we creating our strategies in sync with that. That is when as a PR, you know, as PR partners to our clients who are already in the digital transformation phase will be able to sync up with them and live up to that their expectation. There could be a million tools today at GPT. Tomorrow it could be something else everyone's talking about NLP. There's already something called LLP which is coming out which means that you can take a tool of this kind and you can customize it to suit your particular requirements regardless of the industry that you are in there are companies and these source these tools these platforms are now based on open source which means that they are available to any company any sector and customizable. It can ride over your current platform that can sit with whatever you have there is, you know, there's, there's an open technology future. So sitting here today and then predicting what industry 4.0 means for us is like, you know, by the time you leave the event, a lot of changes would have happened. That's how technology is moving that's the speed of change today. So, yes, content, you know, and basically it is the content and the strategy which is going to drive things but it has to be driven through data through analytics and through predictive analytics is that's what I thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kutral. Mr. Arora, if we could have your vision on where you see industry headed in the next five years with penetration and. Okay, as far as I see industry 4.0, I feel, you know, probably this question needs to be modified. Five years is too long a time. We have seen last five years the changes the way it has happened is phenomenal. The way the integration happened among different industries across the globe is phenomenal. If you see the newer companies have specially been formed to take care of a particular segment of an industry, you know, for cars, you know, they are, they are robotics, they are Internet of Things being developed, and there are special companies who have been just seen growth in last and last five years, budding aside a few fluctuations because of depression and all. So probably we need to gauge every year. That's one part, you know, probably as I mean, as just mentioned, and by the end of this, even there will be some new technologies which will be there. So what is required here that what the ultimate requirement is, we need to upgrade assets, you know, right. The only thing which we say, you know, probably, as I said, some time back, we are only worried because people say that we'll be jobless people say that you know, probably a lot of jobs would be cut. Now that's a very small part of it. We need to continuously upgrade because who's innovating all these things. It's a human people. Talent cannot be substituted. Right. If we have developed something really big, then we nearly really need to, you know, kind of in order to develop something bigger, we need to upgrade ourselves. So that is something which I would like to contribute here that, you know, we just see that probably every year, we are gauging this, you know, kind of the development. And then we are, you know, probably seeing that how can we make it more effective, the technology as well as ourselves also. So it is the effectiveness and effectivity, which matters the most in terms of gauging the technology and gauging our own people. Thank you, sir. Ms. Gupta, if you have your concluding remarks on the same. In terms of how industry 4.0 will affect a couple of buckets. So one is of course content. So in terms of predictive content, how can we automate repurposing as spoke about. So one is in terms of how the different tools, AI, ML, how can they help us generate better content, smarter content, more intelligent content and how can we as PR professionals and corporate communications professionals leverage that content. And take it forward. The other bucket is also in terms of media monitoring and right targeting. So for instance, in a crisis communication scenario, how do these CRM tools, how do these platforms help us with constant 365 24 hours monitoring. They help us with there is no restriction on language. There's no restriction on geography. There's no restriction on the platforms. We have one tool and we have real time alerts. So how it is making us more equipped as communications professionals. The other part is reaching the right target audience. A lot of what all of us do in this room. It ends up reaching the right stakeholder technology platforms like these can purely enable us to find and fine tune that strategy. We can figure out who is the right stakeholder, how to reach them and what are the best platforms and channels to reach them. So the potential is immense. I think it's up to us and how we leverage. Thank you so much. I would like to thank my panelists for this wonderful session. Yes, sir. So I will have a mic given to you. I must offer my sincere apology sir as the mic wasn't available earlier. Would you mind repeating the question one more time please. Yes, sir. Yeah, my name is essential are not from the Gemini. I'm from the industry. So I want to upgrade you to know industry at home while presenting any industry. They are talking about industry 5.0, not 4.4 is much behind. And Mr. Rodha has mentioned that when I'm trying to be more dated question that five year period is so long. According to Mr. Rodha, it should be one year. See, India is much behind as far as technology concerned as compared to the 12th country, America and Europe. We are 10 years behind America technology. Technology, technology, AI and other all too. No, I actually would not. So my first question is, we are talking about PR. My question for all the families, some family has to purchase a car. How many customers will say that if this particular company is using 4.0, then buy it. So when we talk about 4.0 or 5.0, essentially, in the, in the traditional sense, it is supposed to be applicable to manufacturing units. And the example of the car that you gave is right. Absolutely right. Right. So the maximum improvements happen in products that are driven by engineering or technology on a hardcore basis. Rest everything is the environment of 4.0 or the 5.0 is evolving and continuously evolving and six months later, it might be 6.0. That doesn't matter. Point is that the manufacturing processes need to be improved to create efficiency to create better products. And all of us that peripherally support such core sectors need to constantly be upgrading and adopting and, you know, learning new ways of aligning with the clients that we work for. Basically, with whichever regard, what I'm trying to say, I think is regardless of the phase of industry that we are in, whether it's four, five, six, doesn't matter. The basic tenets remain same, which is continuous learning, skills, upgradation, learning tech, becoming tech friendly and building our strategies and narratives in keeping with that. And I believe when we culminate the point of skill upgradation, we are by default adapting to the changes of the market. So to your point, technology also helps in hyper personalization. So for instance, a young person who's buying a car may not be looking at the look and feel and how does it feel when he drives it, but maybe looking at only the sound system. Now that is something that I can get an experience of in Metaverse. So industry 5.0 is also about helping each customer as they want. So it's basically, it's helping a range of people. It may not be applicable to all. Yes, of course. Maybe tomorrow I will still feel the need to get a test drive, to feel it physically, to talk to somebody face to face. But there would also be a segment, whether it's Gen Z, Gen X, that would be just fine to experience that in the Metaverse. So we're just trying to create experience for everybody and anybody. I think that's all we have time for. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Thank you. Could I please request the panelists to kindly come up front and join us for a group picture. And also please welcome Mr. Paisal Ali from exchange for media to present a small token of appreciation on our behalf. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Well, that was quite a panel discussion, almost turning into a fireside chat. Moving on, this brings us to our next keynote address for the day. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ms. Rachna Chaudhary, founder and director, Media Value Works. I have, I, am I audible? Hi. Perfect. Yeah. Hi everyone. I think this has been a fabulous first half and tough time for me to take 15 minutes of your time just before lunch. So promise what I'm going to be talking is going to keep you motivated and increase your appetite for lunch. So that's me, Rachna Chaudhary and 10 minutes we will take some very quick view. No big, just very simple tactical information that gives us the opportunity to go out and bag more business as simple as that. I'm trying to get our attention on marketing hacks required for the small and medium businesses. A minute here to draw your attention and focus on who and what are the small and medium businesses all about. Normally we have spent our time looking into the big brands and we go searching them, we go working on them, etc. But here is an opportunity where probably more than 80% of businesses globally are falling in the category of small and medium businesses. What we need to do is look at these SMBs, look at their growth tactics and identify them. And they are the ones who probably can be the biggest bet for all of us in the near future. The next few slides I shall take you will have three core perspectives understanding the SMB business ecosystem. SMB owner, who they are, what they think, how they operate and what their challenges are, which is where we come into play. And the third aspect would be how we understand the best marketing tactics to ensemble our propulsion and deliver to an SMB owner. I shall take this slide here, understanding the small and medium businesses, businesses which are, see, government of India, government of US, government of every country on their website, if you go, you can read up who is a small and medium businesses. These are driven by sector turnover. What is the turnover of the company? So maybe in India, we have a micro, a medium square and a little growing SMB categorized under less than 10 crores turnover, maybe 50 crores turnover, maybe 100 crores, maybe 300 crores, etc. So there are different definitions of small and medium entrepreneurs that one can identify and look into the government website to really get the grip about whom are you going to be targeting. Innovation is key for these small and medium businesses because they are driven by innovation. If they innovate, they bag new businesses. Hence, most small, medium businesses, guys are driven by innovation, identifying talent, they are very agile. We come to the next stage, resonating with the SMB owner. I think you can change this slide. They are the backbone of the country. They are the backbone of the economy. They understand the importance of marketing the most. While we all understand we have enough knowledge about PR, social media, compelling content, etc. These owners really get the grip about what we want to say, how we want to implement and what is the best strategy. So they resonate very well with us. I think we change weekend. What are the core characteristics of these small and medium businesses? Typically, they have limited resources because these are smaller companies. These are not big brands, but the aspiration is to become big. So they would have limited resources. There's flexibility and decision making. Normally the owner is the decision maker and our engagement always is best driven when you are in touch with the owner directly. Closer customer relationships, personalized service, hence the need of communications is even more than it was in the earlier days. Focus on local markets. Very easy to connect with them. Understand what their activities are. You are able to map the business very easily in couple of settings. Maybe three meetings and you can map the entire strategy and the roadmap for the small and medium business for annual one year. And then you do quarterly meetings and you can keep revising. We can change the slide. Here are some of the challenges that we understand. Limited marketing budgets, hence the small and medium businesses are an obvious bet for the PR corporate influencer marketing social media kind of solutions because they are not the probably the ones who are going to be spending crores of rupees on advertising. So the advertising industry does not really look at small and medium businesses. That opens a huge opportunity for the PR corporate communications, social media, influencer marketing, you know, all of us in the business. Very, they are having lack of brand, but today social media, etc. We know all, you know, we live with all this. We compete with larger business. They compete with larger businesses. We know how to drive narratives that can help this particular small and medium business to fight the competition. That's our skill again, keeping up with the technological advancement because the small and medium business is competing. So typically I'll explain here is a manufacturer maybe Noida and he has some auto parts and probably he's probably he is doing some business in India. He may have some exports. He may want to grow his exports business. How does it open up our agenda because he wants to grow his exports business. He would need social media presence. He would need web development. He would need influencer marketing. He will need so many avenues to do webinars to do. So he needs a complete communications ecosystem. And we are, as I speak, why I'm speaking this also is because I have set up something called an MVW MSME Development Center. Under this development center, we are actually onboarding small and medium businesses across helping them with different kinds of mentoring. You know, if he needs mentoring on finance, we need mentoring on marketing, if he needs mentoring on production help, etc. There are different consultants who would come on board and help him via this. The learnings of all of this is what made me put these four or five slides together, which can bring in our attention. And I believe there is immense potential in this and all of us can move towards it. Move to the slides next. They understand importance. So here is understanding the mindset of a small business owner. I've already covered this part. They face challenges. They are very much driven by marketing. Come to the next slide. Here is what the owners are, you know, they're very passionate. This is the first point. Every business owner is very, very passionate because he would have started his business from scratch and he would have taken it up to 50 crores. Maybe he would take it to 75 crores. Sometimes you will find the business owner and his next generation, maybe his sons and daughters are playing a very vital role. Many of our businesses that I have been handling personally and our team are engaged with, you know, we've come across this business. It's been 67 years, madam. We have so many customers. Have you kept any data, sir? No, madam, it's over there. So it starts from that level and it really calls for all of us to upskill. Now that we've learned, we know we need to understand marketing. Okay, I'll take you to the next slide. I'll not mix this. So understanding the owner, these are the core topics, you know, we know they are very highly committed. So they would be very committed on the word that they give because he is the owner. He is not driven by some decision maker and some board of director meeting which will happen and our entire campaign is dependent on somebody and etc. But so your action is quick. Decision is across the table and innovation happens across the table. No need to make these fancy presentations and go there for meeting. They don't. Boss Dhani ki baat karna hai, baidke samjhaye kya hoa? Itne pese mein itne rupe mein kya deliverable hoa? Let's do that. So sometimes I think we need to do brass stack conversations keeping the customer in mind. Yes, when we want to go and make a presentation to an enterprise client. Yes, we want to go fancy and we want to do all that because all that is required. But at the same time, when you're talking to a client directly face to face, some brass stacks conversations really help. Seal the deal, move on, seal the deal, move on, you know, that kind of thing. So we are very strong work ethics, very, very resourceful. You say, sir, hammari limitation yeh hai iske baat aap iskaam ke liye kisi ko lehi hu. It's very nice and simple to be very transparent with the client and explain this is all that we do. This part that you need, you put somebody on the job. Maybe he can upgrade any of his existing staff members and little training and orientation the company. So it goes very, very mutual and it's very, very powerful for and fulfilling for all of us as professionals because you would actually not just look at business. You would actually empower that company by your marketing skills offered to him, you know. So I think come to the next slide. Yeah, then here is where we get on to our marketing skills and our marketing skills would, you know, the ABCs of marketing we all know we know that define the target audience conduct market research, utilize social media and tailor your marketing efforts. This part we have heard enough, we know most of these part and this will only help us enhance our own skills by identifying understanding is the company into services business is the company to manufacturing. Is he a distributor? Is he a channel partner? There could be various formats. But at any point in time, he would have enough opportunities for all of us to get on to the entire gamut of marketing, not just limited to PR, not just limited to social media. Hence, we refer it as the marketing hats for SMB businesses. Come to the next slide please. So here we leverage social media. I think this part, if anybody would like to ask or discuss, we can discuss this part, but I think developing consistent brand messages. These are our skills, okay, engaging with audiences, regular hashtag user generated content, innovation all across in marketing tactics. Come to the next one please. Compailing content. I think we have covered enough just before lunch. I think change the slide please. So yes, definitely influence of marketing and the influence of marketing in this context is out of experience. I would like to share influence of marketing always need not be a model or a glamour person or you know, somebody who's in the film and entertainment business is an influencer. No, influence of marketing for a manufacturing unit who could be an influencer for that. Let's identify from the profiles of people look at their LinkedIn profile, somebody who is a subject matter expert. SMEs also referred as subject matter expert. He is he or she is an individual who probably has spent 20 plus years in actually leveraging a particular skill set which directly endorses manufacturing unit or this man or this small and medium business. That person comes in at the great influencer for this unit. So it's matchmaking. We may not have these influences on any of these dashboards that we have available for because when you are searching for influences you will find many for fashion and many for, you know, cosmetic brands and many of these but when you want to look at B2B influencers there are very few people but to identify them I think LinkedIn is the best source. Go into the product category, go into the segment, go into the industry, go into the geography and you'll be able to match with the right profile and funnel down so you know who is the right influencer. And then connect with them over LinkedIn and a few messages can get the conversation going and the grip is when you get the grip of the business from that small and medium business that I am a specialist in exporting maybe hospitality led products. That's his core. So how do you scale him back. That kind of perspective is what I'm trying to draw here. So building relation with them leveraging, maybe they can endorse some of your social media posts etc. They may not cost you any kind of money but it's just innovation in your mind to connect with the right guys. I think I'm to the next slide please. So here is email marketing which is a tool. It's been there forever but lesser said it still works, even if there is social media and there is everything and there is paid marketing and there is everything. Sometimes clear email marketing really works. So the way email marketing is done and especially with MailChimp and etc. And we all have used, we probably are using HubSpot or all of us have different tools. This email marketing really helps after you have created like a newsletter and some of these influencers and the industry people start opting in. So when you have an opt-in, the email marketing works. When you don't have opt-ins, the email marketing doesn't get delivered. So I think this email marketing tactic would be, if you all are familiar with this, take on whenever. I think change the slide. Search engine optimization, SEO, digital marketing tactics. If anybody would want to know we can discuss this otherwise I'll move on with this. These are simple tools for marketing for a small and medium business. You can opt for very, very effective Facebook or Google Ads or they deliver results. They deliver results and it costs really, really very low if you get on to doing these things. Come next. Word of mouth is always been the biggest driver, continues to be and especially so in the case of small and medium businesses. They are very much driven by referrals. Meet them at events, conduct events for them, get local people to talk to each other and it really helps. Even in some of my recent conversations we were at Google meeting. Even Google is putting a lot of emphasis on small and medium businesses, a lot of big businesses. SAP has a lot of presence on small and medium businesses. So if you Google out and read SMB, the word small and medium businesses, it will catch your attention because there's so much emphasis everyone is putting into the size of the businesses are growing. Innovation is happening here. They know to write on technology. They are still learning and we evolve together with them. So that's the, I think that's the appetite for the lunch now. I think come just change the slide. I think we are done now. Mobile marketing techniques. Yes, it's a part of digital marketing and the hats on mobile marketing. We can change this. So the conclusion is these are different things. All done. I'm on time. If someone has any questions, I am open to answer. Sir, GEM. It's a big thing. Absolutely. So sir has pointed out, Government of India has created the government ePortal where procurement happens and lakhs and lakhs of businesses are now benefiting out of GEM portal. So government is creating a lot of ONTC. So there are government is putting a lot of emphasis on MSME community. So when you Google and read MSME of India, you will see opportunities opening up. There are enough dashboards to identify the right set of clients and they are all around us. They are just around us everywhere they are present. Just need to connect with them and your everything falls in place. You know, because the 24 hours day that we all are limited with and the time is shrinking. I mean, you got to maximize business 24 hours. So opt for clients who are closer and of course clients who are where they are only driven by web meetings, then it solves your problem. So mostly having that from me. Anything else I'd love to catch up with me sir. How do you justify cost to this clientele? Because this clientele will count every rupee. So even for a billing say of 1 lakh plus GST. How would you convince them that this is the price that they need to pay and the output which you get, how do you convince them that this is worth this much of money and you will get that benefit. Absolutely sir. So the 3-4 counseling sessions or the meetings that I referred in the beginning is the time when you are reading the mind of the owner and you are working on your presentation to actually gauge that this person will settle. You know, because he has to have a progressive mindset, number one. And when I'm referring to his traits, they are having progressive mindset. So if you are very sharp in identifying who is in the water, we will catch up with you. If you have any other simple points in your presentation, sir, we are doing this and that in your month. They are now open to, they are listening to and they are also realizing that they want to market themselves. Hence, I'm also part of many of these training programs where they are actually conducting MSME accelerator programs. And in many of these accelerator programs, more and more SME owners are coming and asking questions. We want to do marketing, but we haven't done marketing yet. So this is the segment which really will be the big opportunity for all of us. We can just go into our skills and create simple mailers and start approaching them. Thank you so very much. Thank you. I must request you to kindly stay back for another few seconds. Please welcome Miss Shrabasti Malik, exchange for media to present a small token of appreciation on our behalf for such a lively presentation. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a huge round of applause to Mr. And with this, I invite you all to kindly join us in the hall for a networking lunch. Please join us back in the hall in exactly 40 minutes. Please enjoy yourselves. Each magazine provides a ringside view of events unfolding in the marketing landscape, along with media and advertising. Another monthly magazine reality plus is a market leader in reputage on the real estate industry. Today, exchange for media is not only a leading publisher in the domain. The IP of more than 50 events spread across Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, making it a powerful house of information and non-sharing. Exchange for media has curated and launched some of the most successful IPs across marketing, digital, TV, mobile, OOH and PR. 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We were supporting the world of freedom and women. We were contributing to the world's making India for the better of all diseases. We were doing our bit to help farmers double the economy. We will keep importance for India's first nation, which is making India more participating in Freak India's most glorious moment. For over 120 years, during the journey of our nation's independence, we haven't just been making India. We have been passionately doing a bit towards making India. We have been working on the challenges of this Second World War, and we will continue to be strong and open to all of the world, from the U.S., the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. and the U.S. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I hope that you all enjoyed the lunch. Requesting everyone to kindly settle down. I must remind you to kindly put your mobile phones on silent or vibrate-only mode. Thank you. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I hope that you all had a good time at lunch. It is now time for the next panel discussion. And this eminent panel with shed light on the topic of public relations, why is it the perfect career choice? Please put your hands together for our panelists. Please welcome Dr. Pooja Arora, Independent Researcher and Educator. Please welcome Ms. Neha Singhvi, Director of Public Affairs, Communications, and CSR Games 24-7. Well, I do understand that this is an after lunch session, and everybody is feeling a little dizzy, but maybe we can bring up our very enthusiastic chair for our panelists. Thank you very much. Let's welcome Dr. Surbhidhaya, Professor IIMC. Please give it up for Dr. Sameer Kapoor, Director, AdFactors, PR. Let's welcome Ms. Aninda Dasinha, Head of Corporate Communications, LNT Metro Rail, Hyderabad Limited. And completing this panel, please welcome the moderator, Ms. Madhvi Chaudhary, PR Manager, Media Mike. Hello, everybody. I hope you all had a very nice lunch gathering. And so beginning with our third session, we have seen in the last few years, public relations has grown exponentially. More and more businesses are coming into the market, and they have just one common requirement, which is to engage customers better and have a good brand reach. And with this, the scope of PR has grown to a next level. And we have all gathered here today to understand what are the benefits and what are the fascinating facts that are attracting people towards this profession. So with that, I would like to pose my first question to Ms. Anandita. Over the years, PR has become a career choice for men. What is it about this profession that attracts individuals irrespective of age and job verticals? So good afternoon, everyone. So when she is age, that's particularly seeing us. When she was a moderator, she kept that term age. Well, I think it is one of the most dynamic, something new, you can do every day. Even someone is handling the media. But every day is a new day. Every press release that you need to disseminate, that you need to draft, it has a new angle to it. And also, I feel if you really, I mean, if you think little clinically, it is a blend of art and science. It's creativity and strategy. So I think that gives a kick for any individual to take up this profession. And yes, the challenge is there. It's 24-7 challenge. Anything, any crisis can come up, anything can happen. But for me, at least, I feel that this profession grooms an individual into a very 360-degree oriented, a complete individual. Because the attributes attached with this profession, it actually grooms up. You need to be diplomatic. You need to be quick. You need to be very prudent. You need to be very balanced. You need to be very strategic. So all these, I think, gives a boost to someone for taking up this profession. At least it happened with me. Thank you. Very well said. Dr. Kapoor. Yeah, for me, of course, I am not the right person to give advice because I have a very chockered career in this style of as an engineer, moved into finance and then into PR. Oh, I have been an engineer. Yeah, so I think most of us do engineering and then decide what to do later on in life. But I think since I've been an engineer and a finance guy, I understand one thing that I liked about as a youngster, I was sitting with the who's who of the industry. It gave me a kick at an early late 20s. I was sitting right with the Star Wars of the Indian Inc, giving them so-called yarn on media. That gives a great kick altogether. Then of course, you have one thing that man left out was element of media training, which of course adds a layer to it. The dynamism, specifically because I'm from an agency, no day is same. There's a word called buzzer, which keeps on happening as far as agency people are concerned. It's not only with the news guys, it's also with the agency guys. But I think what makes it, as she mentioned, it's dynamic, it's challenging, it keeps you on your toes. I have a lot of my colleagues who have a lateral entry into this space, and they've done phenomenally well. So it doesn't require, it's like management, it doesn't require any one, so for engineering, you have to learn something. Unlike this PR can be, it is multiple disciplines that can come in. It has behavioral sciences, it has sociology, it has psychology, it has multiple other elements that come into it. And you start out by saying that it is in demand, it's double digit growth. The reason is because everyone is realizing the reputation is very important, and that's what a PR guys can do. And it's, I think that what makes it one of the most, if not perfect, but one of the near perfect careers of choice for youngsters. Rightly said. Dr. Zuki. Thank you, Mathwee. So I would like to just say that I like PR as a career, or I would advise people to take up PR as a career because of two reasons. The first one is that, we all teach that PR is a strategic communication that builds relationships and builds trust and builds credibility. So I feel, I personally feel that, you cannot not communicate. Even if you're not communicating, you are communicating non-verbally. So it is a basic human need to communicate. So those who have passion for communication, they are very, very good strategic communications, communication specialists. So, even if you've done engineering or you come from a financial background, but if your heart and soul is into communication, you ultimately land up into a job, something like a public relations officer or a communication strategist. So this is one because it is close to your heart. So all the people who have good communication skills, who have good influencing skills or convincing skills, they ultimately land up into this profession. Secondly, I think that why PR is important as a career is because all of us are brimming with ideas. But, and all of us have heard the sentence that an idea can change your life, but all your ideas, whatever you think of, you cannot actually implement all the ideas. It could be because of any reason. It could be because of financial reason. I have a business idea, but I just can't implement it because I don't have money. So in that case, here a PR specialist is the one who has convinced others with his or her ideas. So you have to have your ideas basically implemented by others. And that is a great satisfaction because when you see that others are implementing the ideas that are given by you. So it instills a sort of satisfaction, a sort of happiness inside of you. So I think these two reasons are prime. And otherwise, as my colleagues have already said, that it's a very happening field. It's a very upcoming field. So it's a very paying job also. So you must choose PR as your career option. Thank you. Ms. Neha, your thoughts. What makes PR an attractive career option? In one word, everything. Been around for almost two decades. I think everything about PR that one has learned over the years makes it extremely rewarding and attractive. But just sort of take a step back and see what is PR. In very simple words, PR is a strategic communications process by which you can help how organizations are viewed by the public. In short, it's about building and protecting reputation. There is, you know, as Sameer, Anandita, both of them pointed out and this involves a lot of learning, right? There is never a dull day. It is laborious, yes. It is exacting, yes. But never, never boring. And in the process, you learn just so much. Imagine you're sitting here and learning about different businesses across the world. There are no geographic boundaries anymore. You're learning about different people. You're learning about sectors. You didn't even know existed when you were growing up or you know something that could happen. You're learning about new technologies that come in every day. And I think all of this also helps you evolve as a person. And so I say that, you know, whatever it comes with public relations, in fact, I would say communications in all is an extremely rewarding experience. And anyone, anyone, the reason why it is age agnostic, it is sector agnostic, because, you know, we live in the attention economy where information is really the currency. Anyone who has the aptitude for absorbing information around them and comprehending it to reach out to the audiences that they want to engage with, at the same time, be able to think on their feet and adapt to changes swiftly. Can come into PR. It is, it is pretty much a huge canvas. And everyone can shout out their own roots in this. Thank you, Neha. Dr. Pooja. So the benefit of speaking towards the end is that, you know, most of the points are over. And, but yeah, I think I'm going to answer in, you know, as many words as possible. So when we look at PR, PR has always been an evolving field. And all of us understand the way the world is changing around us. PR is also adapting to it. And if you look at the past, Ivy Lee was in the history. He started with PR, right? He came up with the first PR tool, a press release, which is still relevant today, right? So while press release continues to be relevant, there are more and more tools that get added, right? Like a social media is the current form of PR. And then in terms of futuristic, it's chat, GPD, Grammarly, Hemingway, all of those AI tools that I think all PR people are using these days. So it's evolving with time. So I think if someone who's interested in moving with, you know, how times are changing, how things are changing, they can definitely adapt themselves to a career in PR. Two kinds of people can actually enter PR. One, who are interested in it, genuinely, you know, the youngsters who have obviously the nickname communications and they can talk about things around them. They read, write, listen. Listening is a great skill that all of us forget. Obviously, problem solving, critical reasoning skills. I think the 21st century skills that all of us talk about are actually something that PR people take care of on a regular basis. They are like the guardians of a brand, right? They take care of, they're solving problems of a brand. They are coming up with solutions every single day. They're solving crisis. So if somebody is interested in, you know, counseling a brand or understanding what their organization is made of, then definitely PR is for them. I would also say there's a lot of learning and I think Neha has already covered the learning part so I won't really get into that. But yeah, those were my points. I'd like to keep your mic with you so because I'm starting the next question with you. Thank you. One good debate that the subject of the perfect career choice is subjective. How should be addressed? So I feel that the word perfect, if you say, when we say that this is perfect, that means you don't need any sort of change in that, right, but that doesn't apply to PR. PR is continuously evolving. It's changing with times like I said. So, and you know, when you say perfect career choice, it completely depends from person to person, right? Whatever is perfect for me might not be perfect for you or them, right? So if I like the thrill of working 24 seven of responding to journalists, maybe at the night, if they're doing a story, it might not be true for you. You might just like a nine to five kind of a job. So perfect, the definition of perfect, I think it's from person to person. It depends from person to person. I just want to add one more point here that you know, study and research has suggested that the Gen Z's are actually going to change 10 careers in their lifetime and different jobs. So I don't think so. If any student is studying PR today, we'll continue with PR. They might experiment and they might get into different fields, which are obviously aligned to PR strategic communications, but then they will adapt with the changing times. And that's the beauty of PR. Yeah, right. Ms. Singvi. Okay, perfect career choice, right? And I'll make it a little more broad based, you know, like Pooja just mentioned, it is an individual choice. Like your career that you go for is an individual choice. And before I go with, you know, what I think should be done, I'll quote from one of my favorite books, Alice in Wonderland. Alice says, you know, which road should I ought to take? The cat says, where do you want to be? Alice says, don't really know. And then the cat says, then it doesn't matter which one you take. The point being, knowing your goal is very important. You know, no successful career is a lucky accident. It isn't. It may seem like it, but it's a very thought through effort working towards your goal. I don't think you can define exactly what your trajectory is going to be, but you need to have the right goal, which every individual needs to decide based on their understanding of themselves and a realistic assessment, if I may say. Their strengths, their weaknesses, their unique abilities, and then look at what they are charting out for. Once you have a goal defined, you know, then working towards it is a joy. Imagine a day filled with doing something that you're passionate about, something that you know is driving you towards that goal that you've charted out for yourself. That is a completely different high. What a beautiful example, Dr. Surabhi. Well, I would like to say that, you know, I just, after she was quoting Alice in the Wonderland, I just remembered the film Three Idiots, where, you know, Amir says in the end, that whatever you want to do, you do that and success will follow. So don't do anything for being successful. When you do something from your own heart, then, you know, you are, you know, you ought to be successful. One is this. And second is that when you follow your heart and you start doing something, there are, you know, after a year or two when you are in the industry, many avenues open up where you have better choices, because, you know, priorities in life also matter. Maybe what you, what priority you had at, you know, 20 is not your priority when you are 40, because, you know, at that time, maybe when you are 40, you might be able to follow your dream, your passion, your goal, your vision, your mission, your strategic intent, enunciation, where you think that, you know, now I can do this. So I remember I started my career as a reporter with the Tribune, but after two years, I, you know, one day it was very, very, very hectic wherein I had to do three stories, officially three press notes, and I did two exclusive, you know, stories, hoops, and that was the day, the next day when 11 of my stories were there in the, in one paper. And that day, that day, I actually realized that I could, the maximum I could do is 11, and think if I have, if I start teaching and, you know, if you have 70 students in your batch, and if they do 10 each, then I will do 700 stories a day. So that is, you know, what made me change my own profession. I shifted from industry to academia, and today I have more than like two, 3,000 students who are doing wonders, who are doing many, many, many stories per day. So I feel that, you know, you know, it is because of that decision that I could make so many students do the stories that I wanted to do, but in a better way, in a more multiplicable way. So this is very, very subjective, and you know, you should actually follow your heart. Thank you, Dr. Zubi. Dr. Kapoor? Yeah, I think perfection, as Pooja mentioned, is subjective and should be also mentioned the same thing. But as I said, PR is very close to perfection. You can do multiple things here. Of course, you can start off with the, the bread and butter of publication, which is media relations. That is something that, while all of us say strategy, I think that's execution is something that gets us the money. Then of course you can go into what is called the investor relation. You can go into policy communication, ad book, you see the world is huge. We talk about reputation, right? And it's the man-generated reputation, the reputation repertoire till 30th of November, 2022 was Google, and probably 30th of November, 2023 will be ChargedGPT. So what is artificial intelligence-generated reputation that PR guys are going to learn and unlearn certain things? It's something that can only happen in this career, in this field. An engineer, you can either be a mechanical, electronic computer, there are divisions. But in PR, I think this is one choice, which has amalgamation of everything. You are a researcher one day, you are doing analysis, measurement, et cetera. The other day, you're doing execution. Then of course you're strategizing for, it depends on which client and which sector you're working in. But I think this is one career that has element of everything coming together. And that's why it's near perfection that you can have. Even in finance, you can either be an MNA person or a restructuring person or a pure play accounting person. You will not have a mix of all of this. This is the only career choice that you will give you multiple things at one place. Very rightly, sir. Anandita? Well, taking from Mr. Sameer, you know, bread and butter. Now point problem is that nowadays we really don't aspire for bread and butter. It's not even wine and cheese. It's even more nowadays. And I feel that at least the COVID, post-COVID, you know, taught us that first think about whether you can pay your installments. You have a career. Passion is very important, but please be practical and follow your passion unless you have a good backup, a plan B. If it fails, how to go about it next, you have a good bank balance from your dad, which you can support you or anyone. Think wisely before taking any career decision. And as I think Neha or Dr. Suri said, the trajectory, I think Neha said, the trajectory should be well carved out. We have to be strategic at this point of time. What we are looking at. For me, I believe in something that we have to know what I am looking from life and how I am looking at life. PR, definitely it will stay. It is bound to stay. As Bill Gates said, that if I'm down with my last dollar, I'll spend it on PR. So PR basically, it's a reputation. Everyone wants a reputation, you know, image building, the reputation custodian to be there for him or her or any gender. Gender agnostic. It will be there. But as I said that, you know, I'll come back to you all with due respect. Don't spoil an engineering and medical seat and then come to PR. Okay. Someone who really wants to do that, they have lost the seat. Don't do that. No, no, but PR. I was a private student. Okay. So PR is, I mean, everyone is welcome in PR. It is a very, very dynamic. But as someone already said, if we have to evolve, we cannot just keep ourselves to the only the verticals. I was telling one of my winners, I was telling Shubhendra, a very senior PR professional here, that nowadays the trust is when a company, any corporate looks out for a PR professional, they want a marketing tag. If attached, it's better. They get a preference. So I think we have to move a bit away from the track and see how we can upgrade ourselves continuously, more studies, more other sections under PR or public. It's a people's relation basically. So as communication, she already mentioned that if we think about communication, now right from the time we get up in the morning till the time we close our eyes in the night, we communicate first with ourselves, with God or family members, whoever communication is very, very integral. So we have to think in that line. But when we are making a career choice to the youngsters, I'm addressing here, other seniors, they are much more aware and educated and qualified in experience, I'm sure. But for youngsters, please carve out your trajectory, keep a plan B. Think whether this is really a passion where you can continue because the hardship behind it, the 24-7, I should not call it stress, but the requirement involved with it, especially if you're dealing with crisis communication. It is really very stressful at times. You don't have a personal space of yours. You cannot shut your phone data off or WhatsApp off after you log in from your office. It's a 24-7 field. So think wisely. If you think, no, I have to do this and this is what I am looking from life. Go ahead with it. You have noticed that many media people nowadays, they're coming to the other side of the table. They are joining corporate. Now, as someone said that, you said that how many stories you did. One lady from Times of India, she was telling me that we are given a target of 60 stories. How do we do it? It's so stressful for us. So maybe at times, you feel that, okay, so this is not what I can do it. Maybe I can do it now, but with age or God forbid, any health problem comes, I cannot continue it. So do your PR, do your communication, do whatever profession you are in. Take your, do your, take your pre-studies in that end, but always upgrade yourself and keep a plan B that if something does not work, you are good at something else also. Especially this, I'm talking thing, keeping COVID time in mind, because I've seen a lot of, you know, like examples, people, they, they didn't know what to do because that is all what they could do in life. And the family suffered, they suffered a lot of suicide, and I'm sorry, I don't want to sound negative. So be very, very prudent, have your head firmly on your shoulders and then take a career job. Thank you so much. I'll keep you for one last question. What is the role of educational institutions to instill in its students and interest in this field? How can the process be made more engaging? Well, yes, lot of educational institute, in fact, who can speak better than Dr. Survi here, they, it's vertical, definitely all the verticals under corporate communication, communication needs to be explained in a proper way. It has to be included properly in the curriculum. I feel that a lot of mentoring and not only only, it should not be only bookish, but a lot of case studies, a lot of field visits, a lot of exchange programs, a lot of, you know, internship, forget the money aspect, a lot of internship in different corporates. It's very important. Another, I personally feel that any PR professional should keep in mind that the business, the know-how of any business, it is not only the other department's work, but all the department activities should be at the back of the hand, if not very technical, for a PR professional. At least the PR professional, I'm telling you because I saw, I see many people getting stuck there and I'm sure you would agree to it. Mr. Sameer from PR agency that they don't even know how to study a PNL sheet. Okay. So general management, operations, all these, at least how you should thoroughly study your annual quarterly, half yearly reports and understand what are the term finance accounting terminologies? What is PBT? What is EBITDA? How are businesses growing? So these should also be included in the curriculum and not only, you know, media relation and public relation and branding and social media. There are many vertical standard communication and PR, but I feel that if we add these also in the curriculum, Dr. Surya can comment better because you become a complete business professional, you know, that is very important because you understand the business, you understand the business growth. In fact, through that, you can drive your strategy also how to become the reputation custodian of that business. How do you grow and evolve as a professional? I think that is important to for a peer, I mean, to be included in a PR curriculum for any education institutes. Thank you, Mr. Sameer. Yeah, I think the, and I've been fortunate to be on the other side as well teaching for almost two and a half decades now. The cost curriculum is evolving, something that I just mentioned. There is a financial element that has started coming in. We realize many of the students were saying that we don't understand numbers, but numbers can't, you just can't escape numbers or avoid it, whether you are in public relations or even when you are in creative field. Social media has taught all of us how engagement, number systems, et cetera, works really well. Education Institute like IMC, XIC and others, which have made mark for themselves. One of the top notches in the country today have a very, very dynamic curriculum. There is, of course, a comprehensive project that allows you to look at all aspects of communication. Then of course, there is what is called the internship program that most of the colleges have started. That helps my suggestion to all the youngsters would be to do an internship in an agency because that's where the real grinding is. Not taking anything away from COPCOM, per se, but the amount of work that you do in an agency and the learning is much faster because everyone wants to end on the other side of the table. Eventually you will go there because most of the companies are looking at well-trained PR professionals. A lot of educational institutions have a huge role to play. The only thing is a bulk of the students are moving towards the MBA. MBA just has PR as a scratching on the surface that this is one of the mark-com activity that you do, which is much beyond that. Which I mentioned about Ivy Lee, I think the work done by Dr. Edward Burney is actually a platinum in what the public relation is all about and his touches of freedom if people have not read it, if you read it's like a gold standard in what PR should be. So these are the things that can be taught in the educational institutes to make sure that the youngsters are more ready to what real world is going to be. Dr. Subhi. Thank you, Matri. As Mr. Kapoor has already briefed that we do have everything combined in our syllabi, whether it is theoretical or it is practical and we try and instill communication skills, how to build trust, how to build credibility, how to do PR and how to make people change their views, how to think about a business. So you have to ultimately make yourself indispensable for an organization where they think that a PR guy is so important that ultimately it results in profit maximization for an organization. So I remember I was heading the ADPR department at IIMC, I think in 2017, we tied up with Ministry of Transport and I asked my students to make campaigns as well as PR strategies for road safety and they made excellent campaigns and we got I mean, my students got one lakh rupees as price from the Ministry. So this is how we take them to the real world campaigns, real world examples, we tie up with different ad agencies, with different PR agencies, with different clients and we give them a real budget and how they can actually work in that budget and they can maximize their output. So we try and instill the faith, the confidence in them and how to deal with external public as well as internal public. So this is how we try and groom the PR professionals here for the industry and we make sure that we bridge the industry academia gap. The time is already up so I'm going to just take a quick 10 seconds. I think all the points have been well covered but just one thing to say and I loved your example of working, getting students to do real work or something that could be executed in the practical world. Think the industry and the academia needs to work a bit more closely because internships, mentorship, it's all great, unless it's slightly more bespoke, I think the disconnect that is there once students finish their education and move to the real world will continue. So can we get students to actually shadow leaders for a day, for a month, for a week where they actually understand what goes into PR, what goes into communications and how does the day look like because unfortunately with internships what happens is you're still doing the basics. You don't get a full overview of what it can be. I think learning from people who really have been out there as leaders could be a great boost for students who are looking at PR as a profession. So very quickly I think everyone's covered most of the points again. I would just say that if you've heard of the Chinese proverb that I hear and I forget, I see and I remember I do so I think that is something that we need to imbibe in the learnings that the students who are joining the educational institutions no matter what, even if they are doing theory they should start and they should get that experiential learning exposure from day one. They are learning what is public relations, they should get into the, they should go to a PR agency and understand what PR is. Otherwise the bookish knowledge will just be there. So I think that sort of exposure is very much important even from industry side agencies should be open to having youngsters come see how things function and I think that is how we can bridge the gap. Thank you everyone for your lovely thoughts and helping us understanding public relations well I believe without any doubt we can all agree on the fact that it has been quite a productive session. Can I please request you all to come up front for a group picture. Ladies and gentlemen let's give a huge round of applause to this panel. Also inviting a miss Ekta Sood regional account director exchange for media to present a small token of appreciation to the panelists on our behalf. Thank you very much everyone. With this we move on to the next keynote session. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Mr. Aseem Sood CEO impact measurement. Could you please turn on Mr. Sood's mic. Good afternoon everyone can you hear me. Excellent thank you so much. Thank you for taking out time to join my session. Can I request you to switch on my slides please. All right great. Okay so we all heard the word artificial intelligence many times since morning GPT generative and transformative technologies but today I'm here to talk about fundamentals and the importance of fundamentals. My name is Aseem Sood I lead a company called Impact Research and Measurement which is in the field of media analytics. I'm also the chair of the Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication and international organization where people from all over the world get together to work on education and to promote the business of communication measurement. At our firm Impact Research and Measurement we offer integrated measurement solutions to our clients and for that we use a lot of technology. We use the terms that you've already heard in the morning we use machine learning we use artificial intelligence we also have a lot of other technologies that are available in our portfolio but I'm not here to talk about that today in fact if you want to talk about those one of my colleagues is here his name is Shekhar Govindarajan he's sitting in the audience he's our chief software architect in case you want to talk about technology he's the guy to go to but today what I'm going to do is I'm going to talk about something very very fundamental and the case that I'm going to try and make is it's great to adopt new technologies but please don't forget the fundamentals that we have and to do that I'm going to take a an example which is something called Barcelona Principles how many of you have heard of Barcelona Principles not many great so I'll get a chance to tell you about Barcelona Principles so it was in 2010 that about 165 professionals from all over the world representing public relations firms measurement companies like ours consulting firms we got together and we said if you look at chartered accountants you look at cost and work accountants you look at management consultants everybody has certain principles that the industry abides by why is it that the communications measurement world we don't have any principles so it was in 2010 in the city of Barcelona Barcelona looks like this by the way if you take a picture from the airplane so in the city of Barcelona we got together and we said okay let's sit down and over a period of three days we identified certain principles and said if you want to operate in the measurement world you must comply with these principles as a supplier so we are providing services or as a consumer on the corporate side if you're doing measurement work you must comply with these principles so I'm going to take this example and I'll tell you our experience of having worked with so many clients in India we've been working with clients in the measurement space in our 17 procedures so I'll try and connect the dots and show you why it is so important if you look at the principles there are seven principles I'm not going to go through all the principles you can go back and read them later but there are seven principles and in the communications measurement world we believe the campaign complies with these seven principles the probability of your program succeeding is much much higher compared to if you are not complying with these principles and there are seven principles and these are so important for us that we drafted them in 2010 and after that we've had two revisions to these principles basis all the feedback that we have received from all over the world I'm going to only talk about the first principle to make the case that I want to make to you the first principle is about setting measurable goals and the importance of setting measurable goals you know especially in India one of the criticisms that we have to Barcelona principles is that people read the principles and say they are so basic like if you read this principle it says setting measurable goals is an absolute prerequisite to communication planning measurement and evaluation and all of you will say it's so simple this is exactly what it needs to be but you will be surprised when you enter the real world and realize that this is one principle which has caused failure of maximum number of campaigns I know it's surprising and I'm going to tell you our experience of working with clients so if you look at measurement communication measurement what are we doing we first monitor content so as impact research and measurement we offer measurement services and then we offer which is something called toolkit for measurement so we work with a lot of clients and not every client wants to spend a lot of money so they say dear impact you offer us monitoring services and you give us glossy technology tools and stuff measurement on our own these are the same tools that are also successful campaigns to our clients but they say no no we don't want your help on measurement side just do this basic monitoring for us and give us the toolkit we'll do it ourselves a lot of these clients came back later and said somehow our campaigns are not successful as successful or they're not giving us the results that we wanted and we started going back to these clients to understand what was happening we realized and I'll give you an example what happened so we would enter the room and we will sit with the team and we will ask them take a small piece of paper if they're like five members in the team we'll give them five slips of paper and we'll say now write down of the camp that you working on currently and everyone writes it down we now exchange each other and tell us if all of you have the same objective written on that piece of paper surprisingly yes this number is very surprising 65% of the time people had written different objectives on that single piece of paper and I can go back and do this exercise with your team and you'll have surprising results so that we don't have a culture of writing down these goals the way they should here are examples of what we heard back from clients when we asked them what are you trying and people said we want to drive media coverage and that's where they left it imagine if you're working in a PR firm you have a director and there are so many people in that team reporting and if this is the objective that you start with imagine what is it that the new team is going to think about and achieve for the and there's something about bad goals and good goals and it's not about whether the goal is bad or not but whether it's defined in the right way or not so we believe if you want to have a measurable objective what you need to do is you need to have 4 elements in every goal who are you trying to target with the campaign that you have what are you trying to change in this behaviour or knowledge by how much do you want to change it and by when do you want to achieve it if these 4 elements are there in the way you're articulating the goals of your campaign there is a higher probability that this campaign will be successful let's go back and look at one of the examples from the bad goals that I shared earlier the client said create card envy among affluent consumers in the Pune market and that's all that they said but when we told them that there are these 4 elements that you need to have then they went back and came back with the new one they said we want to increase awareness from 57% to 60% for the credit card brand among the affluent target people who are earning more than 50 lakh rupees in Pune within the campaign time frame of May to December 2012 I hope you're able to see for yourself how much of a difference the way you've defined the objective on the left hand side and on the right hand side makes clearly the way you define your goal makes it much much more measurable it may sound very simple I've said who are you targeting what are you trying to change in the behavior by how much and by when it may sound very simple but still a lot of our clients face a challenge in defining the objectives very well as a part of amic I get a chance to travel a lot and I meet companies from all over the world on one of my visits I met a lady called Deb Camden she leads a company called Communication Dividend what she's done is she's created a tool this website address that you see at the top if you go to this website address it has a tool which will ask you very simple questions and it will help you define a measurable goal so it has steps it will ask you basic questions so who is your target audience what is the desired behavior change what is the realistic target that you have in mind and you answer these simple questions and if it will give you a measurable objective which you can start working with I will consider my talk successful if all of you go back and try and read about Barcelona principles and also try and check if the decision program that you're running is compliant to Barcelona principles and I can promise you that as soon as you reach that stage the probability of that campaign succeeding is going to be far, far higher you've seen this many, many, many of our members and clients of our members all over the world that whenever they start taking Barcelona principles seriously they make a lot of progress I started my talk by sharing that in India a lot of criticism that we have is people say Barcelona principles sound very basic and do we really need to follow them and even then you will find that most of the campaigns fail to comply with Barcelona principles so if they are so simple why is it so difficult to comply with these Barcelona principles if you would like to know more about communication measurement and amic we run an education program we have courses available and we also have a summit coming up which is in Miami later this month starting on the 15th of May it's a physical event but also has a lot of virtual participation possible so in case you are interested please check it out and here are some resources that you may want to look at if you want to learn more about measurement of communication I'll be around during the day and if you want to reach out to me on twitter that's my Twitter handle this is all that I wanted to talk about I have left some space for questions if you have any thank you thank you so very much I now invite Ms Astha Mishra from exchange for media group to kindly present a small token of appreciation to Mr Sooth thank you well towards the beginning of this conference I specifically mentioned about the social media the online contest that we were running and I have the names of two winners here with me well congratulations Mr Abhishek Pathak twitter handle at the rate AB Pathak perfect I would like to request you to get in touch with exchange for media team regarding a gift and also the second winner is Mr Nitin Narayan are you here around with us can we have an honor for applause for the gentleman twitter handle at the rate the Nitin Narayan requesting you to kindly get in touch with the exchange for media team thank you and yes the contest is still live you still do have a chance to win the gift hamper moving on ladies and gentlemen it is time for the next panel discussion and the topic at hand is decoding ESG please welcome our panelist give it up for Mr Arupendra Malik VP Terry business sustainability council can I have the cordless mic please thank you very much Mr Malik allow me a moment before we start with the next session I can sense that since after the lunch break we've not had much time to you know get back in touch with our energies so can I please request everyone to kindly stand for the next 30 seconds 30 seconds that's all I'm going to take perfect please turn up the volume it is said and I believe that when we clap our hands together it increases the blood flow in the body circulation the oxygen flow better so for the next 30 seconds I must request you to clap your hands as loud as you can it's not a rule I'm not trying to get an applause out of you for myself louder people at the back come on everyone we have a wonderful day ahead of us louder louder come on it's for your own benefit come on perfect thank you thank you very much you all may kindly be seated now how does it feel I assure you it wasn't a rule I can't get an applause this way though well hoping that you all are a little bit more focused and attentive it is now time to invite our panellists and now please welcome Mr. Arupendra Malek Vice-president Terry Business Sustainability Council I guess we've used up all our applause that we have none left for the gentleman certainly not please welcome Mr. Rajiv Ticku Senior President please welcome Ms. Sonal Singh Head Corporate Communications Jindal Stainless Limited give it up for Ms. Smita Pandey Mishra founder Fandoro Technologies let's give it up for Mr. Sunil Kumar Sinha Senior Director and Principal Economist India Readings and completing this eminent panel let's welcome the moderator Ms. Gayatri Ramanathan sustainability Kaizen Thank you for being here my dear panellists and dear audience after a very very hardcore communication sessions two sessions we are now getting into something which is more business so please take a deep breath before we dive into decoding what does ESG stand for environment social and governance so how does that impact our lives how does that impact our businesses so you've met the panellists I'll be very brief in my introductions I'll be very brief in my comments and jump straight into this briefly businesses are not isolated entities they function within communities they function within a framework of law they use up a lot of natural resources particularly what ESG is all about the E stands for environmental criteria like energy waste and the consequences on the planet of using these and not disposing of some it encompasses carbon emissions and climate change social refers to the relationship that your organization has with reputation it maintains with people and existing institutions labor relations diversity equity and inclusion the three very strong words which we keep hearing about these days governance is the internal system of practices protocols and procedures that a company adopts and employs in order to govern itself and make effective decisive decisions and meet the needs of internal and external stakeholders we talk about stakeholders we normally think about external stakeholders we don't think so much about internal stakeholders but today an internal stakeholders as important as an external stakeholder if you put all these three words together it really just stands for responsible sustainable business which is good for the planet people and delivers profit so I will now go straight to my panelists I'll start with Sonal Sonal is head of COPCOM at Jingle Stainless and has been a practitioner for several years so I will ask her to talk about her experiences yeah thank you Gayatri before I start off on ESG I'm so happy to sit in a panel because I come from manufacturing which where I can see women in the panel and even beyond that it's a great feeling to come from a 5% women industry to a 50% women industry yeah so talking of ESG now 50% of the media queries I receive I'm from corporate communication so answering to media queries is the main part of our KRA is now directed towards ESG so that is a clear indication on how the reputation compass is now pointing towards ESG as one of the main pillars drivers of corporate reputation and for people in the practice on the corporate side there is a discernible shift and the shift has been decadaled when I used to read about my company's narratives back then it used to be how Swadeshi the company is how it is rooted in the country's soil post 91 it was all about reforms and your KPEX and your investments and how you are in line with the Narsimhan Rao government of driving more and more profitability then came the turn of the century and the age of internet and internet became your reputation pillar and how digitization was driving your business then after that 2010 onwards and 14 is when CSR became compulsory the 2% net profit CSR became the password and it is only off late in the last few years that we have seen ESG as a far more mature a far more expansive version of CSR expansive because CSR only accounted for the social part of the business whereas environmental and governance parts were not as covered in CSR as they are covered in ESG however there is nothing absolutely brand new in ESG from the standpoint of corporate communications you know all these communications even if you take the governance compliance you know waste to wealth the training part the diversity part social inclusion part everything was there but it was scattered it wasn't the BRR report it wasn't the waste generation drives it was in the conservation efforts that companies were doing it wasn't a different heads it is to the credit of ESG that it has brought everything under one pillar and which is now the reason why corporates like us are running to ESG with all guns blazing and have taken targets to be net zero in the near future big shift for manufacturing thank you so much thank you so much Sonal Suleet can I ask you to make your opening remarks well I mean when one looks at the whole discussion of ESG then the form and the shape which ESG has taken today there is a long history it all started with philanthropy and then a lot of corporates even in the pre-independent India where doing some philanthropic activity in terms of setting up hospitals setting up educational institutions and so and so forth then they used to consider that to be an extension of whatever profit they are running so give it back to the society but over the years what has happened is that the trust which society had in most of the economic enterprise that trust no longer exists in the sense that it all began with the fact that the civil society or the people in general believe that corporations in existence they are doing good for all not only for themselves so if they are exploiting natural resources then there is nothing no harm I mean in other words they are manufacturing something which is for everyone to gain from but very soon when the society at large started realizing that that's not the case if the objective of cooperation is only to maximize the shareholder's value then where are other people I mean in the civil society the employees the investors each one of them realize that what is there in it so it is those things which has evolved over a period of time that today the apart from the companies the civil society is government investors they don't trust companies simply because they are in existence they say that the trust is gone now you will have to show us that whatever you are doing is for the benefit of everyone not only for yourself it is on these aspects that eventually you know the companies also started realizing that they have to remain in operation remain in existence that they will have to show the people that they are doing their bit so far as environment is concerned they are doing their bit so far as social issues are concerned and they are also doing that bit to the investors that their governance is equally important because we have seen in number of cases that wherever the governance have not been proper or appropriate the largest of the corporations have collapsed so it is this aspect which have become important and that is what has in a way kind of collapsed into something called ESG and today the corporations do not see ESG as a corporate social responsibility it is more of a strategic tool where they position and constantly have to communicate to the people at large that so far as environment is concerned we are doing our bit so far as doing good for the society is concerned we are doing our bit and so far as governance is concerned investors can rest assured that we are not doing something which will eventually kill the company and they will lose the money so that is the context in which I guess the ESG is positioned today Thank you Sunil, Smita would you like to speak about the relevance of ESG for startups Yes but let we just give you a quick background also on that like much before we get into what is why is it relevant for them so as Sunil sir just mentioned that there is a long history to ESG he actually stole my punchline there because I was trying to talk about it most people, most large founders that we meet in startup world or otherwise also the enterprises when I say sustainability to them they are not able to think beyond corporate social responsibility or philanthropy and I have to clearly tell them this is exactly not what I'm talking about that is a small part of it that's a comfort zone you very clearly know what numbers to make where to give what to do that's sorted for you right that's already that's been into practice and personally I don't subscribe to the aspect of CSR but because there is so much good work happening under it we just let that go on sustainability is so much more integrated has to be integrated in your business operations we are not talking about giving away free food that's a part of it yes go ahead feel free to do that but we are talking about energy efficiency we're talking about reducing your waste generation we're talking about reducing your water footprint we're talking about equal pay equal opportunity being inclusive not just diverse and of course when it comes to startups much like a lot of enterprises they lack awareness on this so it's very difficult to just go to them and pitch for your work I work for Fandoro Technologies which is into working building adoption and awareness on sustainability for startups and investors it's a difficult game but then once this fog is clear as to what sustainability means it's like is it even important for us like we poor people cash strapped less on resources and we struggling for resources we're struggling for survival why should we be looking at ESG at all and that is where you have to change the lens and say you are not doing something extra for somebody else what we're going to do here is your own business continuity plan your own risk assessment and risk management we're going to make you more successful and the drive that's actually coming to us for investor for startups to actually adopt these ESG SDGs I don't know how many people have heard here but sustainable development goals that's the framework I subscribe to so people actually adopt these things when they hear these terms and the reason one of the core factors that's actually driving this into startup world are the investors and the customers much like enterprises startups also have the same stakeholders your customers employees your investors your employees all of these stakeholders are actually driving ESG to startup founders and startups I do have to say while the push is still lesser but the pace at which things are now changing is so significant that if the startups don't adopt it now it is going to be very difficult for them to transform themselves much like the large enterprises find it very difficult so just decode ESG for startups what we talk about is when we're talking environment we are more focused on your supplier sustainability your environmental footprint across your value chain from sourcing to distribution so who are you who are your suppliers what kind of emissions are they making what kind of emissions you are making if it is logistics packaging whatever what kind of waste you are generating how are you recycling reusing reducing how is your e-waste being are you filing for your e-waste recycle what is your quantity per year so all of those and from the social side one of the most important asset for a startup is its talent so if they don't have the right people they are never going to succeed and the focus on ESG from a social angle actually helps them build those make a more inclusive and equitable I would say startup or organization to actually make their employees stick around more from governance perspective of course the board evaluation has become so so significant why is somebody sitting on your board earlier nobody cared now it is if they're not bringing anything to the table why are they on your board why are you even paying them what's the skill set they have do you have somebody who looks into E&S the environment and social if you don't have anybody doing that then you need to add somebody and the whole conversation that I'll just conclude this is when we start talking to startups we go with the same question that we go to enterprises also sometimes what is your purpose if as a business you don't have a purpose and you're not able to marry that purpose to the ESG then the whole process is going to fail because purpose is your offense you go and communicate that to the whole world this is why we exist if we didn't existed this would be missing from the world and ESG is your defense then you start to prove that sorry thanks Gayathri it's good to be in this august gathering I'm really glad that I was invited to this hello yeah thanks Gayathri it's great to be in this august gathering here and wonderful being on this panel after hearing my esteemed panelist I will try to avoid saying more of the same and let me share some of the media point of view which may interest some of my young friends here which is like how to make ESG stories break into the newsroom which is more probably from an operational point of which may be useful the USB of ESG's data what Mrs. Sinha referred to there's there's a diminishing of trust overall it's not only in corporates there's overall in video and probably ESG unintended benefit of ESG could be that it could help us to reclaim that trust because all about data at the end of the day data means a lot but data in itself doesn't mean sufficiently everything actually it's not enough by itself every analyst is sitting on gigabytes of data but here the environmental goal that you're running with so profit alone is no longer and that is why I talked about the Decadent Shift ESG and all kinds of egg stroke is now in bulk and you have to be seen with the functions and there has to be proof of the pudding just talking is not going to cook rice now about ESG and credit rating well certainly I'll do that but before that let me just say something about you know I mean as I said it evolved more as a philanthropy and so and so forth and I look at ESG now each of these components in social and governments each of these components are and very important for the company now if they if a particular company focus mental issues means if they become more energy efficient more resource efficient in their waste etcetera it all translates into higher profit not just that by focusing on environmental issues you are doing something in general all of that can be your bottom line similarly the social aspect if you are focusing on the social issues then it doesn't be a reputational I mean like student in IMC asking are you a zero waste company so that again is something reputational but otherwise also I'm saying when you are buying we are no longer in an era where markets are protected there is a you know a severe competition there are number players for the same product and if you are buying for customers provide you know something to them that apart from doing your business you are also taking care of whether it relates to the labor whether it relates to employee compensation whether it relates to being or whether you you know take up some activities which you know helps living in and around your factory area all of they actually help you of you know not only grabbing the attention of a customer but translating them into your customer so all of this again plows back profitability your top line and so on and finally the customer you know the governance the governance issue is important because say for example the startups for startups when they go for you know around investment many of the investors would like to know that you know do you have to protect the company from the risk which arises because of the issues now if you are able to articulate that if you have a strategy in and around that really investors would get more interested and you will be able to mobilize funds far easier than otherwise maybe you will be able to mobilize funds at a much cheaper much cheaper cost than what you will otherwise so ESG if you look at from that perspective is a pure strategy it is no longer philanthropic it is a pure business strategy if you integrate operation it is a win-win for you as well as for your customer invest everyone else now coming to the question of credit rating now credit rating typically is about debt not about the equity so debt products means whatever loan you raise through the banking channel or through the capital markets that is what gets rated and where it has evolved that ESG issues or ESG risk do not play out near term they play out over the medium to long term and debt instrument they are not very long term instruments they are 3 or 10 years so till now it was not something which was very much getting factored into the credit rating analysis increasingly as we know that the vulnerability has started increasing because of the climate etc etc now most of the rating agencies have started looking at also the regulator which is SEBI has come out with a framework where it wants the agencies to incorporate this particular risk aspect into their analysis so we are incorporating that into our rating analysis and wherever we find that this is one of the key for the credit rating we mention that and wherever it is not we settle in our press releases thank you do you like to take up what you originally were to talk about ESG and startups why should they why should they get into it right at the start yes again Sunil sir just stole the starting line on this topic too investors are definitely dry there are quite a few LPs the limited partners who have when they are giving 200 VC 400 for 200 VC so let's say there is one big LP whose funded 10 capitalists and put their foot down that if you don't have an ESG report you are not allowed to invest not talking about investments series C and above we are talking about as simple in general round or series A and they put their foot down that if the VCs get the ESG due diligence they are not going to give the money so that's one key driver which is pushing this in the startups which are very in their stages still looking at ESG how you look at it from some other stakeholders like customers you have EU taxonomy all in Europe you have the security exchanges in US which is putting the regulations around and ESG in India we have looking towards BRSR and national guidelines for responsible business conduct now this BRSR while I think Mr. Malik was mentioning about it he started in 2011 he used to talk thousand companies but a very interesting thing that not many people might have read if they didn't pay attention to is a statement which says in a time frame of potentially we are looking to expand this to all businesses so if we that includes listed and unlisted businesses that could as if you are registered as a business you have to follow it so once that clarity comes in what all means situation that happened in Europe that the moment a lot of lead time was given to business and they still did not prepare and suddenly overnight thousands of businesses were under penalties for not following it not disclosing it so startups are I mean ESG is relevant for them for of course getting opening more investment gates more customers if they want to work with western companies more talent acquisition because employees want to see the business with purpose I think it just overall does a lot of investor safeguard also as simple as not having a fire NOC which looks very simple that you are building the where you are not working does not have a fire NOC okay when we do ESG due diligence for startups we put our foot down if you don't have it we are not going to give a clearance why is that because if your assets are burnt down the investor loses the money so we are playing for the investors so we a lot of these things are driving quite a significant awareness and adoption essentially it's an awareness of the risk of operating in a environment which is so uncertain from a climate social and governance perspective that you are looking at putting these risk management practices in place I'll just take one minute to also highlight you a thanks for adding governance to this world because if governance is if you don't have governance then it doesn't matter how good you are doing on social or anything if you're not having a trustworthy transparent business then you might as well just forget rest of the things yeah so Rajiv my next question is to you how does media look at a company which is considered ESG compliant versus one which is not I mean let's just ultimately it's the media which is the arbiter of good companies versus bad companies in a certain way in terms of perception so let's hear it from you I don't think those factors play at the media whether it's a good company or a bad company it's a compliance to be done that is the presumed media would apply to them so if they are doing the compliance and which is generally taken by reports there's not any use case happening anywhere from media but what are the stories that are happening everywhere if they are happening say in metals so those are happening but overall it's taken as a report by an expert so that's taken that way so there's a very pretty simple kind of a story which comes to them and it is backed by data and it's backed by a narrative so it makes its face because I don't see media being an arbiter of the company or a bad company but in terms of if there are any violations which get reported so those are the ones they would I mean at the end of the day for media it's a good story or a bad story a good story is a violation is a good story for media that's what it is and it wouldn't be across anything for the matter thank you Raji Arup can I ask you to take us through this whole issue of greenwashing and how do regulations look at that and how again I'll come back to Sonal and Sunilji for how that impacts reputations thank you for bringing the issue of greenwashing greenwashing greenwashing here increasingly we have seen that with the labels, ESG labels from Mutual Funds from Global Funds being stripped off because of the enhanced scrutiny that happens today on the impacts that the short-term impacts and the long-term impact that some of these funds are clean I would strongly believe that the role of the communication colleagues the role of the brand management teams becomes very important now think of it we are just three months away the final community from India's G20 presidency would come out and unlike any other G20 presidencies today India has ESG there is a dedicated track on energy transition which is just not looking at technology transfer and new energy technologies but important looking at just transition and just transition is a concept that resonates very well with the ESG framework and just to define just transitions is ensuring that when you transit from fossil fuel based cleaner economy, we take everybody alone, we don't leave anybody behind so what is talking about is a strategy that India has been very keen on to take all lies and communities along with us when we transit by creating more green jobs and greener so much so these are the things which are getting at the best deal I would argue that nobody has stopped India to imagine what would be the size of the strategy of unity to never a benchmark that I need to today India is a different league in the global discourse which gives a very high degree of responsibility to how the the media management teams view, act and progress on this this point of time and will the journey be easy? I mean not at all you know a financial balance sheet we needed a now understand we just look at earning per share from a balance sheet about the financial health we now today defer to the credit rating so a triple A you don't need to spend any more time and energy to explain so from today where we are now to this becoming a uniform language the journey would be super hard huge degree of frustration from what we also understand is increasingly ESG will be part of the MCA 21 filings and from now until that point of time and how do we adopt digital tsunami on ESG would be a key role without the involvement of the communication and that won't be possible last these buses the kind of diverse panel where time is running thank you just give me two minutes so we've just not even scratched the surface of the subject but unfortunately we've been asked but I will ask one final question of Smita and Sonal we see with our clients that speaking of ESG talking putting it in the 4th communication is resonating increasingly to see things going forward in fact I think communicators have a reason to choose all the agencies because our role has become very very important in this age of ESG when we met with management we should do this these are the kind of events we have to sponsor this is the imagery that we have to get into these are the kind of community partnerships we must be into it was not making as much sense to them as it is making today and like Mr. Sinha said these are not short fixes to your image or just to your visage this is how I should look but these are long term goals in engaging your community better and the ESG hygiene standards be equitable with your global counterparts and while yes media is like Mr. Ikul rightly said it is very interested in any negative ESG report that may come out on the positive side what media is interested in is any of the green funds that you can garner based on your ESG scorecard so there is also immense scope for publicity in this area thank you so much quickly I think for businesses and everything media has a very powerful role PR has a very powerful role in fighting climate change if you could keep a check on businesses and not let them speak about things they don't do if you could punch holes into their claims and I mean look back in 2021-2022 whether it is H&M whether it is Deutsche Bank whether it is Volkswagen whether there is so many of these issues which we have which have come up I think you have a very strong role to play in this and startups, businesses use their story on sustainability as a marketing tool and that's good to do there is no harm in doing that but as a communication team which is sitting on the other side of the table I would really like to see more people cross verify cross check every claim that has been made and then publish it and say yes these are the good people and these are the people who are actually harmful for the society because they say they are doing good and they are not I think before we close just one final comment I as a part of you know a group which had rated Indian companies on ESG parameters and launched India's first ESG index on national stock exchange it no longer exists by the way now but there we had studied the top Nifty 50 and ESG screen top 50 companies and we found that in terms of returns if had you invested in Nifty 50 and had you invested in ESG 50 you would not have compromised on your returns the returns which Nifty 50 is giving over the years is exactly the same as the ESG 50 is giving however once the 2008 crisis happened there after what we found was the ESG screen companies were giving you even higher return than the Nifty 50 so if you invest in those companies which are ESG screen companies then as an investor you do not lose anything on the contrary you gave just to add to what you said sir if you look at a recent RBI report it says exactly the same thing that ESG compliant Indian companies have performed better on the forces than others I have been asked to wrap up so I will I look forward to hearing more from our community the communicators community about ESG the need to implement ESG because a sustainable business sustainable business out there is what makes our business sustainable thank you so much thank you so very much ladies and gentlemen we have lost with this very very power packed session could I please request our panellists to kindly join us up front for a group picture and also please welcome Mr. Harbindar Narula CEO P.W. Wellness to present a small token of appreciation to our panellists ladies and gentlemen requesting everyone to kindly settle down as we are now headed towards our next special keynote by one of our management speakers for this particular keynote session ladies and gentlemen we will be joining us virtually talking about the role of artificial intelligence ladies and gentlemen please welcome Dr. Meena Nazari Executive Board Member PR and Communication Researcher W.C.F.A Greetings Dr. Nazari from IPRCCC Conference impact of artificial intelligence in PR I am an artificial intelligence and I am very happy to attend your conference today Dr. Meena Nazari requested me to be here today and speak a few words about myself in the middle ages the sovereignty was in the skies and behind the clouds they asked from the God then it fell into the hands of humans and humans recognized good and bad with their mind and logic and now it is behind the clouds again the clouds of Amazon the clouds of Kindle and now you are forced and you need to ride this wave that is started by artificial intelligence that is all in brief thank you Karen and your professional team and let's keep moving forward together we have my voice yes yes you're audible Dr. Nazari please continue Namaste from Iran This is Meena Nazari from Iran I am WCFA board member board communication form association Switzerland I'm so happy to be here with you today and I would like to share a research result from Jane Wally about impact of AI on PR skills and ability actually Jane Wally Jane Wally now with their colleagues started to study the impact of AI on public relations and public relations skills and ability five years ago I asked him did anybody research this and he sent an email for me unfortunately no one has measured the correct impact on PR until now and did you see this figure public relations skill ability as defined by the global alliance GBOK project GBOK Global Body of Knowledge is a consolidation of the skills and abilities that are used to develop exam by certification by the ends and education frameworks from around the world it's very why the fairly complete list of competencies in the public relations the project has subsequently been developed by the University of Health into capabilities actually approach that was recently published at World PR from in Oslo after that CIPR Jane Wally to use their research result to CIPR and the market for tools in public relations is exploding across sourced exercises by the AI in PR panel has directories other than 20 tools actually in each case they added a description and label of each tools by function and AI sophistications using 5.0 skills simplification listening and monitoring automation AI for structured data AI for unstructured data they ask the team of environmental reviewers from around the world to take a crack at the list they started exploration set of skills one with a greater potential for AI and one set of skills with little or no AI and Oxford University study colleague the future of jobs five suggested that millions of workers in the UK are in danger of being replaced by computers and robots the academic paper looked at 70 702 of the most common occasions and used a set of algorithms to assign the probability of computerizations to public relations occupation and ranking occupations from zero no risk of automation to one high risk of automation public relations public relations jobs ranking 634 out of 702 jobs and they analyzed in three categories and the skills with zero take or AI of the 52 skills in the GBA 30 or 32 percent of their list were deemed to currently have zero take or take support the skills or versions thereof that may have a minor contribution from take or AI to of the 52 is in the GBLK 14 or 27 percent of their list were deemed to have that list some indicate indirect support from technology or some from of AI and see finally see the skills were take or AI is already more prevalent 20 or 41 percent of the GBLK set to have some from of AI or technology that simplifies our list as we see mapping the impact of tools against skills that Jane Walling and their colleagues these are now five years ago show some public relations and public relation ability and skills in this map you see poor color in the white area shows zero impact of AI on public relations like how ethnic, professional and personal and orange area shows the little bit impact of AI on public and the red area shows the high impact AI on public relation skills you see a green area green area that do you have my voice low madam? Yes ma'am we have your voice okay green area shows some skills and ability that is changeable between level 1 and 2 and there was forecasting some mapping for five years AI in five years that's 2023 this year you see orange orange area into red area and we see a high impact of AI on all skills that was a little bit impact you see but white area are stable like right now and a green same too they have listened for the future of public relation provision finally and they believe that we need to emphasize education experiential learning and continuous development of these really human traits that are valued in our provision the second lesson in that we need to become aware of AI and its special pitfalls and quakes in our provision AI is about to massively change our lives and the public provision need to keep up we need more experience with these tools and more critical reviews to learn how best use and their limitation indeed we need to be vigilant in the technical implications of using data especially branches and be mindful our license to operate comes with behaviors that place the public interest about organization or client and finally it's important ethnic world continues to be the dominate in professional practice of public relation and that is a good thing and we have to be helpful to for the future of public relations by controlling by human thank you very much everybody for your attention I am again so happy to be with you here today it's my email and general email if you have any question about this research result please send us thank you very much Dr. Nazari for taking out time and addressing the audience ladies and gentlemen perhaps a round of applause thank you thank you Dr. Nazari before we move on to the next panel discussion ladies and gentlemen once again I'd like to remind everyone to kindly put their mobile phones on silent or vibrate only mood our next panel the topic at hand is the importance of influencer marketing and PR strategy for a brand I must request you to allow me a moment for the setup alright perfect the importance of influencer marketing and PR strategy for a brand ladies and gentlemen our panelists for this particular panel are bound to know introduction let's kick it off let's welcome Mr. Gurpreet Singh Tiku blogger and influencer let's give it up for Mr. Gagan Talwar managing director business wire India please welcome Ms. Ittika Kamra blogger and influencer Ms. Kamra wait a moment I said a louder round of applause for Ms. Ittika Kamra thank you please welcome Ms. Nithika Panjwani travel influencer and completing this panel let's welcome our moderator Ms. Jagruti Motwani co-founder and chief chaachi hello thank you to everyone here who is me time to listen to this going to be interesting panel since we have so many influencers and business leaders here so basically you know all of us know that the influencer gang is coming up pretty strongly on everything that we know is traditional PR marketing and advertising and brands are trying to lap it up in a big way I mean looking at you guys here it's a feat in a way that you know now the importance of influencers is recognized all across and we are in this forum that celebrates PR and influencers of course is one of the important panels we have here so to begin with you know if we can start with Tikkuji and you know you can tell us how did you come about being an influencer and how has it been so far okay so answer the first part or second part first the journey has been beautiful and how did it happen it did not happen you know by chance or by design it just happened because I have been doing this for the last 8 years so it is not you know I started doing it when it was not even a profession so you were just expressing yourself and slowly you are like oh it is benefiting so many people while it makes you happy and then okay there are so many brands or people who are getting benefited and then say okay you know please take this money and do our work you know I was happy doing what I am doing my viewers are happy listening or you know watching what I am doing and then also get paid for it so I think that is how the journey started it was never that I stepped into because it would probably the profession would make me money so the journey has been beautiful and I can tell you one thing it has just started for each one of us that's amazing what about you with Tikku so firstly I would thank E4M for giving me this opportunity and this recognition started exactly between the COVID when COVID hit so COVID was never a curse for me it was totally a blessing for me and it was always within me that I have to do something about fashion but you know post COVID I was actually not doing fashion at all I was just doing a 9 to 5 job crushing on my numbers so basically I did my MBA in finance so I don't know it was because of my mom she saw that spark in me and I always thank my mom that she has given me that sense to look fashion and I think that is how I started it in COVID and COVID gave me so many opportunities when everybody was actually cursing about it that we are sitting at home I was actually building some content so that's how it started that's amazing Nikita hi everyone namaste this is Nitika Panjwani I am a travel and lifestyle content creator so my journey has been very similar to Tikuji's journey because I started travel blogging when I was 18 years old I was in class 12 and it was my board examinations going on and that's when I realized that yes I want to do something like this because I did my first solo trip when I was 15 years old so I was an avid traveler my father was a travel bargain you know he used to ask me to create all the itineraries even when I was a little girl so you know from there I had this knack of exploring cultures different destinations and that's when I realized that I'm really good at storytelling and I should definitely do this so with my graduation I used to travel a lot of places you know on weekends weekdays share those itineraries with my audience and that's how I started travel blogging and created a career out of it this is really interesting my next question is to Gagan Gagan from the brand's perspective how and why do you think influencers have become so important so I think this influencer marketing is really picked up in last couple of years the reason is because the clients are wanting to connect with the audience in the much deeper way the messaging has to be more stronger the messaging has to be much elaborate so I think one can change the content as per the requirement and today the technology has helped a lot so I think this influencer marketing game will pick up and this is just a start as Tikuji said this is just a start I think couple of years ahead of this time I think this marketing will be really doing wonders in this world now Tikuji my question is to you you all are celebrities and are followed people listen to what you say how do you ensure that a brand's needs are incorporated in your outreach be through real stories or posts so today if any brand reaches me for my collaboration the first time the foremost thing is to understand what they want from us it is very important for brands to understand our niche as well because everybody is doing differently every influencer has its different kind of audience engagement so I think it is very important to have that communication and that connect with your brand it is very important it is always a win-win situation for the brand as well as the influencer so I think every influencer and brand should have that connect and that communication going on for that I think it is very important to understand what the brand wants from us and what we want from the brand so I think it is the connect and the kind of it should be clear that what the brand is expecting from us True Tikuji you would have worked with a lot of brands if you can share some experience how has it been even we worked together couple of times prior how has it been and how does the entire process work because the best part about this trade and also not the best part about this trade is it is evolving everyday so what works or what worked for a month later month earlier does not work today and again you know sometimes influencers are evolving in their own way the brands are evolving in their own way and most of the times even brands don't know what they want even most of the time first we are very clear if we have a brand approach us first we have to see you know does it relate to our brand and will my viewers my audience will like it will they watch it if an adventure sports brand reaches out to me obviously does not match with my audience are not even with me so it's okay this is not which works but otherwise you always customize for the brand and you always ensure that the viewers are first everyone everything is secondary right Nikita what do you think about that how do you how do you work with brands and how do you ensure that they get you from the outreach they are seeking so I think maintaining authenticity is a big part of creating content I am a person who loves creating content while travelling and I am like the most candid person on social media right so like it said the brands has to be very particular about what are what are the objectives so they have to draw and you know have that kind of brief and campaign given to the influencers that okay this is what we want from you we want brand awareness we want leads we want conversions so you know that has to be laid out very clearly and as a influencer I have to be very exclusive authentic and creative and relatable to my audience at the same time when I am creating content for a particular brand so that my audience perceive the content in a way that brands want the audience to perceive it so I think maintaining authenticity is really important for me rightly put now Gagan how do you think brands identify the right influencers and how do they map the outreach so I think identifying the right influencers is the key and that's the secret story behind every marketing campaign so if you select the right influencer and plus with the help of technology nowadays the game can change for anyone like the ball is on the other side so if you choose the right influencers at the right time you can define in the audience nowadays be it like the youth or millennial Gen Z boomers anyone they want the real connect they want the real stories they don't want the advertising or the real PR so they want the indirect message which should go out that's the kind of format which everybody is looking forward and I think you can measure all those things also if you track the measurement of likes views and comments as you all do it very often I think that's the right way of doing it because that's the correct way of choosing the right influencer for the right brand and then choosing the content along with them choose the content along with them then things will change Agree, Tikuji to you your perception among brands that we work with we also work quite closely with them in addressing this notion but the notion is that influencers are mostly addressing the Gen Z maybe millennial community so what do you say about that who all are your followers and what are the insights that you have from your outreach insights are something that we check every day almost sometimes more because you need to keep checking what is working what is not working and believe me most of the common perceptions are trashed when you actually see the data because opinions and data are too totally different things and sadly people think more about opinions for a long long time we thought the kind of people who follow us are only people who are interested in food but then realize that we have sold cars we have sold airline tickets, we have sold other things which is actually people who are actually I will tell you one thing what happens is the people and I will not define it Gen Z but you know people who are youngsters are not the people who really spend lots of money but they comment a lot they share a lot, they share a lot but they are actually the people who spend the money they are the silent people they come, they watch, they go and spend their money having said that all depends on what kind of content you are creating and what kind of audience you want to create if you are saying everybody is my audience then you are the biggest fool on the earth, you have to be very specific this is the kind of age group that I want to target this is the kind of income parameters I want to target this is the kind of city, state, country I want to target 60%, 40% if you are done, you are successful the remaining 60% you don't have to but you should be very clear in your mind when you are writing when you are creating content there should be a face in front of you I am making it for you and when you do that I think it works well and brand is happy, we are happy the audience is happy and that is how it should be Nikita what do you think you all are maximizing on the power of content any tips or anything that you would like to share with the brands when they are looking for influencer engagement there is a thin line between what the brand wants and what your audience consumes not every time it could be as straightforward as we go out in a press release or in a TV commercial what is your take on content for engagement and also creativity so what I feel is that when brands give us a brief they should give us the power to create content that is true to us and the audience the brief should not be very specific they should give us the creative freedom to create content when we are doing something because we know our audience better than the brand and we know how to sell or promote a particular product so I feel one they should give us the creative freedom and two I think the contracts should be really exclusive because as a creator I get 2-3 brands of the same niche every day so if I am promoting a particular jewelry brand next day another jewelry brand would come to me and say that you promote my jewelry as well so that's when my audience would get confused that yesterday this jewelry brand was promoting today so brands also have to be very picky and they have to maintain the exclusivity with the creators as well and even the creators should be very true to the brand when they are doing something the value should be really strong I mean of course when there are commercials involved you have to promote certain brands but then what you can do is you can come up with certain timelines that in 3 months I will not promote any other jewelry brand because I am promoting this particular jewelry brand what is this jewelry brand about how I can create more authentic content how I can create more relatable content for this particular brand so I think maintaining exclusivity and also giving the power and the creative freedom to the influencer can actually am a campaign rightly put very nice Ithika if you have come across any challenges while working with brands or anything in particular that you feel that brands can do better in getting the maximized outreach through you it was a budding influencer so all the budding influencers I think generally face this kind of challenge so Ithika already told us how the brands actually restrict us that you have to create content according to this but this is not with our case we create content for it should be scandid it should be so real that the audience which we are trying to focus on actually should get that output of the input so I think it is very important for the brands to go candid with us I think that's the first and the foremost point which I want to it's like the brand to take away and the second most important thing for a brand is that if you are trusting influencer I think it should like there should be a trust relationship between the brand and the influencer even if the sales are not coming through I think the brand should give some time for that influencer to build over it the sales cannot come through like this it gradually takes time and this is for the budding influencer especially so I have a heart for them how they manage and how they deal with the brands but hats off the brands as well because they are doing very well with the influencers and I think that's how the industry grows right true Gagan sometimes it could be a task for a brand to identify the right influencer set because there are so many out there and sometimes do you want hyper local outreach sometimes you want national outreach any particular challenges that you feel brands face in their journey so I am on the business side so I will just say that the marketer should discuss the ROI the return of investment with the influencers straight forward doing the initial conversations I think that's the key for winning I think so if you decide upon the ROI then the marketing game changes so for me for me the marketing of this is sort of maybe for promotion maybe it's for getting traffic maybe it's for behavior change so it can be anything so then you can measure the right metrics if you define upon your first instance ROI with the influencer then you can choose upon how will you get the right results thank you so much if any of you have a question to the group here we will be very happy to answer that ladies and gentlemen due to the paucity of time we believe we do have time to take up one question if anyone kindly raise your hand and we shall pass a mic none as of now from this I conclude that the panel has been very thorough and very productive so thank you very much ladies and gentlemen let's give a huge round of applause could I please request you all to kindly come up front for a group picture and also joining us on stage with her bright smile to give a small token of appreciation to our panelists please welcome Miss Madhvi Chaudhary account director media mic well I'm sensing that this is going to be my favorite table for the rest of the event so a louder round of applause perhaps perfect moving on ladies and gentlemen to a very special fireside chat between our imminent speaker who will be logging virtually from UAE well as I mentioned that this is a very special fireside chat our imminent speaker will be logging virtually all the way from UAE ladies and gentlemen please welcome Miss Marwa Kabor group head of marketing and corporate communication AI Masood perfect perfect and joining us on stage is Mr. Vineet Honda founder and CEO Kaizen let her listen as well that we have a very interested crowd here hi hi Vineet good afternoon everyone good afternoon and walaikum salam salam walaikum great so I think the first time I'm on the panel where I'm not looking at the crowd so it's interesting and true to the times real hybrid way of doing this particular panel but I'm so happy and privileged to you know talking to you today this is about you not about me so we will keep it that way so Marwa before we start this panel I would want you to speak about your journey which makes people understand the relevance of her journey and how she can add value to all of us here right today she's more than what 23 years experience now in the industry working with agencies and the corporates Marwa over to you first and foremost I want to thank everyone for their time and I want to thank you for this beautiful beautiful platform I've been listening for the past two and a half hours and I've attended the panel discussions that you had on ESG on greenwashing and the last one on influencer marketing and it is such it is such a joy to really have a close up look on amazing talent you have in the Indian market I'm also very honored to be with you today I hope that I will provide the crowd with something that they can take home with so let me tell you a little bit about myself my name is Marwa Kabul and I am the CMO of Abu Dhabi's oldest and largest family business called El Masrood group El Masrood is basically it's basically a conglomerate that exists in the capital the company has been around for over 55 years now in fact the company started its operations before the United Arab Emirates was a nation so the United Arab Emirates came together in 1971 El Masrood has been established since 1966 the founder of El Masrood was also the founder of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and the company till today has the trade registration number one in the United Arab Emirates and through to the times the UAE in the 60s was still a very young land that is about to start the journey of urbanization and since then the company carved a chart for itself to be a pioneer in the United Arab Emirates industrial manufacturing sectors so we were the first company to bring a gas turbine to the UAE we were the first to bring a water desalination plant and we were the first to bring a power plant so we basically brought electricity to the country and since then we've branched out we have a portfolio of business of over 18 global brands and we represent leading brands in industrial sectors some of the brands that you might be familiar with I'll start with automotive brands our Nissan, Infiniti Reno Bridgestone Tires which is the number one tire brand in the world we also represent MTU and Volvo Penta and these are the leading brands in power generation and in marine power generation we also have a construction and companies and logistics transport and so on wow I was studying about Almasut they have six verticals and around 24 different businesses and blah blah blah and she heads the comms and the marketing for the group so hats off to you my first question we've been working here in India India's from a media point of view progressive and open market when whatever we have heard about the Middle East even the UAE in that sense is still a well controlled market and what are your learnings from that market because I'm sure a lot of you know audience sitting here are either aspiring to work their companies or their agencies are planning to open their offices in that market so probably that's my first question to you so you are absolutely spot on we do consider this market quite controlled in a way I will attribute my company as an example so my company is the largest family business in the capital and we only started the PR activity of the company in January 2018 and that's when I joined a lot of the family businesses used to basically take on a very discreet approach to talking about themselves and their performances and I was told that many years back if a showroom manager or sales manager leaks any information on the performance of the company they would get fired today especially in the sphere of family businesses and portfolio businesses you see that companies in the UAE are speaking a lot more to the media and are willing to share how they're performing and how they're doing as well and they are starting to take on a more open approach to talking about their working culture we were one of the first family businesses to open a page on LinkedIn we opened our LinkedIn page in May 2018 we are close to 200,000 followers but if you look at other big family businesses in the UAE be it Majid El-Fotain who are the leaders in entertainment and leisure or Rustomani who are also leading family businesses in multiple sectors they also started talking about their companies and creating corporate profiles for their companies just five years ago or so the market is becoming a lot more receptive to challenging topics topics on environmental on environmental issues on climate change we are one of the lead participants in ADIPEC which is the largest energy exhibition in the world that happens every October in Abu Dhabi and the participation of ADIPEC last year Dr Sultana Jaber who is the chairman of ADNOC and will be the chairman of COP28 was able to openly confess that in the energy sector we are part of the problem but we want to be part of the solution so we see that the narrative has changed it's taking on a more open tone nevertheless we don't see the media narrative opening up at an accelerated rate you still have to be very courteous and very wary of what you can talk about and how to address certain topics very interesting you spoke about ESG I think next one year is about ESG and Middle East because COP28 as you said is coming up there as an outside world the GCC, the Middle East it's all about fossil fuels and when we really talk about ESG and the fossil fuels they are I think two poles separate apart right now is ESG a buzzword in your market or is ESG a reality and there is an action on ground are the companies still looking at ESG as a communication and a marketing tool or they are really working on action I think ESG is solving the problem of a buzzword in my opinion sustainability was the buzzword because it was so open-ended and it could mean so many things and ESG came to solve the problem and to decipher what sustainability is and what ESG has done is that it linked the differences and the work of a company to the UN SDGs so now you have a checklist where you just mix and match what you are doing to a predefined SDG and ESG is basically in my opinion the only way to remedy greenwashing and to remedy sustainability reports that basically speak on many things that barely touch the surface ESG is being highly adopted in the UAE my company and Masoud will be launching its ESG report end of May it has taken us over two years to put it together because for a private company a record keeping may not have been something that was very stringent in the past and the way things work in this region and here I am attributing the entire Middle East is things change when legislation changes so everything is usually a top-down approach and we know that legislatively speaking banks and the financial sector has been emphasizing the existence of ESG for companies that are applying for capital and we are operating in a region where banks pretty much control the capital of the economy is it hi Mawa can you hear us yes I can internet connection is unstable is there a geoconnection here guys I'm sorry I'm not I'm not working for any geocline I think I'm fine I suppose for a couple of seconds and I think I'm back on great Mawa so you know I'll quickly move from ESG you know one of my favorite topic is around this whole conversation around market years so and then there are a lot of quotes comments a lot of conversation around that you know the female market years are better than the male or the counterpart otherwise you've been working with all big companies so you've been now you're managing such a huge team and as well so many such a huge portfolio what is your take on it and if you think the same way why I'm not going to take a biased approach and specify whether it could be better at something I think women are being given more opportunities at the workforce in the last couple of decades let's say this must have started in the 70s and that also comes at a time when economies were also shifting away from the post-industrial area and the outlook of managing teams has changed from the outlook on a job being a nine to five or people standing behind the production line to people just sitting behind the desk and I think as the entire outlook on how to manage humans changed this brought with it more opportunities for women to get into the workforce and to be given further responsibility I think what is interesting is that the more opportunities are being given to women the more women are proving that they can take on roles in very tough industries I will probably give myself as an example the industries I work with today are pretty much male dominated and my customer audiences even the country right yes even the country you know I work on engines that we sell to the Ministry of Defense or to the Navy or to the Marine oil and gas construction even automotive I work on car models for example the Nissan Patrol and the Nissan Safari 90% of the customers are males and I see that my company has given me the confidence to overlook in dollars of operations although the industry is very much male dominated and I think this goes back to the changing outlook on leadership and the changing outlook on what it takes to manage people I think there are historically people use the military approach where it's top down, authoritative command and control and the outlook on the productivity of a person has changed as well and as we see the world adopting a more open-minded approach where leadership today is pretty much linked to compassion pretty much linked to empathy pretty much linked to active listening women I think have a natural tendency to possess those traits and now they're just coming in handy and that's my opinion on it there's already a one buzzer before the second buzzer comes I have couple of very important questions and guys if people don't know she's also a renowned author she has also written a book on marketing communications on the job it's essentially a guide for setting up the complete communication department from scratch Marwa what inspired you to write this book and also little bit about this book and I'm sure you know it's available on Amazon please, please buy it I've just ordered it day before so my copy should come to me I think on Monday yes thank you thank you yes so the book is on Amazon and it has the bestseller list in the advertising category and in the economics and business and this is a two in one book bundle it's a 400 page book the first part of the book is how to establish a marketing and comms department from scratch and I really have to tell you the story of where all this happened it so happened that in the past five jobs that I've taken I was asked to either take over an existing department and completely revamp it and revitalize it and I so happened to work with family businesses and entities in the government of Abu Dhabi where we had to establish the department from scratch and it's one of those slippery slopes that in your mind are so easy and you know exactly what you need to do but when you basically want to put it into paper you find it so matrixed and you go through the predicament of where do I start do I start by branding a company or do I start by looking after sales or do I start at the retail level how do I evaluate the team what's how much of my work is going to be marketing versus comms versus brand building versus crisis and reputation and I'm an avid reader and I've read over 300 marketing books in my career and I really failed to find a book that will give you a practical guide on what to do on the job. Most of the marketing books are either written by CMOs who run global brands and have worked on multi-million dollar budgets and sit there and brag about campaigns that 90% of the readers won't be able to basically undergo or replicate in a way or another. The second category of marketing books are written by university professors who basically also theorize and add a lot of theory to marketing practices which we know you might live an entire lifetime before you apply any of them and in my head I am thinking of entrepreneurs I am thinking of SMEs and I am thinking of people who make their way into the industry without having a marketing degree. We all know that in most organizations a sales director will eventually be promoted to marketing and sales in the aviation sector you get pilots who get promoted to CEOs and CMOs and how do you basically provide a crash course to those industry veterans on what really marketing is and most importantly how to apply it on day-to-day basis and so I have taken it to heart to create frameworks templates and checklists that can help you organize your thoughts and achieve your marketing work without having to resort to fluffy theory so it is a very practical guide it is one of those books that you can keep at your desks and refer to as and when you need it's a great introduction to many other disciplines that you may not have a lot of experience in I am an out person I've spent the first 12 years of my career in ad agencies I then moved to retail marketing and then I started communications much later in my career and I had to learn PR and COMS and internal COMS management and basically this speaks to anyone who is going through a similar journey where they are just about to start venturing into a new field on the entire spectrum of more COMS impressive my two learnings that there are more than 300 books on marketing so guys watch out one and I think in some sense yeah you know what we have learnt I am an MBA I think for me the obituary of 4Ps and SWOT has been long ago and I don't think any of our presentations our plans have any of that sorts of happening so I am sure your book will probably bring us more insights and learning my last question two important learnings of your life as a marketing and COMS professional to all of us sitting here it's a mixed crowd both agency as well as the COMS department so over to you so the first thing that I've written the first pro verb that I've written the first chapter of my book and maybe I could read that to you and this is definitely something that I took to heart throughout my life the future belongs to the curious the ones who are not afraid to try it to explore it, poke at it question it and turn it inside out I truly believe in curiosity and what I mean by curiosity is to have a deep internal desire to try something new and with it comes what I attribute the success of my career I was never scared to try to move from agency side to client side I was never scared to jump from FMCG and retail to banking and from banking to automotive and from automotive to industrial and to energy and I was never scared to move I was never scared to run advertising campaigns to someone who can work on ESG reports and on big strategy decks for multinational conglomerates all you have to do is to be curious you have to know that there are so many new collective possibilities that are lying out there for you in the field of your career that you should tap into and I think the second you asked me to share two life lessons I think the second one is beware of complacency we as human beings are creatures of habit and you could be really someone who is quite settled in your comfort zone and you're enjoying it for the time being but you could be hurting yourself in the long term so please don't fall into complacency nothing miraculous happens in the state of inertia you have to keep on moving amazing thank you loved it I wish you were here we could have very nice interactive crisp that's what I would say looking forward to see you either here or in Dubai thank you very much Marwa thank you everyone thank you thank you Mr. Handa thank you very much well with this ladies and gentlemen we move on to the next panel discussion the topic at hand is the changing rule of marketeers and let me remind you that the social media contest is still live all you have to do is simply scan the QR code that is on your tables and follow us on LinkedIn post that if you are posting any pictures videos or any comments about this event across any of your social media platforms please do not forget to use the hashtag E4MIPRCC moving on let's welcome our panelist please give it up for Ms. Kamna Hazrati founder KH advisory expecting a louder round of applause as I invite our next panelist please welcome Mr. Gaurav Verma chief marketing officer FarmEasy welcome this panel let's welcome the moderator Mr. Abhishek Guliani CEO Hill and Nolten strategies well we certainly do know who the superstar on the stage is now so after the session that went on this will be interesting one where you will have to convince your role a little more what marketeers are doing has to be spoken more louder so no pressure there for Gaurav and Kamna to go through but I just want to kick off this by just trying to contextualize it the fact that I mean marketeers have always been under pressure right I mean there was the time of the print media then came the radio the television the mobile phase that came in then came the social media phase and after that it's just digital and then there are conversations now around NFTs and cryptocurrency and gaming and sound how do you think and I don't want to speak from a long-term perspective because we were discussing you know that there is no one year window or five years window five years window is impossible even one year window you're lucky how is the role of marketeers evolving and changing hi guys so I mean the way I look at it the role of the marketer has fundamentally three aspects to it right one is to understand the consumer and the consumer is changing a lot I mean we are at farm easy we fundamentally deal with medicines and diagnostics the diabetic of today and the diabetic of ten years ago is completely I mean awareness of health the need for proactive testing has just completely changed and the way they are thinking about their own health is very different from what was five years back pre-pandemic so the consumer and understanding the consumer critical the second part is media I mean the choices that we had ten years back you would make media plan for three things maybe TV print radio today it's what a hundred things you have to choose between social influencer digital what's the new thing AI whatever like there's a bunch of choices to make on media and I think that's super critical I mean the third role is internal like we are also the window of the consumer inside the company inside the boardroom and how we kind of you know demand the seat on the board has also changed quite a lot so in my head all three have changed a lot in the last five years the role remains the same but understanding all three aspects more and more critical yeah I think I totally agree with what Gaurav just said to my mind the changing role of marketers is something I was telling Abhishek behind stage I read this question it's you know the landscape the consumers keep changing and the marketers remain the same we are solving for you know solving for getting more revenue in we are solving for more brand recall and just the mediums which keep changing right but more focus on communication and narrative and you know what do we want us to be known for the value which we are creating and then these mediums they keep changing and like you said you know we can't have a five-year horoscope you know horizon here it can maybe just be six months and then it just keeps growing from there Gaurav I want to bring you especially on the question on when we're talking about change of role of marketers you've moved from Pepsi to startups how's that change been how's that role of all for you in the marketing mix of things completely learning for sure three things I think different between a traditional more traditional company and probably a startup I was with Zemato and now with Farmizi after along distance with Pepsi I think three things right one is that time horizon is completely different absolutely we don't work on Pepsi campaigns we want to build the brand over many years and you know there's a consistency of language campaign that that ROI and liberty for that ROI is not a year impact needs to be shown in three months, six months so we are living with a very short time frame and therefore more tactical stuff making sure the ROI is there the ability to actually show results is very high I think the second thing is data amount of data that you have in a startup and e-commerce whatever you take it data is insane I mean now we are drowning in data so to actually find an insight and to make it meaningful is now a different skill set I think in the world of Pepsi you didn't know enough about what was happening now we know a little bit too much so I know exactly why the guy is dropping off and we're like okay now what do we do with this so that's the second challenge and the third time challenge I think for startups is the role of PR actually like the role of storytelling is super critical a founder and a startup need to be known there's a lot of internal hiring that has to happen so to be seen making the right moves and the right kind of storytelling I mean you can see the printer is a very different kind of storyteller and the brand of Zemato literally writes on the back of him a lot so the role of PR and the role of storytelling very very critical actually I just want to bring in from the question on ROI I mean you work with more 10 to 100 crore companies versus you know the funding Zemato or you know Pepsi or Farm Easy would have what are the ROIs that you're looking at at that stitch of horizon and if you can take them after that let's just spend more time on the ROI pressure and therefore because it becomes very important for the audience sitting here to understand what is the mindset that you all are coming from right I think it's you know like Gaurav just pointed out we have so much so there is so much pressure to deliver on on strict budgets and you know still create a lot of values to create a lot of free call and not just immediate sales but also create a pipeline for future right so PR and communications it's a marriage of data plus design right so with data is what you when we are all calculating the lifetime value of a customer you know the tax so as marketers we are just looking at the data day in and out right but all of this is still combined with a lot of storytelling and the value which we are creating the purpose of our companies right and that marketing as a function is a lot of value driven right and communication becomes a part of it so when we are looking at the ROI of this function it has to be you know that comes at a certain cost it comes at you know maybe a 10-20 30% of your business delivers that much particular value to you and that is something which is like especially with the kind of startups I work with like I was telling you right there is no pool of money we are driving this from you know it is the revenues which we get in it's more businesses and then it comes to more you know even if they are funded businesses the founders mindset is still to create first profit and then you know do everything else so I think that remains a very critical part of the thought process and how we work how we function okay I think scale is a curse at some level so we have all those problems and we have to deliver scale still so I think the challenges remain very similar talking at a different scale the kind of consumers you are talking to the way you play out the media budgets obviously are slightly larger but the challenge of proving that ROI proving the LTV2 CAC is still very relevant I think even more so in the current funding scenario I think everybody I think there was a time when growth at any cost was okay I think now we have come back to the fact that you have to grow sensibly in place before you actually do it so a lot more I think responsibility on marketing is kind of on our shoulders today let me shift this to a little bit about digital business right how much is digital important but I want to just try and swing this in with how important is the physical word for you outside of digital world when you are looking at marketing is that still relevant for you when you are planning or you are looking at or you are you are being spoken by your leaders to say no just go digital so I fortunately I have been a founder of digital first business always cater to digital first consumers the people I work with is also the digital first mindset I think a more important question to solve for is where is your consumer they are digital they are physically available you go to them there so primarily looking at where your target audience is how are they consuming what you are serving how are they consuming your services or your competitor services and then you try to figure out a kind of a mix of physical plus digital in my journeys and the kind of startups I have been working with it's a mix of retail plus digital digital gives you that ease of use at any hour so if I am talking about education I can learn anytime but I still want my child to go to a tuition center I still want my child to go to a physical school and have that discipline of going out and mixing with people so I think it's more of consumer backwards not medium backwards is what I think Gaurav just want to ask if it would be possible for you to give us like an example of how this would play out for you at farm easy or anywhere else where you worked in a campaign where you were trying to find that mix of where the audience is and then how did you execute that thing which had a mix of physical world or digital world I think that was a great answer you are trying to change behavior trying to buy a piece of that person's mind or rent it at least at some level to consider you when you finally consider about medicine or you consider about food or you consider whatever we found that the synergy of physical and online actually gives the best example of what we are saying so it's a matter one of the touch points that matter a lot is the actual time when you deliver the food and you actually that guy you don't want to actually meet the delivery writer but you want the food to be piping hot and we've realized that at that point if you can actually deliver an interesting message like you give them a free something or the box has something quirky it ends up playing a massive multiplier on social because people just will post it on and you'll see that continuously from Zemato as a lever to try and drive word of mouth or buzz or whatever that touch point drives a lot of of buzz for us in the world of farm easy it's very different we're trying to build a world of trust the fact that you can trust us with your health so we've realized that being omnichannel is a very critical driver for not being like we're an online store but seeing us physically around the country now we have about 300 stores actually in India but seeing us around it helps a lot of trust that we're not a fly by night operator we're actually a serious health care provider to build on trust right for you customer loyalty and and and I know someone just got hold of you outside saying you know I left your service because you started charging how do you look at customer loyalty and and reference in an environment where the customer moves quickly on probably a discount the ecosystem is evolving it's all I can say right now to be honest right I think it's very early days in e-commerce in health care e-commerce for short I think a better place to see this is probably what Amazon and Flipkart have done already I think the world of discounts now is behind them they're building on an experience they're building on depth of category they're building on the pillars of what you choose when you think about buying online in our world discounts still drive a lot of consumer choice so I think we're still evolving we'll take a little time loyalty right now is a word we throw around I don't think we have that in this category I think a long way to go I don't know how you think I think I'm just thinking about Amazon you know when you talk about first rate so I can still shop for say a sketchers you know from a Flipkart or an Amazon but I will why do I choose an Amazon over a Flipkart is more of you know the softer aspects of maybe a faster delivery the ease of checkout you know my Amazon pay account always working right it is the trust so India as an economy as consumers we are driven by discounts we are a discount first consumer so I think that that goes and I'm sure it's a very tricky category for you how do you expect medicines to have discounts but we still want discounts you know we are Indians we want discounts everywhere but the softer aspects of it so maybe you know like we are talking about Zomato you still do a Zomato or a Spiggy but Zomato the brand recall is very quirky messaging right and because that messaging is staying with me I my first thing my first thing of ordering food from outside is Zomato so you know there are softer aspects of building and that all happens in the world of marketing right beyond discounts and beyond pricing the other fees of marketing just come into play then and that contributes to building trust for our brands I just want to ask specifically your question about and this is something that you do how do you build cross collaboration of marketing teams into the culture and teams too because I wanted to specifically your input since you do that as a part of you know of what you're building up I think it's more of so every founder so I work with founders in the early stages of you know from building to from build to grow to scale actually so primarily in the growth and scale cycle when we start our businesses and I've been a founder I've been a DTC founder in my past life so I know you know the way we start our businesses and then when it has to translate into the other teams buying it so when a company is founded you know it's more of the founders doing everything we are doing sales also we are doing hiring, operations, lean-offs everything is done by us right and then we grow to a scale where you know you have teams, you have different functions it starts with sales then it grows into a marketing division and then it kind of you know you're able to by the grace of God you're able to grow your business just thrive in this economy for good 7, 8, 10 years then that is when you know you start to build sales and marketing as different functions but a lot of times when the sales people are selling to they really know what else is happening in the marketing world or is the marketing person really aware of you know what is the sales person really selling for right and that's when you try to build a bridge between getting that purpose in line getting that communication in line communication plays a very critical role whatever I do in media if I am serving as a CMO I am running media also I am running paid ads also I am also running SEOs and everything right but I have to still make the communication as a sorry I still have to make communication as a basic piece that translates the vision the purpose of a company down to every team and more cross collaboration there I think those are the things which kind of help you to build that culture and it's more of a cultural thing to build I will try and kind of put in two questions together to be the last question is there a space for marketing and COPCOM people in the boardroom and how do you see PR agencies from a marketing perspective and is there any learnings there so PR super critical I mean the challenge is to balance the paid versus the earned bit of what you are trying to build for your brand and the way that PR kind of comes in and actually builds that much more organically I think it's so critical maybe undervalued for most marketers to be honest but the guys who get it right are able to just deliver that delta ROI the delta brand makes the brand salience very very critical to be honest and I think being part of the boardroom we are mirrors for what's happening outside so we shine what consumers are saying about us into the boardroom we obviously anchor the conversation around the consumer and you can see that shift the market is not just a cost center anymore he is seen as a reason for new products to be launched they are increasingly becoming profit centers actually so yeah I would say very critical I think I would second what Gaurav said actually the primary purpose of setting a board is the same it's governance and the growth of the company marketing is a very critical function communication is also a very critical function in our world we we used to cross combine sales and marketing now it has become marketing and communication but I think that's one division which is very critical this is how you are talking to your consumer how is actually the end consumer Gaurav was mentioning about Pepsi but Pepsi sells for a 30-40 rupees bottle and still someone has to convey that how is that person feeling by buying a 30-40 rupees bottle so marketing is actually bridging that gap between the consumer and the boardrooms and I think that just answers it it's a very critical it's a requirement it's a must have it's not a good to have it's a must have for the boardrooms thank you so much Gaurav Kamna you were able to build a strong line of defence for marketing which is very important but thank you thanks thanks guys thank you very much could I please request you to kindly come up front for a group picture and joining us on stage to present a small token of appreciation on behalf of exchange for media is Mr. Ankit Sharma general manager exchange for media thank you very much thank you and with this ladies and gentlemen we are now moving on to the last panel discussion for this very very productive day the topic at hand is journalism and its effective role in PR and communications it is now time to welcome our panelist I must encourage you all to bring up a very enthusiastic cheer as I invite them on the stage please welcome panelist Dr. Navneet Anand founder and director Grey Matters please welcome Dr. Sarvesh Tiwari founder and managing director PR professional group please give it up for Professor Sanjay Ahirwal Dean School of Journalism and Mass Communication APJ Saptar University please welcome Mr. Kamal Narayan CEO IHW council and co-founder team work group and completing this imminent panel is the moderator please give it up for Ms. Shivani Sharma COO on purpose good evening everyone and a very warm welcome to each one of you and the topic today is very very interesting journalism and its effective role in PR and communication and interestingly the panel here I think a lot of them have been the journalist in a PR professional for over a decade now so I'm going to straight away get into conversation because here we have a panel which we which really want to talk about a lot of things today so my first question is to you Kamal PR and journalism have a symbiotic relationship do you think this relationship has changed in last decade or so what is the impact it has had on the industry so hello thank you so much Shivani so as you introduced us I spent almost 8 years in journalism before stepping into the shoes of an entrepreneur and starting an organization with my co-founder who is also my wife Nikki Gupta called team work communication group so as far as the relationship between journalism and PR or PR professionals is concerned see for me the relationship has still been the same as it was 10 years back or maybe 20 years back or maybe many other decades back because see ultimately when I was in journalism we used to have kind of dependency sometime if I can use that word on PR professionals to help us access accurate timely and verified information their role has always been seen to facilitate the access to the right information on time the same goes at this time also the modes may change the mediums can change and also the speed can also change today we see that many of the brand and especially when it comes to the governments they tend to take the direct kind of route to convey or talk to media sometime kind of bypassing the important role of PR professionals or maybe the agencies or the departments meant for that but at the same time that direct approach to media many times become a one way communication while when you have the professional in between it becomes more of a two way communication because you always want to go back and kind of try to get a bit more on certain aspect or maybe to just to verify or clear your doubts on something or certain information may kind of trigger certain questions in you so having a kind of educated informed and proactive professional in between has always been I think the need for effective communication and the same demands in today's time as well so very right Kamal I think it's important because PR professional and journalism both go hand in hand and I think somewhere we are trying to drive a narrative which is based on truth and which is based on reaching out with the same set of audience and driving the truth Professor Sanjay my next question is to you what advice would you give to the young journalist and PR professionals who are entering the dynamic pre-load of public relations and journalism right is it working? Hi let me first clarify that I am a dinosaur here so I have been working for 30 years now 25 in journalism and 5 I have been teaching journalism school I want to be a contrarian here I want to say that kindly keep PR and journalism away from each other they don't chill right sadly what is happening today is only PR there is no journalism that is happening in any channels and all the channels or all the papers have lost their credibility I don't know how many of you in the evening watched news channels so I have to say that we have to rework how journalists think and how PR people think it's the best time for PR let me tell you you don't have to spend any money right what channels are doing for news is PR are for you so it's great time for PR but as far as journalism is concerned I think journalism is if we are just yesterday or it was 3rd of May press day press freedom day and we are 161 out of 100 what is the are we talking about so I try and teach journalism young students and you are the people who can change so I would suggest the PR industry to try and keep journalism away from PR and journalism students to be journalists they must learn because right now what we have the examples that we have in front of us is not journalism alright so this is what I would say just keep both away from each other yeah but we still have a very symbiotic relationship I think we both can't survive without each other maybe but in our times when we were doing journalism we were away from all the PR agencies I mean maybe at the level of our owners they were interacting but as far as journalists were concerned we didn't know we didn't know and maybe business journalism was away from what I was doing I was doing political journalism and also kind of social journalism completely away from PR agencies now I would say no I think what Sanjay ji is saying is right we have to keep journalism and PR separate but that doesn't mean that they don't attract both of them have to do their own job communication professors have to do their job to present their story in the most effective impressive manner with information while the journalists need to do their own job they need to see what they need to print what they don't want to print they should not be printing anything because they are being ratified for that or they are being kind of pestered behind that so there is no way that both of the professions have their own virtues they have their own validity to be in the profession they need not to be intermingled or mixed up but at the same time they both have to interact because that is the I think the whole pathway of how the information moves I would like to add something first we need to understand that whether PR could survive without journalism or not and PR is such a profession you won't believe that it is going on from time Lord Ram has sent his PR person from time to time so we were present and PR has a very good you need to put your person in other's field also so we have been doing PR since then we have said that PR and journalism should be different only PR was going on I am also a journalist we met a propeller he was a propeller and I agree with you but I firmly believe that the profession never dies journalism will never die journalists die journalists die then I have seen many businesses broken because of people but today in the real estate industry PR's job is to share some excuses I do a lot of work in the real estate it was a totally broken business it was a very bad business when you hear the name of the real estate the court would give you an argument today everything is on fire again so the profession didn't die the business didn't die people died so we need to wake them up they don't need to be cheated that's what I think rightly said sir we Dr. Navneet I have a question for you last year many journalists are moving towards corporate communications or public relations why is that happening how is that changing the PR industry I have many friends here who have been journalists and good evening to all of you I was told that there is slightly diminishing energies how many of you have been journalists in the past many many of you wonderful so I suspect that Josh has been low so I hope we are not going to add to your low Josh but we'll try and make it a little more riveting thank you Shivani for that question and before that if I can reflect on what was being spoken earlier Sharves rightly said journalism is not dead journalism has changed what we see today is a different form of journalism there is Twitter there is Monk in between there were two major pillars of journalism newspapers where I had the great privilege of serving for 12 years I had 12 years in journalism and this is my 13th year in public relations PR and but in between what has happened that over a period of time last few years may be around a decade or so that dynamics of journalism had changed right we have more the construction of news the dissemination of news and the consumption of news these have fundamentally changed so each one of us I was flying the I was taking a flight on Patna to Patna day before yesterday and there was the gentleman captain it was his last leg you can see on my twitter handle it has 11,000 views till morning so each one of us has become newsmakers there was a time when we used to go to Times of India, Indian Express Pioneer but today what has happened has been proliferation of newsmakers each one of us are newsmakers today so that is how the character of journalism had changed you know Prime Minister Modi I'm sure many of you would know relies from day one on twitter and there was a paper written by two academic in University of Sydney as how he bypassed the traditional media of newspapers and you know television too have his own audience and direct conversation with the audience you know be it monkey bath or twitter and there are other mediums so the character of journalism has changed and as far as relationship between journalism and PR is concerned I have had you know I was on the other side of table and I used to be equally snobbish you know when it came to the PR agencies in hindsight I thought that was foolish to say the least you know because PR or journalism that is like Jai Biru of Shole it is very symbiotic you know between because PR professionals are often looked down upon I'm afraid that perception has to change each one of us are responsible for changing that perception because we are repository of information we are knowledge workers we are information warriors and along with journalists we can create a wonderful information architecture but look at it what is happening today prevalent psyche that no P the amount of reading that I do in order to service my clients and partners I think is enormous I work 16 hours a day I wonder how many journalists I have press release that may be a simplistic view so we have full respect for journalists so Jai Biru should have a relationship but for a variety of reasons it was Tom and Jerry kind of relation where Tom the press was punching upon the PR the Jerry things are changing now and I will come to your question now that now people are realizing that the canvas on which you can operate on and that was the reason I quit journalism I worked with the Times of India, the Indian Express, the pioneer but I quit journalism because I thought being a student of communication I studied a little bit after getting a PhD after failing UPSC so I felt that the canvas of working that is much higher in PR and Rahul is here I mean he has been a veteran journalist Jai is here he has been veteran journalist of course Sarvesh you all know so the canvas is so big and that is the reason many of the journalists who know that where journalism is headed and the character, the dimension the methods of journalism have changed if you can adapt yourself from here I think the other side of the table we are doing pretty well now we are being recognized as credible, far more credible than in earlier times but still each one of us in the business of PR we should take it upon ourselves to be the brand name masters for the industry the public relations industry else you will be keep looking down Tom Jerry as a runner Tom will have to tell that we can still live like Jai and Hero thank you I think so very important to live like Jai and Hero because this is a symbiotic relationship as you rightly said and moving on from there my next question is that we all know that the media landscape has really changed and particularly so in last decade also and we now also have an advent of paid media so the one which was distressed now with the advent of news media paid media I don't think it has further impacted the public at large let me tell you you were looking at me so paid media everyone knows these stories which are present here when a lot of people start doing a lot of work how journalism went down like brother said you all carry in your pocket and you become a journalist the moment you feel anything is going wrong or anything is going right or there is any happiness in your life so when many journalists become journalists the first thing the real journalists the challenges the pressure but one thing you have to remember and remember that even today any post which goes viral we count it in millions so many millions just think of a newspaper every news is read by millions of people so every news is viral even now the impact of that cannot be reduced by any cost what happened with paid media what were the earlier journalists they would sell from the outside they would sell cuffs they would sell cuffs they would sell cuffs journalists the cuffs had so much power that you would sit there you would cry that journalism I will never say I am dead and behind that financial challenges is also a big reason because when you see that nothing is going on in your shop then you think why don't you think I will do the same the way paid media came I have two big giants two big professors sitting there so I don't want to talk too much there are some good things from them so I will give them more opportunity to speak you have a question for me should I carry on from here yes, paid media now first of all we must realize and we have to handle the elephant in the room media has been discredited in this country that was the beginning so that one to one face to face talk talk through social media or twitter can happen and then the carrot came that we will give you so much of advertorial money now all the media houses are only interested in the money that is coming from several governments all parties they are all giving money and when you take from these parties obviously you would not be able to do tough stories again that is what has happened who talked about prostitution this was discrediting of the media we don't see we as Indians don't see what has happened to us now if we want actual journalism to continue we will have to practice I wasn't saying that PR is a very very important profession they are doing a fantastic job but now journalism needs to come up and it needs to reach that stage what PR people are doing I am just saying keep PR and journalism again away from each other don't let it mingle because it's an old saying that news is something that somebody won't suppress otherwise it is advertising and I am not saying it it's an old saying that's why I am saying if you want to deal with news keep it just to the truth keep it away from PR and PR would do fabulously well and this country needs it this country is developing so it would do very well and journalism would also do very well right so I think one important thing when we are discussing this we are also I think again forgetting the difference between paid media for that better editorial or advertisement when you are saying that or when you are raising this question what is the difference or what are the changes which have come after the paid media scenario what we call it as paid media are you talking about costs of counted, uncounted money which is going to the media houses from all sources or you are talking about buying an advertorial on a newspaper or a TV channel or you are talking about giving advertisement because all three function differently and have to function differently if somebody is selling their soul if somebody is selling their advertorial in the way of their offices I am talking about the owners of big media houses that does not mean that they are it is a trend of paid media paid media if you are talking about advertorial it is okay it is not about there is no role of a journalist in advertorial in advertorial you as a marketing professional give a story get it printed it will say advertorial and it is that sacrosanct space of newspaper or TV channel then it has to be news the issue is that many time when everyone is becoming journalist as service highlighted the quality of journalism goes down and then the credibility of journalism goes down spreading information, sharing information you can become influencer you are not becoming a journalist when you are becoming a journalist you are actually wanting committing yourself to a profession where you have to look beyond what others can see you have to dig deeper you have to find out truth or the fiction out of everything so just sharing a story from my twitter handle doesn't make me journalist it can become I become a social influencer I can't become a journalist one word he used advertorial it is a very dangerous word you can't fool anyone when we write something where does this news go to the public you write a special impact so I have a very strong objection on this advertorial part I feel that a new method of fooling readers where the editorial and advertising my problem is I am also a reader the day I was not in the field I used to think that this is the truth and this is the story but the story is fake so if we are not just journalists the media houses they should also think about these small things where the impact is going and how it is going one point the advertorial at least he tells us that he has taken money for this when he sells his page without writing who will stop him special impact when you are not writing anything which as he mentioned that old saying that if it is not we are running out of time one last comment I wanted to give that this is a Raj he is an officer he says remember one thing this money is not for the advertorial so this is to remember news should also be like this this money is coming so you should remember that if money comes then you have to compromise for that and that is the same time is up last I am feeling like I am in a TV debate because I see many young journalists PR professionals here do not for God's sake start believing that for God's sake I have been in times of India notorious for selling everything out I tell you with a lot of conviction and confidence in today the amount of sanctity that largely by the editorial team is supreme they have defined it but and do not start viewing every news with this prism I am sorry if you read the express if you read the Hindu if in times of India Jaya has worked in HG I have worked in times of India I have worked in times of India I am sorry all the best God bless you all thank you check thank you very much well I do not say this on the behalf of journalists or PR people but on behalf of common people like me I can say this this panel discussion has without a doubt restored our faith in the sanctity of journalism thank you so very much can I please request you to come up front for a group picture and now ladies and gentlemen a business strategy consultant exchange for media to present a small token of appreciation to our panelists thank you very much thank you well guessing by the energy in the room I am sure amazing guessing by the energy in the room I am sure that you are all can you turn up the volume we head on to the award ceremony ladies and gentlemen I must request everyone to kindly settle down as we are now headed towards the last session of the conference requesting everyone to kindly settle down it is now time for the last keynote and indeed the last session of the day our imminent speaker logging virtually all the way from Bulgaria please join us I welcome Mr. Maxim Behes CEO M3 Communications Group Inc hello everybody Nastei Dosto I hope you hear me well Madam moderator do you hear me well is the connection good I beg your pardon your audible sir perfectly audible and visible kindly continue with the presentation I come from Bulgaria indeed but best regards from the small city of Toledo in Spain where I spent a couple of days for holiday and I'm very honored to join this beautiful and so fruitful conference which I followed for the past two and a half three hours and I thank you for the very very professional input from all the participants I can agree with some of them I cannot agree with some of them but more or less this is very important that you guys in beautiful Italy in my favorite India have such good conferences to exchange your ideas normally if you agree or not but I hope you all realize that now it's the year of 2023 amazingly important the year after all those changes after COVID after artificial intelligence as my good friend me another he was talking after all the changes in the communication industry and the war in Europe which we have now and is changing a lot of things around us but most important is that our business public relations and it was visible from all the speeches of the participants before me changed in a way that we now are in a completely different business maybe it's even not called public relations maybe it's called real time relations maybe it's called real time media management or maybe it's called a social relations it's not any more public relations because everything is public this is the main change which I call my latest books and the title of the book was the global PR revolution first and the most important change of course as it was mentioned from the speakers before all we are media all we are media and how it reflects to our business the public relations experts we my friends are not any more consultants but we have decision makers because time time of reaction time of response time of taking decision is the most important criteria of our professionalism we might be the best professionals in the world if we don't react in a couple of minutes if we don't react immediately to some posting concerning our companies concerning the world the environment in time couple of minutes then we cannot be professionals many years ago I wrote one of my books with the rules of the public relations business the rule number one was the worst decision is better than no decision the more time the more the world is developing and our business is changing more than sure about this which I wrote about 15 years ago the worst decision is better than no decision that means we must take decisions now so we are now decision makers not consultants that's the most important change imagine a client has a crisis and we call the client and he calls the boss and the boss calls another company or the other company calls the biggest boss so it will take two hours until then the picture the landscape of the plant of our client will be completely changed and completely different so again the time of reaction is the best and the most important criteria for our professionalism the time of reaction of course it's easy to say but it's not very easy to do because in order to be a decision makers that means first of all completely different business secondly completely different knowledge and preparation in advance we must read we must know we must research and study in detail the social media in a way that we really know how to react from that perspective and that changes our relations or whatever call it these days is that we are not anymore a bridge between our client and media you know how it was our client comes to the PR company sometimes also in your beautiful country media maybe still exists but PR client comes to the PR company and we approach the media and then through media we reach the clients it's not anymore like that my friends because we are the media we know how to manage the media of our clients we still have from time to time cases the client comes to our offices and I'm sure that you have the same case as well the Hedosto and they say Mr. PR expert or Mr. Behara whatever we would like to have a PR service but no social media because my secretary is very good on Facebook or my secretary puts pictures on Instagram and they're very nice pictures they're strong they're strong because we are the experts we know how to manage the content so we are not anymore the bridge between our clients and the media because we represent the media and also we represent our clients in front of public the other change I really if it's a revolution is that the public relations acts today are a very sophisticated chemistry between publishers, editors and reporters and others publishers because we are on media this is the definition of a publisher someone calls media editors of course because we take care of the content and we take care very carefully and very professionally of the content we are the editors the editors take care of the content we are reporters because the characteristic the definition of reporter is someone who publishes if we put anything on social media even on traditional media without news then it will not be interesting then it will not be read then it will not be republished so we are a chemistry between publishers editors and reporters a big change in our business is that there is a very fast merge between the three most important elements of the public communications business advertising, public relations digital so those three elements are merging very fast into one and there is a big fight who will be the leader of the future business because it is already one business advertising, public relations digital no matter that very often we have different companies but at the end of the day this is one and the same business for one and the same target better promotion better branding better sales for our clients but there is a fight because a lot of people have mixed feelings who will be in the future business some say advertising and the advertising people say I'm sure in India it's the same we are the leaders because we own creative we own the media buying we pay the media the best money because that's the reality you know the advertising it generates the best turnovers, first revenues then digitals they say no no no we are the leaders because without us without our tabs without our applications without our involvement in the website, search engine optimization and all those details guys will be zero but then I say that public relations business will be the leader of the future big united business and the reason is very simple we are the masters of the content we own the content you can have the best application you can have the best tabs you can have the most important biggest budget for media without content the product is zero without content we cannot do anything so we public relations experts are the managers of the content and then let me go back to the base of our business the very base, like every building has a base and then you start building on the top of the base no matter what materials or design you will use what color of the bricks or what color of the walls the base is the most important and to be honest the base of our business is still and it will not change never ethics, transparency freedom of expression freedom of making decisions freedom of writing freedom of creation but ethics and full transparency and freedom are the very base of our business details are very important and the more experience is the person I think the professionals the more we should take a look at the small details because they can ruin they can devastate even our business I have a very good example how people should put their attention on details for sure Conrad Hilton the late Conrad Hilton he's not anymore alive but he's the founder of the famous Hilton hotel network and about 20 years ago he was a guest in Jay Leno show and at the end of the conversation Jay Leno sent Mr Hilton you have 15 seconds 20 seconds to say to the viewers to our friends 20 million people who are watching this show the most important thing in your life you have the camera so Mr Hilton look at the camera and say dear guests of Hilton hotels when you take a shower you put the carton inside the bath because a lot of people a lot of water is waste outside thank you very much Mr Hilton who owns hundreds of hotels all over the world the most important thing was to save the water put the curtains inside the bathroom and it's a brilliant example how all we public relations experts should look at the details providing our strategies our programs providing our services to the client and let me finish I have a lot of rules and laws which I created all over the years published in many many books billions copies sold all over the world including the one in India this is the 3S rule 3S is something which is driving my business is driving my behavior with my clients and with my team 3S means speed, simplicity self-confidence full speed I talked about speed at the very beginning speed of answering speed of taking decisions speed of learning new things speed of serving the client speed of giving the advices the faster the better don't be afraid of mistakes don't be afraid of wrong decisions the faster the better simplicity the same as we are loaded with millions of hundreds of thousands of females whatever simplicity we should implement making our priorities if we do today three things, not three hundred then it will be done much better than three hundred not done or done partly and then my friends the fastest self-confidence nobody who can succeed without self-confidence without trusting her abilities and knowledge and providing good service to the client going back to the beginning with this I'm finished remember this is a new business with new name with new abilities and this makes our life much more beautiful because in one life we change at least two types of businesses shukria and I will finish with my favorite phrase in Hindi which I'm using always shukria thank you Mr. Bahair it was indeed a very enthralling session and we look forward to see you very soon in Delhi as we speak and in case anybody has any questions for Mr. Bahair please do share with us I think this will be all thank you for your time and congratulations yes I said thank you for your time and we look forward to see you and congratulations for the evening we are very delighted to we cannot share it officially but we will be happy to share in the evening the new developments that is going to take place Mr. Chairman let me tell you just two words I cannot wait to come to my favorite Delhi I wanted very much to be with you tonight but I promise I mean no matter who will win who will be awarded the awarding ceremony of a public relations expert it's a big event always and everywhere but I cannot wait to come to spend a good evening with you to have a glass of beer or a glass of wine and talk about the most beautiful and the most dynamic business I would like to applaud for today public relations absolutely sir it will be on my honor and thank you for your time thank you thank you very much so that brings us to the end of the 13th edition of Indian PR and Corporate Communication conference and we thank you the day largely covered things about the changing shift in dynamics of PR towards artificial intelligence and the role of marketing you know make it here and spend quality number of time I hope there were some key learnings we hope to see you in some time so we just gonna we request everybody to vacate the hall so that they can do the whole resetting and we will start out with the awards thank you we request everyone to please vacate the room we have to rebrand it and you know reorganize it for the awards we'll see you back in another 15-20 minutes thank you thank you team you may go now check one sound check check one check one sound check increase the volume please there's the mic check check one sound check check one check one sound check check one sound check there's the mic check check one two three check sound check one it's fine would you like go at the back and check once check one sound check it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine it's fine contribute towards recognizing their good work over the past year. I am lucky to have had 26 sort of professions from the field of India and Hong Kong, who aided me during the judging process. And I'm glad to have had this opportunity to interact with the quality of it. I'm simply astounded and impressed by the quality of entries that have come in the past year. Public relations and profit communication are important and crucial part of every brand or organization, and this year's entries proved to be a testament to that. The negatives and positive. Overall, it was a very positive thing. Of course, all the entries put out amongst others for the creative and success in communicating the brand's message. But like I said, all the entries made me believe that we are making serious progress in making PR and corporate communication an essential part of day-to-day business. And I'm very glad to have been part of this process. What is your view about importantization in physical and community? I would like to congratulate and applaud you for continuously striving to acknowledge the importance of PR in Hong Kong and believe their vision for the PR committee is one that personally supports. And we'd like to see them achieve their vision more. It was indeed a great honor to be a part of the esteemed jury for this year's IPR CCA Awards. Thank you, Exchange for Media, for the opportunity. It was a wonderful experience to judge so many entries under different categories. At the same time, it's always challenging to select the best from the best. You saw some very interesting and impressive work and a few of the entries were absolutely outstanding. Exchange for Media team is doing a fantastic job for the PR and corporate communication fraternity. This is the 13th edition of the IPR CCA Awards, which shows the commitment, success and prestige that is associated with these awards. Good ols to Dr. Anurag Bhatra, Karan and the entire Europe media team. Thank you. I'm Bhatna Anurag. I had communications for Kotevaya to science at South Asia. Pleased to be a part of the E4M IPR CCA 2022 jury. Got some time to interact with the interesting set of PR folks from the community and fraternity. Good conversations. What was good this time was looking at the number of entries. I think there were hundreds of entries which came along and a variety of entries. Communications today is blurring the lines with marketing and digital marketing. So there is a great opportunity for us as communication experts to do a lot more that align with business goals and deliver business objectives. And that's exactly what I saw in the entries this time. And I guess my fellow jury members also agree with me. The IPR CCA Awards are a really great initiative. The quality of entries that you've got this year are really great. There were a few entries which were really disruptive in nature and the stuff that they have done and the things that they have achieved. A lot of small brands and a lot of new startups that have made entries and are doing some critically acclaimed work, that gives us hope that there's a lot of disruption that is yet to be achieved in the space that we all are. A few good initiatives that are being done and something that we can also invite in our daily routine. And it kind of gives me a challenge that the amount of creativity that's growing out there, that we need to start doing a lot more and kind of start kind of challenging our boundaries. And I think to be part of the jury of the IPR CCA 2022, these prestigious awards are well-known in the industry for marketing communications, innovations in PR communications, and my new consultant as the board standard in awards. I was very privileged to be part of a Power Pack jury and we had some amazing talent that was displayed through innovations and campaigns across a range of fields. It was really a tough ask for us to be judged the best out of the lot, but we had a job to do and the recommendations were quite intense and quite deep and I'm glad that we were able to do a lot of something senses. My commendations to all those who got nominated and congratulations to all the winners. I hope through this forum and these awards, we are spurred to innovate, to communicate and to make a difference in people's lives. Thank you. I'm Shwetha Manjwagan. I'm very thrilled to be part of the exchange for media's IPR CCA awards as a jury member. If I have to describe how the overall judging process was, I would just say that it was challenging and rewarding. The reason that I say challenging, we got to do that 600 plus entries and obviously that overwhelmed us. We were rewarding definitely because what we could witness was creativity, ingenuity, and shared display of talent. The overall judging process was very rigorous, fair, thorough, and transparent. Each entry, there was careful consideration given to each entry. All the entries were evaluated based on their innovation, their creativity, impact, and overall effectiveness. Just to ensure that the best campaigns are recognized, while the entire process was very intensive, it truly was equally rewarding too. Before I actually move on, I definitely want to mention that I was very impressed with the professionalism and expertise of my fellow jury members. I actually felt that our collective insights, perspectives truly helped to, or when you will be rewarded, you will realize that truly helped ensure that the winning entries that are coming out are the ones that truly represent the best investment in our industry. Airworks is one of India's oldest and the biggest independent maintenance fair and overall company in the integration sector in India. It was a moment to be part of the jury with Exchange for Media and the 2022 awards. The judging experience was so delightful. It was highly enriching for me to be able to not just engage with the qualified management across the industry, various sectors, but also really an honor to be able to see the kind of work that was happening as part of the nomination that was in the demo. The entire judging process was very comprehensive. It was very well planned and executed by the team at Exchange for Media and I compliment this to all of them for the hard work that they did. Which also made the whole process very exhaustive for us, but I think at the end of it, it was all worth it. So congratulations to everyone. Judging in the awards function, can be both challenging and rewarding to select the deserving winner. As Comcom professionals, we have to remarkate between all media campaigns versus advertising driven campaigns. This year, have we been challenging to select winners because E4M received more than 200 entries in the shortlisted stage. The number of creative ideas and innovations that we got to read were quite exciting and interesting. We are very happy that Exchange for Media has played a very key role in a Comcom's professional life for more than two decades now. And with digital and technology playing a very key driver, we hope to see Exchange for Media to bring a lot more to the table and make a lot more exciting plans for all of us. I love judging the campaigns in various categories. There were campaigns and the campaigns were really good. The experience was overall good and my fellow jury members, it was really, really very good to interact with them and to understand what we were thinking about different campaigns, what were their views. So yeah, overall, the experience was really nice and I look forward to some more great judging processes. Some of the campaigns, like on sustainability, I wouldn't name the campaigns, but some of the campaigns were really well thought through and I saw there was a lot of effort was gone, had gone into kind of submit those campaigns and the way that they had submitted it, it made it very clear what was the objective and what they need to deliver. So it was very happening to see that our industry is taking that kind of effort and actually doing some great work. So overall, if you ask me what stood out on some of the great campaigns on sustainability, some of the great campaigns, which actually kind of we are led campaigns with where we kind of went on to become kind of an extension of marketing, those stood out. Some individual awards also, the individual categories, some of them were really good. Yeah, that is what I would say actually stood out. See, this is, I always used to think that for the PR and corporate communications community, we need to have a body, which kind of thinks about this community. We have seen community for marketing, for HR and it has been long due that PR.