 Our next session is a fireside chat between Mr. Nawal Ahuja, co-founder, exchange for media group and with D. Arbalki, a leading filmmaker. Arbalki made his feature film debut with Chinicum. He wrote and directed this film while he was chairman and creative head of low-linked us, the advertising agency. Though always wanting to be a filmmaker, Arbalki's addiction to advertising made him spend over 27 years in the business, leading India's most talented team and communication specialist to create work for hundreds of iconic brands like Ideas, Allureo, Tata Team, Kavals, Tanish, Unilever Band, like Surf XL, Lifeboy, Fair and Lovely, Britannia, Bajaj, LG, Sane, Gobain, MRF, Access Bank, ICICI and many, many more. And finally, when the de-addiction process began, Chinicum was followed by Pa, Shamita, Ki and Ka and Padman. I'm sure you've loved all these movies and the way he has taken the storytelling forward. So ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, once again urge you all of you to send it right away. The session is titled Beyond 2020, the visual future of content marketing. So ladies and gentlemen, join me in warmly welcoming Mr. Arbalki and Mr. Nauvalu Jhanskeen. Very warm welcome to you gentlemen and Mr. Nauvalu Jhanskeen. Thank you. Thank you, Khyati. Thank you for the introductions. Hello, Balki. Good to see you. Hi, hi, Nauvalu. Hi, hi. Happy to see you safe and charged and geared up as always. Though the session is titled Content 2020 and beyond, thank you. Though the session, as I said, is titled 2020 and beyond what's going to happen to content. Let me, I want to make the conversation a little more holistic and take you back to your roots. Advertising is where you started your journey. I was just talking an hour back when we started this conference about, you know, the good old days of television. When AFPs came in, Vogue and Brand started doing what we used to call them as advertiser funded programs. And that was kind of a start for content marketing. You've been in the business long enough, Balki. Creative and content used to be joined at the hip. You know, they used to be one on the same thing. But today with data, technology, AI, things have changed drastically. What's your take on, you know, where creativity and content are headed? Are they, is the gulf now too wide between these two? No, I'm very glad about, you know, the latest role that advertising is playing, which is actually setting right and saying that, asking a few news channels to kind of behave. Otherwise, as we pull out advertising, I think that's actually for the first time, advertising is exercising its might saying that don't destroy society by, you know, talking rubbish. So I think that is, I think the best show of advertising so far in a long, long time to dictate, not actually dictate content as much as say, don't put out lies out there or, you know, do something really good that I think is the best CSI advertising is done so far. Yeah, that's, that's, that's, if I can call it unintended by a product of where advertising has come from creativity to the power of media. But if I can ask you, Balki, about the, you know, creative side of advertising, what you've been seeing over the last 10, 12 years, you started your career in the television era, and then you've kind of moved on to making films. Today, we live in an era where the consumer is distracted, attention spans are very fragmented. We started from 60 second or maybe 120 second ad commercials, which came down to 30 seconds. That came down 10 seconds and TikTok has introduced us to a world where content piece pieces and advertising is five, six seconds. What does it do to the psyche of a creative person who has grown up making 60 second ad films to be able to tell a story in six seconds? See, I don't believe, it's strange. I mean, at a time when people assume that people are doing shorter and shorter content, actually, people are, the series are kind of really, if you look at the, you know, the amount OTT is kind of growing, people are watching longer and longer content. As far as, as long as it's interesting, people are willing to invest eight hours, nine hours, when they were, they were reluctant to invest two and a half hours before. So I think it's not about so much the duration of it. And I also believe that advertising, the basics of advertising are still very much the same, which is, which is, it's all about an idea. It's all about how effectively you communicate an idea. The media and the domain in which it's kind of appearing may, may kind of keep changing. But even now, 90% of advertising is a video, or some form of a story that you're telling on video, how to tell people, it could be digital, it could be television, everything else. I still think cricket is the most powerful medium that there is that is available in the country. And sometimes I think we kind of mistake mediums available to mediums available and pillar as almost effective mediums of advertising. It's not true. If it's not just about being present in a video that's extremely kind of pillar or a digital channel that's kind of used for various other purposes, I don't think that necessarily advertising becomes effective in every kind of channel, which people are kind of getting onto. Advertising has a role, people devour, I mean, consume advertising in a certain way. And, and they find, and they really kind of shun advertising in, in, in other places. So it's not about just being confused with the consumer. It's not about being distracted, it's not about being thrown off by saying that there is so much of distraction out there. We don't know what the consumer is watching. There's so many things he or she is onto. So it makes a greater person's life a lot more confusing. No, I don't think it's true. I think if you look at the last five, six years, it's strange why in the last, not even six, seven, yeah, about seven, eight years if you take it, I don't think a lot of great brands have been in the last seven, eight years. Maybe there have been, I can think of Swiggy, I can think of Fogg, I can think of a couple of other brands, or, you know, new brands, which have been created in the last seven, eight years, not which have been built on. Now, I, I, I, I, and they've been actually built on quite traditionally. They've been built on cricket in a very strange way, you know, and using cricket as the, as the meeting and nothing else. So a lot of people have tried everything else in the sun, kind of trying to go sound to every media where people are kind of doing that, putting seven second video, putting a message out here, this is all kind of, you know, these are all, these are almost like the paraphernalia. You need to just do all that to kind of increase the noise a bit, but that can't be the core noise. The core noise still is about where would a guy, where would a person like to consume advertising and where is advertising most effective? Advertising is not necessarily most effective on mediums that people are kind of, it's not necessarily so. I think that's very well said, because as you yourself pointed out the contradiction, content consumption is immensely growing and numbers bear that out. If you look at, you know, the amount of television content consumption in India, it's gone from two and a half hours a day, 10 odd years back, it's touching almost four hours a day. Whereas, that also means that advertisers have spent, have to spend increasingly higher amounts of money to reach a larger number of target audience. At the same time, the viewability of advertising is kind of mixed, you know, and as you said, finally, you know, a good creative idea is what works. Tell us, Balki, if you look at, as you've been an ad man for so many years, if you look at the last 10 years, have you seen any significant change in the trajectory of the creative ideas that you see on television or digital for that matter? Yeah, of course, there have been some really interesting pieces of work. And on top of mine, I think Swiggy is possibly one of the most interesting, actually, it's quite traditional. Swiggy is a very traditional piece of insight, emotion, fun, everything else, but done beautifully, done consistently, done very refreshingly. Yes, there are a few things, but oh, by and large, I think advertising has gotten a lot more, you know, safer, I don't want to say safer, safer is the wrong word, a lot more conservative, a lot more, I don't like to use the word risk averse because nobody wants to take a risk with their money. I believe I've taken a lot more, less ambitious, I just think that people are more, people are more satisfied if nobody curses their ad than who places their ad. It's a strange kind of a thing. There should not be any trouble, seems to be, I don't want to get trolled. I don't want bad comments on this. I don't care whether it's viral or not or whether it is hugely popular or not, but as long as people don't say bad things about it, it's fine. So once you come from that mindset, you're going to really, if you look at some of the, if you just have to look at IPL, which is the most popular medium, the most expensive medium in the world to see the standard of advertising that is going on, which is quite sad because you're spending so much money, so many people are watching on the most effective platform for brands and you're actually playing the same game of saying, let me play safe, let nobody curse me there. So I feel that's really, really sad. I think we, overall, advertising is also a reflection of where the country is. We've lost, we don't have a sense of humor. We are kind of taking things damn seriously. We're so scared. And I think this myth of trolling, every client is so, every client and agency is so paranoid about trolling. Trolling actually doesn't mean anything. People need to troll. It doesn't make any sense. I don't know why people are taking that kind of criticism. No consumer criticizes an ad. It's only non-consumers who criticize an ad. Okay, consumers have to consume your product or don't. There are people who kind of criticize and praise. Actually it's very funny. The praise is very, very organic. You know, people love the ad. No consumer is going to say, wow, what an ad. They will be just talking about it. They may quote the ad. They may kind of joke about it. The praising and the criticizing is done by people who are actually not consumers. So actually you shouldn't be worried about both in that thing. And today, people are more worried about the criticizing than the praise. So I just feel that confusion should just be kind of ironed out once and for all and advertising agencies and I should wake up and say, it doesn't matter what the trolls are. I mean, what's more important is who has noticed us? What are consumers talking about us? And are they even talking about us? Because most advertising is not talked about. The most dangerous thing is most advertising is not talked about. Even an IP ad is coming every day for 60 days and a sheer weight of noise, like the olden days, we used to say, we used to have this famous example of saying that advertising used to go to clients and say, he built these brands, successful brands. You take one look at the ad, why no stretch of imagination could it have built a brand, except if you're pumping in loads and loads of money and every day it's happening, the consumer till it becomes almost like, it's like the national anthem, it's coming at you every day and it becomes a brand. So sometimes people mistake that hammering has building a brand and call it effective advertising, which is what I feel. I feel it's criminal from an advertising agency's point of view to kind of take credit for something that actually money is not the piece of work. I think very interesting message to CM especially, I don't know whether it's the advertising agencies who are more scared or whether the brand owners are more scared about getting trolled. But that's become increasingly prevalent trend in the last few years. And I think that's also one of the reasons why agencies as well as brands have become very risk averse as you said. And that kind of also leads to the blandness of advertising that PC. What else do you think is contributing to the bloodless bulky risk aversion is of course clearly one thing is there, are we losing our spark of creativity because of as I said, too much of technology dependence, are we our clients are driving too much data analytics into the art of creativity? No, I don't think you can blame technology. I think people confuse technology and throw this confusion of consumer, what do you call that the distraction of the consumer is a great excuse for not being able to focus themselves. So I don't think that's really the problem at all. Right. I still believe that, sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, you're saying something. Sorry. I said, so what do you think is one of the reasons why the spark from creativity is gone? Why, you know, you recall when you look at IPL and you think that a lot of sad advertising is happening, serious amount of money is being sunk, but, you know, very little of that advertising is actually memorable. No, I don't know whether it is, whether it is this entire thing of being ambitious and being more worried about the environment which you live in and misleading the environment which you live in is the shutting off your minds because at a time when, sorry, at a time when content writing is going through the roof and some fantastic creativity is happening online in terms of content, it is sad that advertising that should be leading, that was actually leading cinema, leading entertainment, setting trends for fashion, setting trends for behavior is actually such a lager to the content that's being created. I really think it's the only reason to be in advertising is to set a trend, is to kind of contribute and say, hey, why don't you look at it like this or why don't you behave like this? Hey, this behavior is nice and interesting, let's do this. So that newness of kind of adding something original to society or making a society think about, it could be a joke, it could be a line, it could be a little thought, it could be anything, but that leading a society versus kind of following it and now actually so far behind it, not even following closely is a sad kind of a thing. I think maybe it's just that maybe a lot of people feel that in this environment, people just feel that why do anything that's going to kind of, you know, anything which I do literally a lateral or creative could have one kind of a rough edge here or there which I could get stoned for so maybe just kind of better be quiet and do the normal stuff with a little joke here, little joke there. So satisfy my own creativity a little bit and everybody feels that, hey, not bad fun, it's not boring, it's okay, fine and really nobody knows whether who's going to watch it or not watch it or how popular it is but it goes on. So I think today fundamentally a successful ad has become an ad that's not been cursed. So it's a very, very strange kind of scenario where I have never felt so much of, I can see it around me, I interact with a lot of the people in advertising. So I can see a lot of weariness in people. Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. It's not, you know, for a creative person, it's not the kind of environment you want to create an ad in and if you were to do Jaguurai today, I think his connection is switched off. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. No problem. Just one minute, I'm just getting back online. Sorry. Hello. I'm referring to, yeah, we can hear you, we can hear in CU Balki. No, I can't hear you. Yeah, yeah. Am I audible now? Yeah, fine. So I was referring to the famous ads you created, especially for Tadati Jaguurai, which had such strong social messaging at that time. I wonder if a creative director was sitting on that ad today, would he really have the kind of courage to create that kind of advertising, that kind of message given what is being peddled around in the business today? It's not just the creative director's courage, it's also the client's courage. It's the same Tata who did the ad of Tadati and the same Tata that had to pull out the Tanish CAD. So it's also about the client and today, I mean, if you're questioning a politician and saying what qualification do you have to kind of lead a country or lead a state or whatever, when that's the biggest organization that there is, if you ask that question today, you might be accused of actually pointing fingers at so many politicians who are not so qualified, kind of lead the biggest organization which is the country. But yeah, and I think that I really feel that I think it's time for the fight. It's time to fight it out because the fight is where the noise is. If you create a lot of noise trying to stop it, then if you fight it, you're only going to make it even more. If you fight for the right thing, I think you're going to really play a big role in viriling it. I think you need to start fighting for the right thing today. You do the right thing and stop you. It's actually an opportunity rather than a problem. So I feel we need to start looking at fights and people coming in our way when we're doing the right thing. I always say doing the right thing. That should be seen as an opportunity and that's a sitting viriling. It's a sitting kind of a duck to be popular as a brand and I don't understand why people are not willing to fight. Right. So tell me for a young creative starting career today, the world is very different from what it was 25, 30 years back and as you yourself explained how risk aversion both at the agency and the brand side is kind of one of the reasons why creativity is being stifled. What message would you give to a young creative who's starting out today? I mean, how do you navigate this kind of world where you enter the world of advertising, creativity, dreamy-eyed and reality hits you hard? I would actually urge a lot of creative people in any kind of thing, young people which I enjoy advertising now because now is the right time. When there's a screw up is when there's an opportunity. There is no opportunity when there's no screw up. Today, we are really at the lowest and there is a positive of boldness, of ideas, of an abundance of fear. So therefore, this is the right time to make a market as professional as a mind that can kind of create a difference. So this is the time to come to advertising. You have lesser opportunities when everybody is kind of producing great ideas. You have far more opportunities when very, very few. So I think this is actually the right time. I think that's a very well made point because as you said, when lots of good ideas are being produced then for your opportunity to shine is lesser. And at a time like this, one good idea can really make a career. Let me come to the nuances of what you create bulky and let me talk about both advertising and what you've done on the movie side of the business. As I mentioned at the start, content consumption has changed drastically in the last 20 years, especially in the last five years, thanks to explosion of data, geo, people watching more on mobile phones, YouTube. How is the nuance of curating content change along with that? One part of content curation is naturally the idea. And as you said, idea kind of the core of the idea remains irrespective of the era. But when it comes to execution, what has changed in the last 10 years given how consumption across various screens has changed? Yeah, except for some production quality, very basic production quality. Not all has changed actually. We will keep looking at the 0.5% of people, 0.5% of all of us who are kind of consuming some great series here, watching HBO, watching some of the top end Hindi series kind of produced on Netflix or Amazon or Hot Star. But the real things that are popular and are being consumed out there, according to the pundits, which again, I don't know, I always kind of, I'm wary of people saying that they know the consumer and they put atrocious series and atrocious videos as being the most popular. And you'll say they have one billion views or some shunts, they put big figures like this. And this is what I mean, if you look at a content company, and I've seen some of them today, the way they kind of talk of the consumer is far worse than the than what advertising agencies do. They're also segregating mine, psychographic, demographic study. This is all almost like scientifically manufactured content to appeal to so many minds. It is impossible to do that. You know, almost, it's very crazy to do this kind of thing because it's not, how do I put it this way? It's not so much the quality of the content. You know, people are just kind of, let's say, misled by what makes people watch a certain thing, and they read something else as what is making them watch the thing, and they kind of further the stuff. That's what happened for television. You know, our television content for a very long time so far has been on this myth of so many people are watching this, so many people are watching this. The same people watched Bunyag so many years back, which was such, which was so much better. Why was our television content so much better 25, 30 years back? And why is it so bad right now? It's not people have suddenly changed. You keep feeding people that when you keep popularizing that, obviously they're going to get used to certain things. Obviously, you think that that's what they like. There is no evidence to say that if I kind of feed people something else over a period of time, like I'll give you a small example, like Chudel's, the series on Z5, which is a Pakistani co-produced series with some fantastic actors in Pakistan. It's such a beautiful bold popular series. And I'm not sure in a country like Pakistan, it's really repositioned. In fact that series could have actually Imran Khan should have taken that series and say and Tom Tom went around the world and said, hey, look how progressive, but they didn't do it. They're as silly as us in a lot of ways. So, but the fact of the matter is that is very popular and that is a fantastic kind of a series. Stake scan, for example, these are one or two examples which are coming in where a lot of people have liked it. And which are not the run of the mill kind of the thing which so-called even OTT platforms are segregating into psychographics and demographics and all this kind of things are there. So, I'm very scared the OTT side also in this desperation for viewership or assumed viewership, getting into the same path as a lot of other marketers, as a lot of other brands who've gone through that hardware and power and said in a strange way, they learn to laugh at a lot of things like that a little bit more than content to wear. So, it's a very strange kind of a time even here, even in this kind of environment. Well, the government certainly believes OTT is too bold for them right now. So, there are attempts at regulating what OTT is being OTT, the content OTT players are putting out. It's funny, they're going to be regulating, they're going to be regulating what 0.5% of people watch. They're going to be just regulating that. It's a waste of time. Well, as you said, that's the era we live in. Let me move to your latest love, which is movies, Balki. And as you've been an ad man, you work closely with brands. Tell us a few things that movies can teach brands. Brands have become, as you said, very safe. They are averse to taking risks, especially when it comes to advertising. Movies have charted a very different territory, especially in India in the last 10 years. What are the learnings that a movie business can give to brands and also advertising folks in advertising? I don't think movies have a lot of advertising, because movies are also stuck in a zone like, if there's one book which succeeds and everybody wants to do everybody's life, or every incident that there is on newspaper, they want to make it into a film. So, I believe that movies are also kind of suffering from the lack of originality of content. It's about creating. Movies is just another canvas to create your own stuff. It's not about just portraying stories, it's about creating new stories. It's about creating new characters. It's just not about portraying. Yes, there's some lives you'd like to see something between, but every alternate film cannot become that. So, I don't think, I wouldn't say movies have a lot to teach advertising. I think only advertising can teach advertising, nobody else. Well said, last question before Kyati takes over Balki. COVID has fundamentally changed communication in a lot of ways. Movie making might also see changes. Unfortunately, the business has been very hard hit. What are the three, four trends that you see lasting post COVID, which might have been in kind of their pre-COVID and now they get accentuated because of what's happened this year? I think as far as film is concerned, the fundamental dilemma that we're all faced with is not so much of how to shoot or where to shoot. Of course, that is more like, okay, go to this country, you can't, but we have all begun shooting a bit here there and it's going faster and faster. It's more where to kind of, what is the future of that thing that you're trying to create? Because yes, in the first wave, a lot of OTT kind of guys bought a lot of things that were lying in the hands of the released or they want to release an OTT, but I'm saying economically that's not going to be viable for a long. The economics of the film industry are going to take a major hit and big star vehicles will not have the same kind of trust on OTT like it has on the screen. So there is going to be a redefinition of economics and that's where the confusion is, what is the future of our release and how do we plan economics? Who's going to buy what we're going to watch and what the economics are? That's the dilemma here more than anything else. Well, there have been instances where economic uncertainty has actually fueled creativity in a lot of ways because lesser money has meant people have had to kind of think of very creative ideas to engage audiences. I think you should try telling the stars that because I think most of the money in Bollywood goes to the stars. So therefore, it's not about creativity earlier. It's not, it's not about, I don't think a lot of people spend on production to kind of find strategic ways or creative ways to kind of cut short budgets all about where the money goes. So that's a different discussion altogether which has actually got nothing to do with creativity. Right. Thank you, Balki. Very engaging conversation. Unfortunately, we had only 30 minutes. Kati, I hope you have some audience questions. Balki, stay with us. Kati wants to take up some audience questions. Kati, over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hoja and Mr. Balki. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. We have two very potent questions from our audience that we'd like you to address. One question says I've heard in future scripts can be written by AI machine and the movies can be made accordingly with more creativity in content. What are your thoughts on this? What is the second part of the question and movies can be? That because of which the movies can be made with more creativity in content. Script can be made with artificial intelligence and movies can be made more creatively. I'm not so sure because with real intelligence itself, we're not producing such great stuff. I'm not sure what's going to happen with artificial intelligence. I'm not sure. That's a myth. That's wishful thinking. I sometimes wish that I could just put a thought into a machine and come out as a film and it saves so much labor and everything. It's one of those wishful thinking, nothing else. All right. Another question from the audience says that you mentioned how advertisements are becoming risk averse. Also notice that almost every brand these days are going for a book culture aspect for their ads. I believe this is important but it also leads to lazy writing and that's the same concept being repeated. How do you think new ad makers should proceed in the future? I don't think it's about risk. I corrected myself when I was saying it. I don't like to use the word risk averse. I think it's about less ambitious because I believe the purpose of advertising, or purpose of any field, although advertising is commercial art and although advertising is supposed to help you, you're supposed to, this is a chance for you to contribute something or to lead society or put something back into lives that didn't exist or give consumers a new kind of interest or a new kind of a and I think that's why it's not about continuously boring from culture or society as it is and saying, hey, this is how we live. We all know that's how we live. It can be very relevant, but hey, what's the new thing you're bringing to the party as a brand? What's the new twist you're giving it to? How are you leading us forward? And that's why I think it's more important. Right. So sir, last question from us would be that what theme do you think is going to be the future for content? Any concept theme that you think is going to be yes, original. Originality. All right. Thank you so much Mr. Baal, because spending this time with us and being your content. Pleasure. Pleasure. Thank you so much.