 We will make our best. This is an afternoon time, not a subject for very serious discussion, but taking a few ideas from all over the day. I've been listening to everyone. We'll begin with some of the skills maybe we can take home through this discussion. I have with me a very interesting panel here. At the end, we have the group CEO of Avian, Mr. Nitin Mantri. He has his professional work, but his passion is in actually organizing the industry better and getting good quality talent there. So he is the president of the Public Relations Consultants Association of India, PRCAI, an industry body of repute. He is also the vice president of the International Similar Body, International Confederation of Communication Consultants. So that echo that body, he is also the vice president there. He teaches, he takes a paper on PR in civil institutes of the country as well. Then we have a young member in the panel who has been answering a few questions in the last session, Mr. Karan Rajpal, General Manager of Digital Marketing, Dalmia Bharat Group, who was also heading the digital media for HCL, Industrial Computers Limited sometime earlier. And we also have with us Ms. Jaya Prasad heading Service Plan India, which is the India subsidiary of Service Plan Germany, so I'm not wrong. So she actually traverses between the cross-section of all forms of marketing communication events, PR, and advertising through the organization Service Plan, which is an integrated communication consultancy. Beginning the discussion, I'm remembering one ad, not ad exactly, sorry, a video, a short film, which came around a couple of years ago. And this small two-minute film talked about a particular festival, a celebration, named Sindhur Khalla in Bangla. It means playing with the vermilion, the red vermilion, Sindhur, after the Visarjan of Durga, which is allowed only for married women. And a particular media house, which wasn't so particularly popular in English, popular in Calcutta among the women, came out with this fabulous idea of how and why all women, irrespective of whether they are married or unmarried, whether they are divorced or widows, whether they are young or old, should actually celebrate this festival. And then there was this whole video, which very powerfully put forth celebration and the Sindhur did not become a symbol of marriage, it became a symbol of womanhood and celebration. And this film went viral, two and a half minutes film, went viral. Times of India presented this, a particular PR agency gave the idea. And that idea when viral brought Times of India closer to the hearts of the women, particularly Bengali women in Calcutta in that year. What I'm trying to say here is that traditional education of public relations, perhaps, did not think about so much about the importance of film in communicating. Today, that's one of the skills today that's significantly coming up is the importance of video and pictures, which is the currency in my opinion, the currency of the new age communication. So that could be one skill that we look at. There could be, along with it another skill that will come very closely, is storytelling. I remember we have this very detailed storytelling and script writing and all those classes in our colleges, I was dean earlier in symbiosis, then Amity, then Whistlingwoods, which is well known for filmmaking, and now in Pearl Academy. And everywhere I've seen, particularly here also in Pearl Academy, we normally bring script discussions in a context of filmmaking alone. What's significant to see now, the storytelling is becoming a part and parcel of every form of communication, including public relations and reputation management. I'll just kick off with these two new skill sets, video and pictures, photography and shooting, and storytelling abilities. There will be many more as we go ahead, but I'll begin with Nitin, he's the senior most in the panel and has got an experience of hiring many youngsters. I remember some of my past students also working with him at Avian. So what would you think the top two, apart from the two that we have just now discussed, any other top two skill sets that you look at when you hire youngsters, and where do you find a mismatch if they're coming from institutions? I think I'll take it, I'll just put some context around what you just said. So I think the first thing to understand is that the traditional, I'll talk from a public relations perspective, the traditional PR agency is dead. The traditional PR agency and traditional PR model doesn't exist anymore. And if it does exist, then they're not going to exist for long. And I think the business we are in has changed. The business we are in today is all about, I would say branded content, is about creating good content, and content could be in several forms and shapes, which is written, audio, video, graphics, design, it's all in different forms and shapes. And therefore how we use that content in different media, whether we use it in earned media, paid media, share it, you know, do it on social media, create our own channels, right? That's the change, really. Therefore the skills have to change. And the change in skills, therefore, is not just about pitching to a journalist, which was a big skill earlier. Today it's more about how do you tell the right story. So stories are very important. How do you look at content in short form, looking at the number of social media channels, and not only short form, visual, I mean today, it's a fact that while Facebook is India's one of the largest users of Facebook, but clearly the younger generation coming now is not on Facebook, they want to be on Instagram. So photographs, so visual is going to be a big storytelling medium. So yes, all these, this talent has changed. In fact, the PRCAI did a recent study which shows that more than 56% of our respondents said that they're looking for digital talent, creative talent, and within digital they're looking for talent in social media management and production. If I take your point, branded content which engages audiences, and that could be across all media, so media neutral, media agnostic content, which can travel seamlessly from the online to the offline to the on air, or even on ground, different forms of media, that's creating that content which engages your right audience is that skill that you are looking at. Yes, but even, so that is one skill because you mentioned that, but even before that, how do you reach what content is to insights and analytics. And the other big talent which agencies are going to start looking for is people with data analytics skills. Very good. Yes, so today, you know, Insights and Analytics are going to be for a big part on how which content to develop and which audience to reach is also going to be based on Insights and Analytics. So apart from storytelling and video and content and digital, it's going to be Insights and Analytics. So we condensed whatever we have reached so far, so pictures, video and storytelling and branded content. You had the digital marketing in Dalmia Group, which is one of India's largest business groups. So what's the skill that you see particularly in new media PR, in digital PR? What are the skills you see when you look at a new youngster? So, you know, the skills remain the same, which is understanding what's the crux of anything you want to tell your audience. The number of intermediaries that were involved in it earlier, that is reducing big time. If I wanted to tell a story first, if it was something which is over the top talking about my brand, I would hire an advertising agency, they would build something for me. The PR agency would come in and craft a narrative around it. We'll send out the press release. If the journalist finds it interesting, something would happen. Maybe I'll do something on my website because it was the thing to do. Today, if I have something to say, and I think if it will make sense to my audience, I basically work with a video editor and somebody who shoots. I get that package ready and I share it on my social media channels. The cost that I spend on doing so has to come down. The time that I spend on doing so has to come down. When I'm looking at hiring somebody today, I have just two very, very important things that I look at. One is their ability to master the language they need to speak to the audience. It just cannot be, you know, I am in PR because I'm a people's person and, you know, I am in advertising because I really like all the ads I've seen. It's how do you pick up a technical manual and see what within this could be important to somebody who's buying your products because it's a technical product? And how do you tell it to that person so that he understands it? So in my case, I promote cement. Most of the buying decisions happen by people who are what we call contractors. Who you take when you're building your house. How do I tell this guy why he needs to buy my cement? When every cement taken out of the bag looks the same. That's the person I'm looking for who looks at whatever industry is working at, understands what's the key message that I need to send, does it quickly, does it at a cost where I don't have to go to 30,000 people in my company because it's above the grade at which, you know, procurement can approve it or something else can happen. I need to reduce that amount of time. Great. So cost effectiveness is also one of the skill sets that perhaps comes. How do you bring down the cost in communication? Just with reference to your technical products, I remember most of the times in the colleges, in all the four institutions that I've been heading, I have seen that most of the youngsters normally prefer when they come to PR, initially at the initial stage, which area of PR you'd love to be? Entertainment and lifestyle. And then comes retail and never beyond it. And the guys who have gone to finance PR, financial PR, those who have gone to technology PR, are the guys who have risen faster, risen faster in life because those are the areas which require certain domain knowledge and those domain knowledge are really available. So the combination of a domain knowledge and the PR and communication skills is a major benefit in the hands of many of the youngsters that I've seen. You are at a crossroad of all forms of communication to build a brand in which PR and events are also an important aspect. Taking either example of an actual case study or through your experience, what do you think? What sort of skill sets you look at beyond the ones that we have been discussing so far? First of all, I look at confidence because that's very important. The confident person should be very able to deal with a client because we are dealing with clients and live clients every day. And of course, it's a globalized world. So of course, knowledge is very important for me. Content is very important for me and I see how the person is able to present things properly. So it's really important that the person whom we hire today in the integrated communication has video skills. Yes, of course, but we are ready to train them and the training has been changing because we are sending people to a Marrakesh or probably a place like Warsaw for 15 days. So all these things are really important because an exchange program happens at Service Plan and integration of all these three-four things which we basically have studied is important. So knowledge is very important to create content and to be aware what is going on is really, really the key. Thank you. So confidence, content. Confidence, which is a soft skill. Content, which in my opinion perhaps can be considered as a hard skill as well. So that's your focus. Let's also look at the technological aspects. What technical or technological aspects do you need to? For example, how important today is to look at broadcast technology we have talked about, search engine optimization techniques, social media marketing techniques, a basic knowledge of what AI can do in communication, artificial intelligence can do, a basic knowledge of what is augmented reality and virtual reality, the jargon that you have been hearing a lot. How does it make a difference to a client's image or reputation where it can be used and not used, where using it will be an abuse. So an understanding of technical and technological aspects. What do you think would be the requirement in the new age PR and communication professionals if anything could start? Yeah, good question. I think technology is changing the way we communicate. And like I mentioned earlier, I think first and foremost, you need people to write content in a different way, in a different format. Today, insights and analytics are going to pay a major part as we tell news stories. And to understand insights analytics, you need to understand a lot of the technology behind it. Again, we have tools today that give us analysis of what's happened in the past, whether it's meltwater talk walker or impact. So they talk about what's happened in the past, but I think what we need more and more, and which will come more and more, which is expensive now, is predictive analytics. On what's going to happen, predictive analytics. I think predictive analytics is going to be the future. And if we can... I was telling whether how much will be the farmers issue important in the elections ahead? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's election because that's the hot topic. But how will they react? Or when do I... I mean, you talked about finance, when do people look at the finance pages? Do we look at in the morning? Do we look at in the afternoon? Do we look at in the evening? And that's the time to drop your content in. I mean, you're the digital marketer. You will have to understand when do people look at the content so that you can drop the content at the right time. So that's going to be important. A lot of people have talked about AI, right? While AI will come into our profession, to our industry, it's probably steeping in in different ways and forms and shapes. And it'll take over some of the mundane jobs we do, right? But I think stories... We tell stories, and stories need emotion. And I don't think a robot can have emotion. I don't think so, right? And I don't think... Therefore, I think a lot of our jobs are safe. I think, you know, without emotion, a story is not a story. In fact, I would like to qualify that a lot of your... a lot of the jobs are becoming more intellectual and more perception oriented rather than repetitive ones. Because the repetitive... Anything that can be repeated and done in a loop will be taken over by AI. So much of the jobs you do, our youngsters do, are actually repetitive. So can we go... What sort of skills are required to go beyond that? You know, beyond the first level of skills that we not only have. Yeah, exactly. And I think that will come through knowledge. I think, you know, I teach at a couple of institutions and I think the first thing you have to do is read. And if you read, you'll get the knowledge. And if you have knowledge and you can tell the right stories and if you tell the right stories, then you're in business. Right? Because a robot can't tell stories. So, Karan, you have specialized in public relations and advertising and moved on to digital marketing per se. So what sort of technical skills you needed to upgrade yourself on the job and you look at the youngsters when they come that they should be one step ahead than what you were when you started, perhaps. Because the times have changed in the last ten years that you have been in the business. When I started, if you wanted to show somebody something that appeared on video, it was on a 40-inch screen or the cinema. Today, most of that consumption is happening on a 6-inch screen, which means the quality of the technology that is used to produce this content has democratized. You know, it's just so happened that, you know, it's the news media which is taking, you know, the plunge into this. So NDTV has been running this ad campaign with Samsung where journalists are using Samsung phones to basically film their stories all across India and then there's somebody at the back end who's packaging them. This is going to occur more and more. So today what's more important is do you have access to something which helps you film something which is occurring then. If we look at some of the major news stories that are there even on TV today, the most interesting visual that they have to show is a video somebody shot on their camera because they were there. So they're picking up that entire thing. So what is important is whatever camera you have on hand, can you capture something well and do you know how to edit it into a simple package and use it. How quickly you can do that basically tells you how quickly you can rise in this profession. You should be able to curate that. See, Nitin talked about big data analytics and also big data was his focus, one of the focus areas in the earlier round. You are speaking of video capturing and making. Can you also throw some light on digital skills, the specific digital skills, whether it's related to SEO, SMM, or it's related to understanding of what is listening, social listening, connecting online listening with offline listening. I mean there was a discordant note or schism in the last assembly election, the online and offline were not exactly on the same line. So what sort of skills would you look at in the youngster? See, everything that is interesting to us as a professional, the brand we are selling may not be interesting to the audience. So in the last decade, people have spent billions of rupees getting likes. I am a cement brand, I can have a million likes on my page, but are people interested in talking about cement? Most of the time the answer is a clear no. However, I know every time they have to buy cement, they will run the general search queries, cement price near me, best cement to buy for ex use and so on and so forth. And before this I was in IT, people were buying different kinds of technology. What are the keywords that they are looking for? When they look for that, is it a new site running something offhand about that technology that IoT is going to be big, which gets that top search result, or is it me because I have produced the most relevant content? So when I look at talent, what I want is this person should be able to quickly analyze the data that is present. AI is basically just fulfilling our own biases right now because they are automatic. Are we living in eco chambers? Yes, absolutely. But within those eco chambers, something will bubble up to the top. We need to continue to create content and attack it with different angles. And over a period of time it becomes that whenever the customer is searching for something in their purchase journey, wherever they are, you are the system within which they find the right content and they can take their purchase decision. Thank you for that. I will touch on a little sensitive subject now. A large number of PR professionals today at the entry level are ladies. And you are a lady leader of an organization. I am sure you have also seen several issues connected to the Me Too movement within the communication world. So what sort of suggestions would you have for the large number of young women coming into the profession? What word of caution and what word of encouragement do you have if you could throw some light on that? I think the world is changing really fast. We have too many communication channels today. But the youngsters who are women, I think they are more confident than I joined before because probably from our family, I was from a small town and not so confident. But yeah, work is really important. Because in your work environment, I think you shouldn't look for any sweet spots. That's one. Number two is that be very careful with middle-aged men because they are looking at soft targets on young women. That's my only take. And I think we have just four minutes left. Great. Nitin, we too have to take care. Okay, coming back. Nitin, the question that I would like to ask before you. You just told a little earlier, insights. People need to understand insights and build their stories around the insights. There's another thought that insight-driven communication is the starting point. Four-site-driven communication is the closing point. So a pitch is one. A client is one, not just on insights because they largely know their insights or maybe they can be tutored and taught on that. But what's important is they look for four-sites. So at an entry level, I understand the youngsters may not have that understanding. So what's your outlook? How do you really look at someone that whether the person is only knowing what is already known in the marketplace about this brand or they can develop some four-site? That's one. And the other one, whether the person can create organic content and not just shared content, some organic content if that person can create. So what sort of skills would develop these two things? Four-sidedness and organic content. I think I mentioned earlier predictive analytics. I think that's four-site. One, and two, I think nothing beats reading. I'll be honest with you. We might be in a days of digital media where we read 140 character tweets or short posts on Instagram stories or Facebook, but nothing can beat reading and enhancing knowledge. I think the previous session talked about getting up in the morning and reading a newspaper. No, that I think is not going to happen, but I think reading, reread, and that will get you knowledge, which will enable you to have four-site. You talked about writing stories and writing content. Absolutely. We look at people who can write good content. And I don't mean writing actual writing, but writing actually visualizing good content. And by visualizing could be writing, could be production, could be design. I think if I go five years back... You'd like to bring an element of design thinking in communication. If I go five years back, I don't think any PR agency had designers or creative people. Today our agency itself has 40 people amongst a lot of designers. In this context, would you prefer organizations to specialize, like for example ad factors or title sponsor is known for financial PR or text 100 is known for tech PR. There are some other organizations known for certain other areas of... So is that a preferred route of business ahead or a vanilla approach where you have several departments, several divisions on several sectors? I think that's a business goal. I think there is room for specialization and there's room for generalization. I think there's room for both. Is there any individual vision of the organization? Absolutely though, I can tell you that whether you ask ad factors or text 100, they will not say that they're tech or financial only. In the market it becomes... That's a perception. Even in financial you need infographics and greater design. So design thinking is your contribution to this discussion now. What would you suggest on insight, foresight and organic content? There's too much of content is shared, less is only. I think when a person joins a PR agency there are certain tasks which are considered a right of passage for them. So the newest person will put together the client's media docket and will speak to journalists. You got press release and all of those things. There is a lot of investment in technology that can be shared in client text that we have things which will give you analytics and listening. Let's invest in technology which does these mundane tasks and try and own the client's websites blog. Get your youngest people to start researching stories that can be published on those blogs. Obviously the quality control and all of that will happen. I think that is the quickest way to onboard some of these people and as opportunities are there, have them film things, have them write other things, have them shoot for social media. I think that can be a better right of passage rather than the first year spent in just sending client dockets. I think it's not very meaningful. Can we have a quick comment from everyone? Just 30 seconds. Let her answer to this. Anything you would like to add to this? Inside, foresight or looking ahead, how do you create organic content? Original content. Original content is what you have seen from your own eyes. Personalization is very important over here. Your point of view is very important because even Google today is trying to understand what you are thinking through data analytics. 30-year-old or 30-year-old behavior is already generalized by Google and they know that in a certain city, in a certain fashion, how you are behaving, which is why predictability is becoming very common. Nitin, one word on skill for the future. Communicators. One word. One word advice or one line maximum. Learn how to tell a story in the technology age. Learn how to tell a story in a technology age. Learn how to tell a story through technology. In the technology age. I am sorry, can we... Original thinking. I say live for today. You will never know what future holds. Personal relations to personal engagement. Tell the story to engage your audience. Thank you. This will end this session. Can we have a round of applause for all of them? And I would request you to stay here and I want to call on stage Mr. John Belly, partner and MD Ketchum, Singapore to give a token of appreciation. Okay, let's have one more round of applause. If you don't mind. Let's take a group picture.