 Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to quickly move forward to our next keynote speaker session. Coming forward to share his insights about the new world order public relations in the tech age is Mr. Atul Sharma, Managing Director, Rudefin. Let me welcome him with a huge applause. Welcome Mr. Sharma. Thank you so much. It's definitely a pleasure to be here at the IPRCCI Awards. Hi, I'm Atul. I am the Managing Director of Rudefin India, and I also double up as the President of the Public Relations Consultants Association of India. Last year around, I think not around the same time, but I spoke at the annual E4M Summit and one of the things which is strikingly similar is that the topic that I spoke about was pretty much similar, I can say that. I spoke about the fact that technology is disrupting every industry, including the world of communication. I spoke about trends which came alive strongly around the pandemic and shaped the future of communications, including analytics, big data, influencer, and many more. I think what struck me a little while back from the panel that I was just listening into was the fact that change is the only constant, and that's something which hasn't changed. I can definitely say one thing for sure that while I think in the new year, we see definitely in 2021 things will improve, things will look better, but we will be fortunate one if we have a normal year. Coming back to the topic of the day, which is I have to talk about the new world order public relations in the tech age. As a part of that, I have picked up four mega trends from the world of technology that is defining the world of public relations. Why only four? I have an interesting story behind each of these four and why 2021 is going to be about these four mega trends, but I think that will come in the course of this talk as we go along. The first one is voice. We are very, very upbeat about voice and that reminds me of an interesting story. I was having a conversation with one of my friends a few years back and he's in the banking industry and we often spoke about the fact that how I am completely deluged with the pesky calls that I get from banks about credit cards, about home loans, about switching home loans and I told him that if everybody is so unhappy with these calls, then why don't you guys just shut it down? I'm sure you can find newer ways of tapping into new customers and what I heard from him was that close to 80% of their business still comes from these calls, new business. I think that got me thinking about the fact that there's something about the voice which is innately intimate. You want to talk to people, you want to hear people, you can connect with people when you hear people. The text doesn't do that magic and that's why according to me, I think voice is going to be one of those mega trends which is going to define the world of public relations. We already see that right now, your voice assistants on your phones are doing everything for you. So right from finding places to ordering foods to possibly looking out the right words for you, they do everything for you. Even if I look at voice activated devices like Google Home, Alexa, they're changing our world in a very unique way, especially in a country like India where people can't really converse that well in English, but they can really converse well in their native languages. Instead of typing keywords in a search engine, why can't I just talk to my phone? Why can't I just talk to my voice assistant and that is something which I see is going to be a big, big game changer. I think every stat points in that direction, so whether it is 20% of the searches are happening on voice, whether it is around close to 20 million units which have been shipped in Q1 of 2019 by tech majors like Google, Xiaomi, Amazon, Apple. I think the fact is that there is already groundwork which has been laid down for the voice. Why am I so upbeat about it? The reason why I say this is because this trend is really special for us at Rudefin. A few years back, we earned the batch of a Alexa skills certified firm placing us in the same league as a big enterprise player like TCS or Emphasis or a voice specialist firm like Voxogenic or Voice First. What we did was we decided to embrace that trend and we created Kathy's thoughts on Alexa skills. Kathy, who is a global CEO, she leverages this to communicate to our 1000 plus associates across the globe. She shares her thoughts, she talks about what's happening in the industry, she talks about what can be done more from an employee engagement, productivity perspective. She talks about market trends and it's a good way to make sure that we are as an organization on the same page. If you want to check it out, I think just look up Alexa, actually shout out on Alexa Kathy's thoughts and you'll get to know a lot much more. I definitely feel India is ready for this trend and hence this is going to be that first trend in my book which I feel is going to change the world order. The second one, I think you see it all around you is video. Video is ubiquitous if I can use that word and is the mega trend of our era and it is more relevant than ever. Every brand and corporate should have a video strategy if they aren't already writing this way because video is how stories are being shared today and I'm sure it is going to be how stories are going to be shared in the future. There are millionaires like Mark Zuckerberg who have made a lot of money already out of this or people like Yang Ziming, the Tiktok fame who is going to make a lot of money out of it. I think if you want more proof, there's a recent research which was done by Animoto which says that 90% of millennials prefer to watch a video rather than read a newsletter. Nothing new in that. Another interesting nugget which I came across was that all of us on an average watch around 84 minutes of video every day and in 2021 this is going to climb up to 100 minutes. You don't believe me, look up your screen time app. I found it pretty hard to believe but actually I think between the stuff that I end up watching on various websites, on Insta, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, that's the kind of video time that I end up spending on. I think the beauty of this medium is that it brings a live message effortlessly from financial, to medical, to highly technical, to totally human. I think it is able to project things through an empathetic lens and it engages multiple parts of the brain in a more engaging and memorable way. That's I think one thing which I definitely feel is going to be another trend. Over the years, I think when I started 20 years back, we used to do these B-roll footages, we used to do these video news releases and off late we see now that there are brands which are producing videos, which has that stickiness that are marketing or an advertising content often lacks. I've had fortune of working with brands like Google, Ford, Indigo who have really leveraged videos as a tool for effective storytelling. So I think learned a lot, very interesting trend and I think very, very, very pretty much which we see happening all around us. Why is it so special for us? I think I revisited this trend earlier in the year when as a company we acquired Osmosis Films which is a creative production house and it specializes in not only brand videos but also in documentaries and including originals like The Edge of Wonder, The Human Microbiome. So there's a lot of interesting stuff but I think once you start visiting the kind of content that you can do with video, you see and you know that this is a mega trend which is here to stay and is only going to add to what we are doing from an effective storytelling perspective. The third one, I think it's a tongue twister of sorts. I got introduced to it a few days back which is the digital ecosystem and for all those on this webcast who are new to this term or were late to the party, I would say it's an amalgamation of the physical and the digital world and the way we look at it and especially the last one year this pandemic has accentuated this trend. So the world of AR, VR, AI, all of this is meshing together and is creating this new experience wherein brands are engaging with their customers in the physical as well as in the digital space. And we saw this, I think we had a lot of resistance to these events which were happening through AR and VR but I think during the Corona times we just all experienced it. We realized that it's not that difficult to showcase demo videos to the media, to take influencer through our product reviews, to launch a new phone in these tough times through these new platforms. It's definitely not difficult and with 7 billion people and with 3.5 billion smartphone users in the world, I just feel that this technology is going to further evolve. This is going to be much more interesting than what we see. The new technologies which were buzzwords which we possibly didn't understand, we have an experience of it. I can say, I think in this year I got exposed to AR, I got exposed to VR. We saw it happening in the space that we work in and that's what makes me feel and believe that this is a new trend which is going to be here to stay. Why do I feel so, why am I so upbeat about this trend? I work with a client who goes by the name of Extender and what they end up doing is they create interactive channels wherein they take the retail experience and from a retail experience they just create it in a more engaging, in a delightful short form experience and they write from augmented packaging to engagement to intelligence, they blend it all in and it's an interesting natural movement for brands and its customers to seamlessly integrate with other mediums like TV, radio, print and online ads and that something is which I find is a really, really interesting trend which can drive engagement and happier customers. The last trend, the fourth mega trend in the scheme of things. So I think a lot is being said about the whole piece-o-piece. We speak about paid, we speak about earned, we speak about shared. I think the O which is in my opinion the big fat O now in the mix which comes last but it's definitely not the least. I think that is going to be another trend in my estimation which is going to be changing the public relations world. Today brands, corporates, leaders, even governments have woken up to the value of not only owning the story but also the medium on which the story is being run especially in this cluttered environment. If the brand needs to be seen as leaders, I strongly believe in this that you can't just provide products and services. You have to offer more than that. If I look at the world around me, brands which do interesting storytelling are selling more than products and services. So what are they selling? They're selling ideas, they're selling inspiration, they're selling hope of a future which is bright and sustainable. Look at Tesla. It has ticked in all these boxes. So Elon Musk offers ideas, he offers inspiration, he offers hope of definitely a sustainable future which is nice and bright. And I think if around, if keeping that in mind, if you can surround your brand with the right content which is valuable, which is educational, which is engaging with a gripping storyline, I think it will definitely cut through a lot of clutter. Global companies like A16Z which is one of the most prolific VC firms which started their podcast way back in 2014 are actually now building a media company instead of relying on traditional media organizations. Well, I would say it's really stretching it to the next, completely to the next limit. But if you look at closer home, there are people like Gaurav Munjal of Unacademy who's making all the important announcements on Twitter. It definitely lets him control his narrative. It keeps his personality young and digital friendly. And I think that is what we are seeking in this digital age. I think with that, those are the four trends which I wanted to share with you. And I feel that I have been able to share with you something different which you haven't heard in the course of the day. But I think on that note, while I strongly believe that technology will disrupt the world of communication, but the fulcrum of our world is always going to be storytelling and that is going to always stand the test of the time. It has survived decades and I don't see a reason why it won't survive in the future. Evergreen campaigns with stories that touch a deep chord which have a human connection will always leave a lasting impression. Yes, technology will disrupt. It will automate some jobs, but I think there will be jobs always in the human realm. So I think each one of us who's worried about the fact that the technology might end up automating their jobs, I would say that let's focus on skills which will be relevant even five years later. And if I have to focus on that, I would say three skills or three values I would urge each one of you to be true to is stay curious, fire up your creativity and imbibe empathy because those, in my opinion, are the valuable skills that will be required to stay relevant in this changing world order of public relations. So best of luck and thank you so much for having me on this forum. Thank you so much, Mr. Sharma. I think such great words I could hear in the concluding note of yours that we need to build empathy. So thank you so much, Mr. Sharma, for your time, for your insights and for sharing those nuggets of wisdom with us. Thank you. Thank you, Cathy. Thank you so much.