 Well, ladies and gentlemen, now I invite Mr. Sudhakar Rao, Director of Branding Iqfi Group, to share his insights on branding challenges in a polarized world. Well, Mr. Rao has been an accomplished brand strategist, a startup mentor, and a social media advisor. At Iqfi, Sudhakar Rao heads branding for the entire group that includes 11 Iqfi universities, 9 Iqfi business schools, 7 tech schools, 7 law schools, and a huge distance learning program. Thank you so much, Mr. Rao, for joining us today and being a part of the India Brand Conclave. Over to you. Thank you very much, Bhavna, and good evening to you and everyone who has logged in today for the India Brand Conclave 2020. It's my second time to be speaking on the IDC. Last year also I was there, and it's a great opportunity to be here, learn and contribute at the same time. Today, I'm going to talk about the branding challenges in a polarized world, and I have a small presentation to take you through. This is the presentation I would like to start with. Am I visible? Am I visible? Yes. Is my presentation visible? Good. Well, last week I was on a jury called the Boat Room Challenge for B school students who were supposed to study a case and make a presentation for solution, and that was the case on the college. So the students from I am Amdabad and I am Kozikot and other primary schools were there, and I was a jury. And what I noticed primarily there was that some of the students were making inferences that the toothpaste market is de-growing basically because certain brands are not perceived to be Indian. While the data collected is of one, the inference is something else. I think everybody is trying to very gently put in a conclusion that there is nationalism for even toothpaste. I think that inference is particularly wrong because there are not many people who know that Colgate is foreign. I think Colgate has become a household name. The inference which is right is that people are looking for benefits, people are looking for a specialist segment kind of toothpaste like sensitive or herbal or Ayurvedic, so on and so forth. I think some kind of polarization is going to hit all of us at some time, and even the top 1%, 2% of the society are also going to be affected in some way. And this was one of the examples which I learned last week. And therefore, if we do not correct it, that becomes the normal, unfortunately. And therefore, our topic today drives a lot from this particular aspect of challenges for all of us that lie ahead in handling brands, not only handling brands, but also in society. As we grow, we learn, we try to think that there is a school of thought for ourselves because that is the amount of learning that we have. And we believe we try to stick to our identities over there and think that this is all we know. It's like my well of water is the deepest because I live in this well, something akin to that kind of logic. So biases are but natural. And therefore, identities grow out of those biases. There are possibilities of having different views because you will have a different facet of body of knowledge that you learn initially. And therefore, you can have a different view. Different views are pretty common and sometimes it results in conflicting behaviors. This is all a byproduct of growth or civilization. But if you tend to follow your leaders so much and add masculinity to your hero and the iconization, sometimes it will result in toxic positivity and also fatal optimism. Not only fatal optimism and positivity, but negativity towards others. And that's where the polarized world begins to take birth. Anthropologically, we are all very, very different fundamentally. Man who was born in one location has grown to different locations by way of extension, by way of growth, by way of exploration. And then we all have picked up regions. We all have picked up different schools of thoughts now called religions. Therefore, as we move forward, it's only a melting pot of these differences that are carried. So differences are bound to be there, which is pretty human to be different. It also means that there will be lots of chaos and then we have nation states. Therefore, in order to manage these chaos, we have built for ourselves what is called loyal order. We have constitutions to go by. We have behavior which can be controlled. Sometimes it could be disturbing behavior. Across various faiths, colors, caste and creeds and everything, all kinds of differences will have to be controlled by a particular set of loyal order. And perhaps that is what is called constitution or rules and regulations that we need to go by. In today's world, we have the growth of internet that is exploding. We have smartphones whose usage is becoming very, very prevalent. And social media is extremely popular. And everybody is putting in their own ideas, their own likes and dislikes and thought processes. Therefore, it's an overcrowded thought processes space out there in social media. And sometimes your thoughts encroach mine and therefore it is becoming thought encroachments. And folks who have agenda to make use of all these overcrowded spaces and create inflammatory situations, they are using tech, they are using bots. And therefore, they may be called troll factories. Evolutionary growth, as I have mentioned just now that we grow and we have various differences, that should not be mistaken as fault lines. And for political reasons, we may say it's a fault line, but fundamentally it's an evolutionary mutation. The human propensity to mingle has to be taken as a signal for us for growth. Politically, assuming that people of a different religion, we have to be thrown out of the window on a certain date, then this genesis of hatred will not stop anywhere. Eventually, the guy living in street number one will not like the guy in the other street. And then it will come to the color, then it will come to the height, then it will come to the trust. It will not end anywhere. A brother will like or dislike another brother or hate a cousin. So it will come to the family, it will come into the room, room number one will not like room number two. So this has to be stopped somewhere. So the genesis of hate has to be understood and stopped at various stages in our society and in our discourse. Yes, trolls, they generally search for negatives in everything. Differences are a different story, but searching only for negatives is a very important characteristic feature of trolls. As I said, you can always criticize various responses, we can criticize various views, but it is based on a reason. And if it is based on unreasonable expression of anger, then that is nothing but troll. We don't have to like everything, we don't have to dislike everything. And sometimes we may have to put down certain aspects of atrocities committed on the weak by the so-called strong. Some domination, some oppression, some assault, everything has to be put down. But troll is of a different nature altogether. I'm trying to differentiate what is troll and what is not a troll. The recent tennis advertisement was pretty good in my view and in most of the people in the advertising world find it really good. It is honest, truthful and decent. It is actually not informative. It is not repulsive or wilder. It is not causing any widespread offense. Least of it, it is not having love jihad. Only an agenda of politics probably could bring in that kind of jargon and create some tension and catch the attention and throw the whole plan out of there. The advertising standards council of India has also said everything is fine with the advertisement. The clean sheet was given by many. We need to understand that these interfaith marriages are reality and India is built on love but not hate. Yes, there was no love jihad in this. It was only celebrating coming together of different faiths. Now, people who find fault with the timing of the advertisement or sensitivity analysis or various things, they are not going to be of any great value in my view. And I would like to grant it to the titan that they would have done sentiment analysis. They would have done clusters of opinions easily gathered. But I think they did not stay close for which the brand stood or for which the brand stated its purpose about. The special managers act of 1954 by constitution actually guarantees this and therefore there cannot be, I'm sure there can be a differing view, but we cannot actually put into force by saying that this has to be stopped or we give it different color or by a different name saying it is going to be banned. There is a last year survey of brands in motion 2019, have certain expectations on the brands that 74% of the consumers want the brands to take a stand on the issues that matter to them. What about these expectations? Do we only go by the trolls or do we go by these expectations which are controlled measured scientific studies of expectations of their consumers? So brands are expected to find their purpose and lead with it. They stand for mutual respect and also work on local action for global impact. This is a huge expectation by the consumers. 83% of them believe that brands are capable of providing stability in this unstable world either by use of technology or by use of various methods that they can probably abate the societal ills. 83% is a huge expectation from the consumers, so we need to go by this. Now, some of the experts say that India is not ready for woke advertising. I'm going to say that never India is going to hold a placard and say that we are going to be ready for woke advertising. Now you come and start advertising. I think that's not going to be a feature at all. So the responsibility of the brands as I have explained in the survey is also that to upkeep the conscience of an average citizen, they need to undertake woke advertising from time to time. As we know, agile advertisements were anti-totalitarian and they were criticized. Tampons were found very different. The response was very, very different by certain religious groups. Well, we all know this popular advertising of unhate campaign of United Colors of Benetton. These are part-breaking advertisements. They have shown to the world that hate is not going to unite us, but then yes, this is another extreme way of building their narrative. Last year, Sirf Excel advertisement of Rangalai Sun was also criticized, was also trolled heavily, but they stood their course and they did not withdraw the advertisement. They showed the spine and said the world, told the world that they really believe in the purpose and therefore they continued the advertisement. Now the creative plots that you can choose for your communication can be really black and white always. It's not possible. I think the brands will graze on these gray avenues as well for brand advertising. That is where drama is possible as long as they don't hurt people, as long as they don't undertake an assault on people's sentiments. And therefore, the gray avenues are a clear yes for the brands in their communication. Now lasting brands move people, not just goods. This is a very important thing which we learned from the 2018 publication by the founder of Patagonia. Though invest more in people in the processes, brands should be inside out and not outside in. That is the way it has to move from attitudinal to behavioral. Commanding customers to influencing them through saliency, orthodox to unconventional and episodic to perpetual. I think those who believe in building brands for a long, long time will have to follow some of these methods. Whether we like it or not, these brands are going to talk about the social change on the context of the day. Advertising is going to be the mock piece. Hence, we should not be surprised when they articulate some of these social concerns. Yes, there are mistakes. It's not that all brands are getting it right. There are certain mistakes when somebody says that we cannot serve in Nagaland and saying that it is outside India, definitely they need to apologize. And certain brands which stereotype women, which show them as objects of desire, they also have to be pulled down or criticized or put down. Yes, everybody is not getting it right. Now, what is the root cause for these polarization, root cause for these trolls? I think it is about the rigidity and the straight jacketedness of one nation, one food, one dress, one thinking for everyone or one culture for everyone. I think it is going to be a creative fear psychosis also of not accommodating everyone. I think this is the root cause and I think we need to have some kind of relaxation, some kind of give and take on this. So otherwise, this artificially creates fault lines and some of the political parties are going to prey on the same. Whenever negativity happens, I think we need to understand the trolls. We need to understand the agenda behind the trolls. As I said, it is going to be only looking at negatives. Now, when you analyze the trolls, you will understand why 85,000 fake accounts were created to influence our responses in the Sushant Singh Rajput's death or murder, as it has been alleged. I think we should not immediately stop it. We should have the patience to deal with it. We should use technology to understand the trolls and unveil the face, the real face behind these trolls. Some of the brands have already mentioned that they are not going to advertise on those TV channels or digital channels which are spewing hate. They don't want to associate with toxicity. Amal, Parleji, Bajaj or Dollar, I think Zolato is also sticking its neck out. It is actually saying those things without any hesitation. It is showing a lot of spine. Bingo was also trolled recently. I think there is a way and a method to handle these things, that is, one in terms of patience, other in terms of technology and a lot of logic and reason. What the trolls do not have? They do not have logic. They don't have patience. And what we have is a lot of patience and a lot of logic and reason. I think this is the way we can counter the trolls and we can create a very positive environment for the brands to thrive in. Politics will come in go but a fair social change promoting human values is going to stay and businesses will definitely associate and promote with the human values and that is what brands are expected to do. Absolutely. Mr. Rao, we are just waiting for your conclusions since we are exceeding on the time. Your experience and expertise is so high. We definitely love you to take your time but concluded at the same time. Over to you, sir. Thank you, Bahram. There is a hunger in our world for real intimacy and experience according to Philip Kotler and brands are expected to display this hunger for being very authentic, very human, people oriented kind of measures and activities. Supposing a brand is standing for a purpose, I think it should not be just online or social. It should be on the ground as well 365 days that purpose should be upheld in all its activities. For example, a brand stands for hygiene for children then they should get into all the pockets of children, all the geographies of children, where they reside, where they inhabited and look at the touch points and create that hygiene factor and then advertise the same on television or on digital. Then the purpose is throughout, the purpose is consistent. Otherwise, it's going to be only for the sake of advertising or it's going to be a facade and then some of the people fail to even keep up with that facade in the wake of trolls. So it's got to be authentic, only then it will work for us, for all the brands. We need to have hope that this negativity shall also pass and in the end, I would recommend that if you believe in a purpose, believe it for long, even if it means sacrificing everything. I'm nobody to sit down judgment on tanishk advertising, but definitely there is something wrong for the second time when they pulled out their five cracker advertisement, I think there is something seriously wrong happening over there. If you really believe in something, we should believe even if it means sacrificing everything. Thank you very much and if I have any questions, I would love to take them right now. Thank you.