 Move on to the next panel, the topic for the next panel discussion is ways to make your communication skills more powerful and effective when dealing with stakeholders. And with a huge round of applause, please welcome our panelists, Professor Surbhi Daya, Professor Department of Journalism, I am CR Ambassador, I am say. Thank you. Thank you to people. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we are celebrating a cause here. Can we get a round of applause for all our panelists who have taken out time from their schedules to grace the occasion and share their insights with us. With the same let's welcome our next panelist, Anshu Khanna, owner, good word media. Please welcome Seema Ahuja, SVP and Global Head of Communications and Corporate Brand Biocon Group and Biocon Biologics. And unfortunately, our fourth panelist, Mr. Ajit Maharaj is stuck in the traffic and we shall leave a chair for the gentleman. He shall be reaching in a couple of minutes and we'll make sure that he is a part of this panel anyhow. And with the same let's welcome the moderator for the session Ruchika Jha exchange for media. Very good afternoon to the panelists and everybody present here. It is indeed a privilege for me to have to moderate this session and have a one on one conversation with the veterans of the PR and corporate communications industry. Before I begin, I would like to, before I begin, I would like to give just a brief introduction of our panelists. We have Dr. Survi Dahiya, who is the professor of Department of Journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi. She has over 20 years of experience in the media industry. She began her career as a correspondent with the National Daily before moving to the academics. Next we have Ms. Anshu Khanna, the owner of Goodworm Media Services. She has over 30 years of experience in the media and PR industry. Next we also have Ms. Seema Ahuja, who is the senior vice president and global head of communications and corporate brand of Biocon Group and Biocon Biologics. Ms. Ahuja has over 30 years of experience in the public relations and corporate communications industry. And now we have Mr. Ajay Maharaj, who is the group head of corporate communications and public relations at Fortis Healthcare. He has over 20 years of experience in the corporate communications industry. Welcome panelists. So to begin with, since the stakeholders are one of the important part, as we know that the stakeholders are one of the important part of both the PR and COPCOM industry, my first question for the panelists goes, what are some of the ways that one can implement on their communication skills to make them more powerful and effective while dealing with them? Ms. Dr. Daya, if I can start with you. Yeah, so very good morning to all of you and we are here to discuss the communication importance and the ways in which we can improve how to communicate, especially with the stakeholders. So I would like to begin by saying that the meaning of the message is not necessarily contained in the message itself. It is actually the result and the negotiation between the receiver and the message. That means, you know, when the sender is sending the message, sender could be anybody a PR professional or an advertiser or, you know, when the sender is sending the message, he or she should be very, very clear what he or she wants to convey. And communication basically means reaching a common goal of understanding. So effective communication will be in a situation when whatever the sender wants to communicate, the receiver receives it in the intended message. So when we say this ad is very effective or this PR strategy is very effective. It is especially in the cases when the communicator understands what are the objectives of those people for whom you are, you know, writing that PR strategy. What is the objective? You have to do the whole groundwork, the whole research work. What is the life cycle of that industry, whether it is in the initial stage or in the developing stage or at the peak, or it is in the declining stage. So if you understand all the nuances, then communication will certainly be better. And remember that all the stakeholders, whether it is, you know, the internal stakeholders or external stakeholders, whether they are employees, employees are all your, you know, brand ambassadors, whether they are external stakeholders, anybody who is an investor, effective communication with stakeholders will come with all the important C's as you know, C for communication, C is the word that we have a lot of words that are connected, you know, with effective communication. Like your communication should always be clear. Clarity is very, very important. If you're clear in your message, effective communication. If you know what is the content, what content is the right content that I have to deliver effective communication. Right context is also very important. Your communication should be, it should be complete. Then it makes your communication effective with all the stakeholders. It should be correct. C for correct. So there are a lot of, a lot of words, you know, communication has to be consistent. It is not a one time or a one way, you know, process. Communication is a two way process. So you have to be consistent in saying what you are saying. You know, that gives you a hammering effect also. Why do the advertisements keep on repeating the advertisements or the promos? That's a hammering effect. So you have to be consistent in your message. You have to be coherent. Again, another C be courteous. You have to be concrete. You have to be concise. So you can pick up the dictionary, find all the C's and all of them are, you know, related to effective communication. So the more you communicate towards reaching a common goal of understanding. The more the stakeholders will appreciate your communication skills. Thank you, Dr. Daya. Miss Khanna, if you could have your views on the same please. So listen, I'm basically a journalist who strayed into PR 30 years back for the last 30 years. I've just been promoting what I call hearts. You know, I am promoting words that pour out of hearts. So authors, art which pours out of a heart because it's painters. I'm working with musicians. I'm working with crafts people. So I don't know too much of technology or technique and brands, brands which are actually in the luxury lifestyle and culture base. Basically, I like to work with brands which were born in India, you know, and that's what gets me very happy. So I'll put it very simply, you know, we after a while become like doctors, you know, so a stakeholder comes to you and he wants a prescription. So like a doctor checks your pulse and says, okay, I think you've got fever. So will you do this test and so you have to understand the core of the brand. You have to understand what your stakeholder wants to communicate and then simply put it together in a very holistic and honest and extremely creative strategy because I'm not saying that you don't need creativity in managing by a corner or hospital. You need as much, but you have to really think. I don't even know where that box is which people keeps talking about to keep talking about out of the box. But I guess you have to go beyond the brief and think and put your heart and soul into it. And that is what communication is. We all communicators, we have to first communicate within and you will find all the answers there and then you'll be able to communicate outside and your stakeholder create a strategy. Please do not cut and paste ever because that's very, very, you know, it's become the norm. You pick up some strategy points from somewhere, put them somewhere else, think from the heart and create a strategy which is totally custom created. And that is what the stakeholder wants to know and that's how you communicate with a stakeholder. Miss Aujya. Thanks. First of all, a very good morning to everyone and let me use this occasion to wish you all a very festive Diwali week. I know it's done there as today. And when I learned it in Delhi, I suddenly realized I'm in Bangalore now over the last 12 years and I had kind of lost touch with what the Indian North Indian festivals are like. So thank you very much for being here for this event on a done terrace, then all of you should be buying silver and getting the ready for the Lakshmi Pooja. So, coming to your question, Ruchika, I would like to take a step back first and I would say, why do we really need to have effective communication with stakeholders. So what is it that we are really looking at. So, for me, it's a principle of force that works. I believe the first objective of effective, you know, stakeholder communication is to build trust. That's what we are looking at, which is why we need to communicate effectively with them. Second is how do we really strengthen the connects that we have the biggest stakeholder groups and this I'm talking about both external and internal. And third, which many of us as communications heads would know that we deal with it all the time is how do you really mitigate the risk by developing better relationships with our stakeholders. And you use them and you need them the most. So how do you really help them during, you know, take the help during crisis management. So if these are the four core objectives for which we need to really have, you know, very effective communication with the stakeholders, then there are another four which factors which are very, very important. And the first part is the time of response. I think as a brand it is very important that we have timely communication or timely engagement with our stakeholders. Second piece is in terms of content that Dr. Daya spoke about how genuine and authentic is your content. And third and more importantly is how rich is your content and what is the frequency at which you are sharing the content or you're engaging with your stakeholders. And last but not the least is what is the impact that your communication is making. So these are four plus four kind of a principle is something very, very important that we as communicators need to be very mindful on a day to day basis. And it doesn't matter how many years you spend in the profession. I think every day we are learning new lessons and that's one of the reasons why I'm here. I'll go around and I'll come to the next question. Thank you, Miss. Mr. Maharaj. Hello. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. So I think the distribution panel has covered almost everything from my and I can say that we can bifurcate this communication into two parts, but it is internal external. And it's very important to have a context along with the content. So that's going to be very important. What are the stakeholders what is the requirement. It's not one size fits all strategy, which you have to adopt. Maybe something is successful somewhere else it won't be good for you. So you have to like, it has been mentioned by Seema also, we have to customize our strategy according to the situation, according to the demand according to the whatever the vision or maybe what they want to So it's critical like I'm in healthcare and what the crisis what we've been through. So we have to change the strategy almost every day because the media kept on changing and almost all the journalists were reporting health at a time. So that's the power of communication like if everybody, all of you must be aware that you have to mask you have to use a sanitizer or you have to maintain social distancing how it happened. So that's the effect of media and maybe the communication what we did. So it was very dynamic in a way the things are very dynamic that the mediums have changed now. So we have to adopt accordingly and whatever new mediums are coming it we can just say that we have 25 30 years of experience. So what did we do is perfect. Maybe it's not right. We have to look at the change we had to adopt and accordingly customize our strategy so that we are able to cater to the different audience, like today the audience is a different as the teenagers talk on to them different social media platforms for where they get there. All the news or whatever kind of information that require. And for the another segment is for the corporate they have different sort of category or maybe the channels from where they want to adopt to their, their communication or whatever the news they want to look at. We have the senior citizens also like for the healthcare our senior citizens are there, who have to connect and they have their own habits, when they want to connect through that kind of stuff so we have to customize accordingly, look at the kind of audience what we're looking at. And that's a strategy has to be done. So I think we have to look at that. Thank you. Mr. Maharaj. So we talked about how to make our communication skills more effective and powerful. Now, coming to the next question is that how crucial it is to be aware of the stakeholders vision and goals before engaging in communication with them. Thank you. That's a very, very relevant question. I think it is extremely important that we have a shared purpose and a shared vision, because if you don't really understand where, you know, what is it that our stakeholders are expecting, and what is it that they hear want to hear from us as a brand. More like a you know broadcast you are just informing them but the, the, the message is not really getting absorbed and not getting received. So it's extremely important that you understand your stakeholders. And as I just said that you know we have diverse stakeholders and need of each of these stakeholders is different. It's important to understand where they're coming from, and what is it that they would want to hear from you. And then it's not about just customizing the messaging, but even the format that we choose needs to be aligned with the stakeholder group and if I give you an example for example, and this is for the internal stakeholders right. We all manage various projects and most of the communication initiators have always have to have a cross functional team involved. So as project managers, it's very important for us to understand what is the net for these take various stakeholder groups that we are engaging in. Let's say HR. Let's say supply chain. Let's say finance. So if there is a, you know, communication initiative that you want to roll out and you're working with them. How do you really get them to, you know, be a part of that, and give them 100%. So to get their commitment is important to ensure that they see what is it for them. How that campaign or how that initiative is really going to help them in achieving their goals. So to your question it's important that we understand stakeholder expectations and accordingly build a way to engage with them, build the communication messaging accordingly so that we are able to create an impact that that stakeholder team. Thank you, Mr. Ocha, Ms. Khanna. So, Seema has a very important stakeholder she's such a face for the industry so that must be also very consuming for you. Yeah. So, you know, stakeholders basically I feel that PR is one place where you can't sell even if you're a great marketing person, you can't sell a fridge to an Eskimo. So stakeholders. Yeah, I'd like to extend a lot of us forget that one of our biggest stakeholders is the media and people don't spend time understanding the pulse of the media. What is it that a magazine or a newspaper saying what is their editorial stand. Because, you know, having worked as a journalist I face that very often that the order story comes to you and then you just waste your effort. So stakeholders will extend even to the media. You have to understand they are your most important stakeholders outside but when you look inside. If you're dealing with a time I'm talking from an agency point of view. So at any point of time you're talking to 15 different kind of businesses. You have to understand the one question you always like to ask is where do you see yourself 10 years from now five years from now. You know what is it that you want and you have to custom create your strategy according to their needs and their vision. You can't go outside of that ever. That's what you know talking to your stakeholders is all about. Thank you miss Khanna. So when we talk about vision and mission of any organization, rather I would like to call it, you know, collectively as strategic intent enunciation. So, when you talk about strategic intent enunciation that includes all your vision mission goals strategies objectives everything. So, you know, it is very, very, very important for all the priory, you know, professionals to understand the strategic intent of the company that they're working for or you know they're making strategies for because that is the defining factor where you are going to build your strategy on because vision and mission are changing maybe every five years or every, you know, 10 years or maybe one year or two years depending on the size of the company. I have just, you know, completed two books and they are in the market now. One is I did a case study on the Z group, which is called as the house that Z built wherein I did a case study on the Z group and the other book is Indian media giants, which is a 1000 page book on the Indian media industry, the times group the Hindustan Times group the Hindu Indian Express Bhaskar Jagran that's published by Oxford University Press it just got released last month. What I studied was that one of the parameters of study was that how the vision and the mission and the strategic intent is changing for that industry after every three years or five years or you know seven years. All the other factors, whether it is the tagline or the punchline, or it is the highest strategy, it all depends on the vision of the company. So, the PR professionals should be well versed with where, as I just said, I'm repeating it where that company stands whether it's in the initial stage or in the developing stage or on the peak. So vision and mission will also change. For example, you, you are opening a new college. So your vision is different. And after 20 years you've reached the peak and you are the number one college in India. So your vision is different same stands for exchange for media. When they started in 2000 or 2004 the vision was absolutely different today the vision is absolutely different. So you have to work on those changing missions and visions, only then the communication will be effective. The second thing that I want to talk here about is that, you know, to make communication understanding communication in an easier manner is to divide it into three stages. You can apply this formula everywhere and anywhere. So, when you talk about three stages, the first stage is horizontal, the second stage is vertical, the third stage is again horizontal. The first stage, for example, I am speaking and you are listening. So this is the horizontal stage. That means when you try and understand the company and the company professional is briefing you everything that is the horizontal stage where you are taking all the information that the company professional is giving you. So second stage is the vertical stage, vertical stages, intrapersonal communication. Now what have you understood out of what the company professional briefed you, that is your intrapersonally, you know, happening the vertical stage. Now what you have understood only that you can communicate that again is the third stage that is the horizontal stage. So whatever you have understood, you are the biggest stakeholder for them to because what you have understood, you are going to communicate in the same manner. You might have understood 90%, you might have understood only 10%. So whatever the second stage, whatever you've grabbed inside you, the third stage will be completely dependent on that, your analysis, your interpretations, everything comes in. And here, you know, individual differences also creep in because all of us are different. We're all different individuals, we all have different personality. We all have different names, different cast, different regions, we come from different states, we come from different parenting from different schooling from different cultures. So this is due to selective exposure. We are exposed selectively to, you know, different cultures. So that makes our perception also selective. You know, nothing is right or wrong. It's just the perception. Same thing can be right for me wrong for her or right for her wrong for me. So it depends on your selective exposure, selective perception as well as selective retention. How many of you know all the 40 students of class 10th? You must be remembering I think seven, eight, nine, 10 maximum. That's your selective retention. So when after the first horizontal stage, when you, you know, speak to yourself, interpret things, perceive things, understand things, intrapersonally, what retains with you comes out in the third stage. And that is the stage where you have to remember the vision and mission and the strategic intent of the company. And therefore, sync those messages, sync that communication, sync those objectives with your communication, which is the best ad. If you have made that ad, if you have created that message of the ad or the PR strategy in sync with the objective and the vision and the mission of the company, the ad will be effective, most effective, hence effective communication. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. that was a wonderful example. Mr. Maharaj. I'm the last one, so I could at least to speak, at least to talk about it anyway. I think when we talk about the vision and mission, and if you're aware as a, if you're part of a communication or PR team, if you're aware about the fact that this is the vision of an organization that makes a life easier. And this gives you a strategic direction, how do you want to place a strategy, who are the prospective stakeholder, what company wants to achieve in like three to four to five years, whatever they have like for the Tata leadership with trust. So the trust is a factor which everybody connects with. That's what Tata stands for, or Fort is like saving an enriching life and maybe we have a vision to patient care and clinical excellence. So that's what we know that what we're supposed to do. So it makes our life easier and also tough also because we have to strategize accordingly, we have to have a strategy in place, how do we connect with the audience, how do we connect with our patient, how do you connect with our shareholders, and other people who look at the brand. So it's very important to have a vision vision and for us as a communicator we should be aware about it. And that will help us in guiding a good strategy, a good plan in place. So I think it's a critical and very important part for an organization as well as a PR person also. Thank you, Mr. Maharaj. We are running out of time, so I'll quickly jump to the concluding question that in the digital world, first world, which medium of communication, according to you can yield maximum number of results. Mr. Maharaj, I would like to start with you. Which medium of communication do you feel will yield optimum results or maximum results? I think to comment about one specific kind of a tool or maybe platform in the digital world is going to be very tough because a different set of audiences there on different kind of platforms what we have in place now like Twitter has a different kind of platform that we are having, the messaging is crisp and clear and it's pretty short. And again, you have LinkedIn, that's a separate kind of tool where we talk more about the professionals and what's happening and you have more detailed information. Then we have our YouTube and other platforms which are there and Facebook also plays a critical role. So it's important to identify what our actual messaging is. So I'll just, instead of talking, I'll just give you one or two examples what I'll talk about like we used to have our in-house letter which used to print 5,000, 6,000 copies and used to go across, across Fortes India in different locations. So later on, I became a digital newsletter, so it became digital and it was a digital copy. And now recently I've launched an audio visual bulletin which we launched last month itself. So that kind of is very different because I think the span of people attention is getting less and they want to look at it in a crisp and very clear format. And AV is something that people prefer. Earlier the town hall used to happen, people used to travel, but now things are digital now. So everybody can connect from any part of the world and people like what pandemic and what COVID has taught us like how good we can connect from different platform. All the conferences, whatever we're attending today in person over here, what last year was on social, on different platform, what we had from the online perspective. So that is important. And I think all the channels are going to be important and whatever clicks as a brand, how well you connect and that's going to matter a lot. That's it. Thank you, Mr. Maharaj. Dr. Daya, your views. So, when we talk about the digital era or otherwise, I remember Marshall McLuhan had once said that medium is the message. So medium is very, very important in the chain of, you know, send a message channel and receiver medium is very, very important. But at the same time, as she has asked, which medium is the most effective. Just ask a question to yourself. What came first relationship or communication. What came first, any answers. Communication, anybody else. Think. Now we have different views here. So it's just like chicken and egg, you know, both of them go hand in hand, without relationships, there's no communications and without communication, there's no relationship. If PR professionals understand this, then the communication will be most effective may, you know, I would say intrapersonal communication is the most effective or interpersonal communication. Sorry, interpersonal communication is when two people are meeting and they're talking face to face and you're not becoming friends and everything. But when we talk about different mediums, suppose something is printed in the newspaper. So that's mass medium. Right. It's one way sort of you can't respond to everything, except letter to the editor, or something is broadcasted or aired. Right. So communication is reaching the common goal of understanding so as far as you can use a medium where you can make the, you know, other person understand what you want to convey that medium is the most effective. So medium is the message, whatever, in whichever way you communicate earlier, the communication was, you know, say one way, then, I mean, only two ways. But now, in the digital era, what has happened digital or online platforms have given the ability to communicate in all the mediums in the sense that you can have a one to one chat on WhatsApp, you can have a group chat on WhatsApp, you have make a group. So group communication is also there. Interpersonal communication is also there. You write a news on Twitter or you break a news on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere in star. That's mass communication. Right. So communication has taken a U turn here with the digital medium, and it provides you a capacity of using all the mediums basically. So, as PR professionals, we should understand only one line that communication and relationship both go hand in hand. Now, if two brothers stop talking, the relationship comes to an end maybe after five years or 10 years if they have not spoken. What is the relationship left. And similarly, you're talking to a stranger you become friends, maybe you, you know, marry each other. So that's the beginning of a relationship. So, similarly, with all the companies that you're working for with for all the organizations that you're working for PR basic definition is to establish and maintain relationships, building relationships, building trust, and it all comes from communication. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so we are talking about a women's summit. So before I start talking about social media. I'd like to say that whatever you're creating content is not king, it's queen content is queen. You know, you have to. It doesn't matter. You know, I have a huge issue with just people standing there and pouting say something, you know, today, slowly, slowly the wire media, which you would talk to is kind of almost equally important as you talking directly to your stakeholders. So if you want to talk to an older lot you talk through Facebook. If you want to say something you talk through Twitter. If you want to create something beautiful you want to Instagram. If you have an article to write you go to LinkedIn. But what is that one thing that binds all of it content. So today at the women's summit, I'll say that content is queen. Thank you. Yeah, well said and shoe. So let me, again, take a step back. So before we really pick and choose which is the digital communication channel which is the best. I think what is important to understand what is the objective of our communication what is the end result that we're looking at. Are we wanting to just inform our people. Are we want to engage with them. Are we wanting to take feedback from them. So a lot depends on what is the intent of that communication that you want to do. I'll give you an example. I mean, if you know initially comms people used to only, you know, focus on broadcast media right and broadcast media. I'm not talking about television I've got anchor sitting here. But what I mean is the webcast and the emails which is essentially a one way communication right, you have a corporate message you have a business update, and you want to communicate it to people so what you do you do a press release and you send it out, you make an email and you send it out. So what are we doing here here, our objective is only to make sure that we push the communication out. Then we moved to pull communication and what did that lead to we stopped sending emails but we started hosting all of this on intranet on website, and we expected that people who are interested in our brand and our brand stories will visit these platforms and consume the content right, but is is push better or pull better. Well, both of them address a particular need. So at this point in time nothing is good nothing is bad but everything is addressing a need which is exists in the marketplace. Moving on to the digital era that we are in and what we have seen is that stakeholder communication is all about being interactive engaging with each other. You know, taking each other's views and respecting each other's views sharing of opinions. So if this is what we have to do, then we need a wide array of digital mediums and social media is definitely one of them. We have other mediums. Yes, we have. I mean if you look at the last three years of COVID if you've seen, we've so well adapted the virtual world. I mean I remember when we used to do this media interviews and are the sitting here she will agree. Every time it had to be their OB van coming to our offices right. But today where are those OB vans. They are not required. We all are doing these broadcast through zoom channel. So it's no longer just, you know, recording a message and sending it as a video release, but we are actually engaging. It's a two way communication that we are doing. Similarly, if you look at other channels like Twitter, we spoke about we spoke about Facebook, etc. So these are all channels which allow you to engage with people as a group. We build communities. We, we offer our support to each other, especially during the COVID times if you know, I think all the social media channels for a field of very big need where all of us are at home, feeling lonely and you know getting to various kind of mental health is these digital and social media platforms that came to our rescue. Each channel has a role to play each communication medium has a role to play. It depends on us as professionals. How do we use those channels. I mean I'll give you another example. Ever since the digital world has come in now we have started engaging with our people through various kind of surveys and feedbacks and all of that. So what is the intent there the intent there is to understand the stakeholder. What is their expectation, you know you as a brand are, you know engaging with media you're engaging with your internal employees, but are you really telling the story that they want to hear. How do they perceive you. So are you really going back taking the feedback understanding how they perceive you, and then working out a story where you want to convey your message and you want to give your brand story. I would only suggest that don't write off any of the medium, just evaluate each of the channels that are available to us but it is one way to way horizontal vertical, whichever way we must use it, we must understand the medium and what impact it can make in a communication strategy and use it accordingly. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you to all the panelists for taking out time from your busy schedule and coming here. I really enjoyed the session and thank you so much. Thank you.