MxMIndia

Tag: Kiran Bedi

  • Day 1 saw the Media & Publisher Abby. Mindshare bagged the Media Agency of the Year title

    It’s Goafest time again…

     

     

    By Our Staff

     

    Goafest 2022 started on high energy. Singer Sukhbir electrified the auditiorium to kick off the 15th edition which happened after a two-year Covid pandemic-led hiatus. The festival started with the lighting of the lamp and the unveiling of AAAI’s new logo. The underlying theme being of celebrating The SuperPower Within.

     

    AAAI’s new logo has been created created by Tempest Advertising’s art director, Lohidasu. The agency’s design was chosen amidst 200 entries. The logo effectively brought the past, the present and the future of both AAAI and advertising in unison. The official unveiling of the redesigned logo at the Goafest, was done by Rohit Ohri, Chairman and CEO of FCB Ulka and film star, Yami Gautam.

     

    Further, the Industry Conclave presented by ABP Group marked the beginning of the festival with the first session of the day, witnessing actress Yami Gautam in a one-on-one conversation with Rana Barua, Chairman, Abby Awards Governing Council 2022 and Vice President of The Ad This was followed by a keynote by Vineeta Singh, Co-founder and CEO, SUGAR Cosmetics & Shark, Shark Tank India, who highlighted the importance of building a brand with quality products and content before focusing on advertising. She also emphasized the power of empowering a team, which mirrors the ethos of Sugar, passionately stating, “Empower them and let them go rule the world!”

     

    The next session saw Ankush Sachdeva, Co-Founder & CEO, Sharechat & Moj, in conversation with Vikram Sakhuja, Group CEO Madison Media & OOH at Madison World.  Following this was a session in partnership with the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), where Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary (CA), Ministry of Consumer Affairs & Food Distribution spoke with Piyush Pandey, Chairman of Global Creative Ogilvy Worldwide & Executive Chairman, Ogilvy India discussing the importance of consumer protection and its responsibility that we have as professionals. The session was moderated by Subhash Kamath, Chairman, ASCI & CEO, BBH, India. Singh ended the session on an impotant note: “If we don’t look after the interest of the consumer, who will?”

     

    After that Kiran Bedi, Former Lt Governor Puducherry and one of India’s best known retired IPS offices, highlighted the importance of leadership, emphasising: “Leadership is internal – you start with yourself; if you can’t lead yourself, you can’t lead people.”

     

    This year, for the first time ever,  after over 50 years of being solo, the Advertising Club collaborated with The One Show.

     

    Speaking about Goafest 2022, Anupriya Acharya, President, Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) said, “It’s been a tough two years, and it’s great to be back on-ground not only in terms of organising the festival but also where achievements are concerned. We are thrilled to  have everyone back, bonding and celebrating this festival.”

     

    Added Jaideep Gandhi, Chairman, Goafest 2022 Organising Committee: “Goafest has undoubtedly grown into one of the most prestigious conventions in South Asia, bringing together some of the most talented and brightest creative geniuses from all walks of life to celebrate the ad-land spirit. We are looking to keep the overall exuberance of this year’s festival about enjoyment, about people coming together to celebrate and connect. As a result, we will be able to understand the true essence of organizing a festival after experiencing two major setbacks in the past. The Goafest festival gives young talent the chance to interact and learn from some of the industry’s stalwarts. These people have played a crucial role in paving the way for them, making the event worthwhile. In addition to these benefits, it serves as a place where young people can engage and network cohesively with the entire media and advertising fraternity.”

     

    Discussing the ABBY Awards at Goafest 2022, Partha Sinha, President, The Advertising Club said, “2022 is definitely a landmark year because of the collaboration of the Abby  Awards with The One Show, and this is a game-changing proposition. It gives a platform to a plethora of agencies, enabling it to become more global. We owe it to the industry to bring something of global standing especially when we are one large world.”

     

    Speaking about the Abbys Awards, Rana Barua, Chairman, Abby Awards Governing Council 2022 & Vice President of The Ad Club said, “A staggering number of participants has been witnessed, surpassing all previous records. In addition to agencies that have participated since our inception, we have also seen those returning every year. Overall, the numbers are higher this month since we had to package everything together in one month. This year and henceforth, Goafest will be considerably bigger and more extravagant.”

     

     

  • General criticism of the media and of journalists has to be accepted as par for the course, writes Ranjona Banerji

    Ranjona Banerji: How the media is everyone’s whipping boy

    By Ranjona Banerji

     

    The media is now everyone’s whipping boy and there is no need for the media to get defensive about this. As long as everyone thinks you’re doing everything wrong, it is clear that you are doing everything right. The expression “paid media” is now indiscriminately used to describe journalists who do not subscribe to your political point of view, when the term within the media is used to describe managements who sell editorial space to political parties or politicians without informing readers or viewers.

     

    Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party has accused the media of being pro-Bharatiya Janata Party and pro-Congress and also said that some of the media is dancing to the diktats of Mukesh Ambani and Reliance. More specifically, the media he says is either pro-Narendra Modi or pro-Rahul Gandhi; the unspoken implication being that the media is anti-him. However, through 2011 the media was extremely pro-Kejriwal and the India Against Corruption movement headed by Anna Hazare. One might wager that without media support, the IAC movement would have gone nowhere. Non-stop coverage of every IAC event, gross exaggeration of public participation figures all ensured that IAC, Hazare, Kejriwal, Manish Sisodia, Kumar Vishwas, Kiran  Bedi, Prashant Bhushan and others became household names.

     

    India’s controversial former chief of army staff VK Singh has also jumped into the fray, calling journalists “presstitutes”. This is how urbandictionary.com describes “presstitute”: “A term coined by Gerald Celente and often used by independent journalists and writers in the alternative media in reference to journalists and talking heads in the mainstream media who give biased and predetermined views in favour of the government and corporations, thus neglecting their fundamental duty of reporting news impartially. It is a portmanteau of press and prostitute.”

     

    In fact, I would question Celente’s (an American “trend forecaster) wisdom and political correctness in damning commercial sex workers (the now accepted term for prostitutes) by associating them with the media and with journalists.

     

    Jokes aside, Singh has been angry for a number of reasons – his various dates of birth did not sit well with either the Indian Army, the GOI or the Supreme Court, his various PR efforts sometimes backfired and Indian Express published a story last year about how some troop movements during his tenure were looked at suspiciously by the Government.

     

    The Editors Guild has taken exception to all this media-bashing and issued a strong statement: “Ironically, leaders who built up reputations and support by engaging the public through the media are now turning on the very media when they come under critical scrutiny…

     

    “The media that question and criticise political leaders and indeed every section of society should of course be open to criticism, even if it is harsh, of its functioning and to its flaws being exposed. The problem arises, however, when abuse and vague, unsubstantiated accusations of corrupt motives take the place of reasoned refutation and debate. An additional danger is that some of the followers could take their cue from the statements of leaders and may not stop with verbal attacks. Both print and television journalists have been subject to physical violence as well by political party workers.”

     

    Physical attacks on journalists are reprehensible and have to be tackled strongly by law and order. But general criticism of the media and of journalists has to be accepted as par for the course. As we have pointed out in these columns, there are clear instances of media bias on display at times and criticism of political parties, politicians and big business is sometimes a carefully calibrated exercise.

     

    The spread of the tentacles of lobbyists and PR people is well-known when it comes to film and business journalism for instance. And the Niira Radia tapes exposed the susceptibility of some of India’s biggest names. These are problems which the media must discuss more stringently, or criticism from those we criticise will only get stronger.

     

    If we don’t guard ourselves, someone else is going to try and do it for us. And that would be the real disaster.

     

  • In the second instalment of his fortnightly column 'PoliTech', Vijay Mukhi digs deep into Twitter data of Messrs Narendra Modi and Shashi Tharoor

    Vijay Mukhi: Are Narendra Modi’s Twitter followers fake? And what about Shashi Tharoor’s?

    By Vijay Mukhi

     

    The best job on the planet is being a columnist on Politics and Technology, because no one in this space  talks sense or hard facts and numbers. Breaking news everyday is about Narendra Modi’s Twitter followers being fake, but no one is offering any credible evidence on either side of the debate, fake or real. So, before I throw my hat in the ring and get egg all over me (which is all in days work for me) let me tell you that I believe in the maxim Trust but Verify so before you cast the first stone, please download all the data that I have gathered from Twitter from my website www.vijaymukhis.com. We are also comparing only Narendra Modi and Shashi Tharoor as the other politicians are pygmies on Twitter compared to these two giants.

     

    Modi, today,  has 19,34,170 followers on Twitter compared to Tharoor who has  18,42,046,  a lead of just under a lakh. Modi and Tharoor share  447,920 followers in common which is around 25% of their followers , Modi and Kiran Bedi share 408,401 followers and Modi also shares 2,98,005 followers with Arvind Kejriwal. Thus, we can safely conclude that there are about 4 lakh people on Twitter who just like following politicians from India — why, we have no answer. This leaves Modi with a maximum of 15 lakh fake followers as fake followers would not share politicians from different groupings.

     

    How do we define a fake follower? Simple answer, someone who does not tweet. Modi has 6,77,296 followers who have never ever tweeted. Now imagine, why would someone join Twitter and not tweet at all! This is very extremely damning and conclusive evidence, we need no judge or jury to convict that these have to be fake followers. Thus if 35% of Modi followers have to be fake, what more evidence do you need! But, do not open the bubbly to celebrate, Tharoor has only 5,23,843 followers who also have never ever tweeted , which make up 28% of his followers. Can we thus draw a line in sand that says that if up to 28% of your followers have never ever tweeted then it is okay but any percentage above that makes these followers a fake? A more charitable explanation is that there is a silent (in terms on not liking the sound of a keyboard) majority out there on Twitter who do not tweet at all, but simply read tweets. If you take a step further, 12% of Modi and Tharoor’s followers tweeted only once and 7% only tweeted twice. A simply addition tells us that over 46% of Tharoor’s followers and 54% of Modi’s followers do not like to tweet or cannot tweet for various reasons. We need to accept that not everyone likes putting pen to paper even though we have to write less than 140 characters.

     

    The best evidence of popularity or influence on Twitter is how many people follow you. About 4,85,077 or 25% or a quarter of Mod’s followers have 0 people following them. Aha, this nails Modi finally and this is enough  proof that these followers are fake! The obvious answer is that if you do not tweet then obviously no one will follow you and for Tharoor the number is 2,61,883 or 14%. The percentage of the number of followers who have only 1 or 2 followers following their tweets, sort of remains the same. Thus like sending tweets , we have a whole community of users on Twitter who are so important that nobody follows what they do. Twitter Orphans can well be a new addition to the English language, what say?
    The obvious conclusion is that about half your followers would be inert or inactive or to use the TV analogy, coach potatoes who would surf from politician to politician.

    One sureshot way of finding out whether your followers are fake is to look at how many followers did you add every day of the year. During the month of July 2013, Modi added on a average around 5000 followers per month and Dr Tharoor about a 1000. For May and June, these numbers were also similar. The only conclusion we can draw here is that Modi’s team is very smart, had they added 50,000 followers on one day, they could be caught in the deserts of Rajasthan. But what if I paid an agency (millions on the web that do this for a small fee) to increase Modi’s followers count by a lakh on a certain day, the media would go ballistic and say that Modi was caught with his hand in the desert sand.

     

    I agree we are getting nowhere. So let’s look at another metric. When did  your Twitter followers create their account on Twitter or an ageing analysis. A whopping 1,02,385 of Modi followers were born on Twitter in April 2013, 94,874 in June 2013 or better still 502, 918 of his followers are under 180 days old on Twitter or created in the year 2103. For Tharoor, this number for 2013 is only 171,459. For 2012, the equivalent numbers are 595,656 for Modi and for Tharoor 360,540. A non-convincing explanation is that India is the youngest country in the world population wise and therefore all of your followers must represent this trend of being young. More than half of Modi’s followers have joined Twitter nearly a million , in the last 18 months only ,maybe just for him. This is why Twitter should give Modi an award for bringing so many people to Twitter!

     

    Where Tharoor leaves Modi biting the dust is when it when to the quality of followers, and that also by a factor of 2. We simply added up all the followers of people who follow Tharoor and the number was an astonishing 27,89,94,347 and for Modi it was half that at 10,87,44,125. We have not removed duplicate followers from this list. So theoretically when Tharoor tweets and if all his followers retweet his tweet around 27 crore people would see that tweet. Tharoor followers have tweeted over  52,26,34,885 times but Modi’s followers being newer and weaker are half that at 27,57,99,883. On a average, a Tharoor follower has 150 followers who tweets 282 times and a Modi follower would have only 56 followers and tweets much less at 143. Thus an average Tharoor follower would beat a Modi follower in a virtual fist fight as Tharoor has a long and khandhani history on Twitter.  Maybe and we have no evidence for saying this, but a Modi follower may have more pets (aka puppies) than a Tharoor follower. It a foregone conclusion that Tharoor’s followers are twice as strong as Modi’s followers and no guesses who would win a twitter slugfest, in spite of what conventional wisdom says that Modi’s followers are winning on Twitter.

     

    OMG, read over 5000 characters ie 35 tweets (my editor decides column length in tweets and not characters)  and yet no conclusion on whether Modi has fake followers or not! So, let’s muddy the waters even more. Go to the Twitter page of a user vijaymukhi712 by typing www.twitter.com/vijaymukhi712. This user bears my name and I have actually tweeted 86 times, a pretty active user one would have to admit, to a fake user under any yardstick. Every day my internet avatar ( not sure of the sex as you will soon see) quotes a love tweet so has his heart in the right place. But if you check further, say the 19th of every month, you will see the same love quote. This user is a creation of a computer program (which is why I cannot determine the sex)  which wakes up at 7 in the morning GMT and depending of the day of the month sends out a tweet. I did not have the time to create a database with 365 tweets. Is this a fake user or a non-human user, a word that will enter the human lexicon very soon. Twitter makes it very easy to create a user that needs no verification and we all tweet using some computer a program written by a programmer. Will there be a way to distinguish between a fake user from a machine-created one? May be and a big may be in my next life!

     

    Finally, all fake things must come to an end and so we come to our real conclusion.

     

    It is in the best (commercial ) interests of the social web to make it very easy to create fake followers as greater the number of Twitter users, the more money Twitter and the rest of its ilk charges for ads. It’s also is in the best interests of the social web that we have no way of determine a fake from a real user. It helps politicians as it make them more important in cyberspace than they really are. I seriously stopped getting women to date me when they realised that my Twitter followers was around 300. We must realise that a large majority of Twitter users will not tweet, they are readers nor writers. If politicians hired the right technology hackers, they will never ever get caught while massing millions of fake followers. Our Internet population will triple from 120 million today to at least 400 million in the next 1000 days thanks to 4G and this problem of fake followers or fake identities or fake tweets or fake anything will never ever be resolved. This emboldens all of us to say what we want about anyone or anything on Twitter and the social web as verification of any type is a miracle and we all know when the last miracle too place.

     

    My last two bits: Modi’s followers are as genuine or as fake as Tharoor’s followers are. Take your pick by doing the obvious, by tweeting.