The Amateur's Scratchpad

Although, Gen Z does not care about Facebook at all, there are still a million users who use Facebook quite religiously. According to a report by Statista.com, Facebook still holds the biggest user base of 2.4 billion in spite of platforms like Instagram and TikTok taking over. But, the last few years hasn’t been particularly easy and breezy for Facebook. Its name has come up multiple times in different controversies. Sometimes it was the Free Basic Plan that the company introduced for its Indian front, the other times it was data breach that happened mostly in their international counterparts.

What happened?

The most recent data breach that Facebook faced was as recent as September 4, 2019. A cyber security researcher named Sanyam Jain found databases of Facebook users which contained the data of 419 million people! The database had the data of 133 million US users, 18 million UK users and 50 million Vietnamese users. With a little more research, Jain found out that the data had been revealed by some outer source. He wanted to find the owner of the data or at least the source from where such enrich data came from but sadly, he was unable to find it. So, he went to TechCrunch which is an online tech news analyzing portal and informed them about the issue. Zack Whittaker, Security Editor at TechCrunch verified and confirmed the issue after a few days to the media. Sanyam also told the media that the data had a lot of phone numbers associated with celebrities.

This was enough to make the media go bonkers on Facebook. But, the organization has also strengthened up their game.

How they handled it?

The first thing that Facebook did was to address the issue within 24 hours. They took this step diligently because when a similar thing happened back in 2018, the organization had kept the media waiting for an answer for more than 24 hours and it’s never a good idea! So, this time they hired a DC based Public Relations firm and issued a statement.

Secondly, they put out a blog post on their Facebook Live Newsroom stating that users can visit their “Help Centre” option for any kind of technical support. Also, for those who forgot their passwords can visit the “Security and login” option to reset their passwords and thus change the data.

They also introduced a number of security policies and strategies to ensure end-to-end encryption and security.

The organization also was quite prompt to issue a spokesperson quote who assured that the data which was found must be duplicated because when a similar thing happened in 2018, the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Facebook had written a blog post ensuring the security and safety of the users. “This data set is old and appears to have information obtained before we made changes last year to remove people’s ability to find others using their phone numbers. The data set has been taken down and we have seen no evidence that Facebook accounts were compromised.”, said Jay Nancarrow, spokesperson of Facebook.

This time Facebook saved its face by following a few clever tactics. But, is our data really safe on Facebook? Are we calling harm on ourselves by putting ourselves and our personal data out on Facebook? What else do we do in this age of social media? As we move forward to a completely digitalized age, these questions go bold and bolder.

Sources:

Facebook’s latest leak includes data on millions of users

Unsecured Facebook Databases Leak Data Of 419 Million Users

Now, let’s be honest here. All of us have smoked at least a joint or a two, right? It is not really an unknown territory to anybody. In fact, everybody starting from college students to musicians to middle aged uncles to housewives to auto, bus and cab drivers to politicians to even cops have taken a hit or a two. Yes, that’s a different issue where nobody in the country can talk about it because it’s illegal. No points for guessing that! Different parts of the country are famous for it. Himachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Shillong are just a few places to name. The common thing between these places is that you get a very high quality stuff but the entire process of transaction remains under sheets. The other place which is uberly famous for it is Benaras which is also the only place where sadhus are found smoking openly. A Holi in Benaras is incomplete with Bhang laddus and a day in Benaras is incomplete without a drag of a chillum.

But now, the question is, “Is India losing out on a market full of opportunities and boom by not legalizing weed/cannabis?”

We all know about the “high” factor that the consumption of this substance in any form can provide to a human being or even to an animal for that matter but it is also not really unknown to us the medicinal benefits of this.

To start off with, marijuana is an appetite builder and stress reliever and this has been scientifically tried and tasted. Unlike alcohol which makes the body warm, lose appetite, and induces puke and prone to urine, marijuana makes the cells of the body relaxed which in turn doesn’t make the body warm but also releases pressure from the blood cells making the body cool down its temperature and building an appetite.

The second and probably the most exciting thing is that it helps lose weight. The intake of marijuana regulates the level of insulin in the body due to which one can lose weight very easily with the use of marijuana.

The third and probably the biggest medicinal benefit of marijuana is that it can help prevent cancer and depression. There is a good amount of research and studies that have shown and proved how the consumption of the drug can fight cancer and depression, the two biggest evils of the society.

Other than these, there are a thousand other benefits that marijuana and its contents can provide. Whenever a ban is put on something in India, it stays. But, the thing to reconsider here is that if the legalization of the drug would boom the economy of the nation or not. There is a huge market of medicine and pharmaceuticals that can really use the drug for the benefit of the thousand diseases that rear their heads everyday which in turn would also regulate economic growth in the market. For now, it is a huge question mark that how far is the Indian government willing to go to actually look through the benefits of the substance and then take the decision of legalizing or not legalizing it.

Whenever we are tired of the hustle-bustle and chaos that goes on in our lives, we take a small vacation, isn’t it? Why do we do that? Because it helps to clear our mind, wash out the clutter that keeps forming into heaps for days and maybe get a clearer perception about a certain thing. For some hill stations work the best, for some deserts and then there are forests for the rest. But, what do you when you want to take a permanent break from the chaos called “life”? You go to Labh Mukti Bhawan which is in the heart of Kashi, also popularly known as Varanasi. Strange, doesn’t it? Yes, you heard it right. There’s a death hotel in the religious city of India where you can go for a two week vacation. The only condition? You have to die at the end of those two weeks or otherwise you got to move out.

Varanasi, the quaint little town is situated on the banks of the river Ganges and is considered one of the holiest places in India. People from all over the world visit this city in the search of a couple different things- culture, salvation and religion. However, the Labh Mukti Bhawan situated in this city has its own terms and conditions. Here, people who are in the last leg of life and want to attend “moksha” or salvation can come and check-in for two weeks and wait for the day of their death. It has 12 rooms along with a small temple for the priests. The place is managed by a man named Bhairav Nath Shukla for the last four decades. For the time period of two weeks, only a mere amount of 20 INR is charged every day and for it’s free for poor people. They also provide wood and other materials for the cremation process to the poor who can’t afford it. According to a Reuter’s report, almost 15,000 people have passed away in this place. “Having managed this place for such a long time I can well understand who would die within two weeks. The ones who don’t have to go back disheartened.”, says Shukla.

Even though people come to this place to die, interestingly, the environment of the place isn’t gloomy at all. The morning starts with a four-hour ritual performed by the priests which apparently brings death closer and in the evening people get together in the courtyard outside to spend their time chit-chatting, making music and playing some indoor games. “In Varanasi, death is not mourned but considered a blessing.”, said Manish Pandey, the manager of the place in a blog by SpeakingTree.in.

Almost 800 people from all over the country and even some from abroad come to this hospice every year to atone to their sins and attain salvation. Bhairav Nath Shukla believes that it’s important to resolve all your conflicts before you die. A trip to the Moksha Bhawan helps people to put their life into perspectives and have a revelation before they leave the world.

Bollywood was/is/will be always famous for its portrayal of sweet, out-of-the-world romance. All of us have grown up looking at the romance and love that the hero takes the heroine through. No matter how cringy it is, it always makes you want more. Also, Bollywood has never shied away from showing romance. And it has always been shown in every way possible. In this portrayal, everything starting from stalking a girl to forcing her to raping her have been normalized, glorified and categorized under romance .The story for romance however has been the same across decades. The boy sees the girl-falls in love-proposes her-she rejects-keeps stalking her till the end of earth until she gives in and says yes.

During the 50s, it was Raj Kapoor’s Awaara where the hero as the protagonist tries to make the heroine fall in love with him using every kind of possible and impossible technique in the world. This was followed by movies like Darr in the 90s when the girl is stalked till her honeymoon because the guy is obsessed with her. Come 2003 and Tere Naam was released which became the cult for these types of movies. Tere Naam shows a violent man a.k.a the hero kidnapping the heroine to make her fall in love with him. Because, of course, he couldn’t handle the “no” that the girl said in the first place and he believes that she is the one for him. The reason? There’s no good enough reason!

In the more recent times, we have Kabir Singh who is the “masiha” of toxic possessive love. He thinks that he can scare anybody and everybody with his short-tempered nature and pick up a girl among an entire class full of students to take her to an isolated field to teach her medicine. Although Kiara Advani’s character, Preeti, was strongly criticized a lot for her acceptance of domination and her perseverance with a highly toxic character like Kabir, there was also a very huge crowd who believed that whatever Kabir did in the movie was necessary for his character and that the character changed for good later on. The greatest defense came from the director of the movie, Sandeep Reddy himself, “If you don’t have the liberty of slapping each other, then I don’t see anything there.” Who should we blame? The poverty? The lack of education? Or simply the strong presence of narrow mentality?

Also, there was another crowd which tried to justify the entire situation saying that we don’t start killing people when we see murders or kidnap people when we see kidnapping on screen. How come the tables have turned in this case? The answer to this very stupid question will be that people are not that dumb to enact murder or kidnapping. But they are swift enough to pick up the habit of treating a girl like a commodity or the habit of abusing them or raising their hands on them because they know that these are crimes that nobody cares much about. This acts as the enhancement of their male ego. The misogyny and the patriarchy is so deeply engrained in the minds of the people that many might not even realize that these are wrong to do.

In this context, I would like to take the help of a real life example where an Indian man living in Australia was arrested for stalking and eve teasing women through lure comments. When he was produced on trial in court and asked for a logical reasoning he said that he has seen in Bollywood movies that how women are stalked and how that makes them happy. So, he naturally connected the dots and made out that women must like to get harassed or stalked. This is the level of misogyny normalization that goes on in our country. The man was of course sent to jail. But, this was Australia. Where are we heading towards with our country?

Bollywood doesn’t often realize that in a country like ours where entertainment consumption is more than education consumption, the level of influence from movies is more on people than education. Thus, whatever that is shown in these movies are embedded in the darkest roots of their minds. So, whatever content that goes out to the public must be regulated well enough and shouldn’t promote anything that might be controversial or offending for any gender.

Today, at School of Communications and Reputation (SCoRe), the batch of 2020 got yet another opportunity of a masterclass with Cornelia Kunze, the co-owner and founder of i-sekai, a consultancy for brand and reputation management based out of Germany. She started her session by answering the question of how is the market for PR different for every region. In this context, she mentioned that PR as a profession is still budding in countries like India and Germany while the markets in US and UK are buzzing with new ideas and opportunities. So, what should one do in order to stand out and make people notice their actions? Following are the seven ingredients that Cornelia mentioned that one needs to mix in order to stand out of the crowd:

1. Dramatize a solution: Public Relations people are called storytellers. That’s for a reason, right? It is important, especially in today’s digital era, to dramatize everything that you do. As a PR person, one should possess the ability to be creative enough to dramatize an entire situation and then provide a solution which is dramatic as well. In this context, she took the reference of Germany Island, a very famous campaign done by an agency in Germany.
2. Be bold enough in a controversy: Now, this is very important in terms of reputation of the brand as well as the agency working for the brand itself. Most of the times, during a controversy, the brand ends up apologizing, sometimes even without a reason. She took the example of Gillette in this case that how they did not budge from their belief and statement even when their #BeaMan campaign faced a lot of backlash.
3. Address a societal tension: One should not confuse this point with the above one. It is always better to acknowledge a news even if the concerned brand has no part in it. This makes the audience feel relieved and satisfied that there is someone who they can confine to.
4. Humanize: As storytellers, we need to humanize every idea, every campaign that comes in our way. Empathetic storytelling takes one a long way. Humanizing a product or a service helps the consumers relate with it on a ground level.
5. Be truly loyal: One needs to be whole heartedly loyal to the brand they are working for. Thus, while working on a certain client or a brand, one needs to know the inside out of that particular brand and client and then put their heart and soul into creating something that will not only maintain their reputation but also make the world look at them from a whole new perspective.
6. Merge data and human truth: The age of data is here. Whatever you put in front of the world has to be data driven. But, sometimes a lot of data might get mundane. In such a situation, it is always good to merge the data with some human truth, maybe a real life example or a scenario.
7. Create something new: PR people often get this complain that they amplify on somebody else’s idea. So, one should always have the goal of creating something new because PR is not only a profession, it’s a mindset. It can make or break the reputation of a brand and change perceptions too.

Public Relations is a very dynamic world and we are at the time when the entire world is changing. “Try to be the brain and not only hands and legs!”, signed off Cornelia.

The other day while giving a presentation I forgot the name of one person that I was supposed to say. And, everything went downhill from there. I’m usually pretty confident about giving presentations but the goof up of that one name made me forget almost everything that I was supposed to say. However, I finished my part and came back but the thought of messing up wouldn’t leave my head. So, here are a few tips (exclusively for myself and also for others who might need it) on what not to do while giving a presentation:

1. Firstly, the presentation itself should be very compact. Too much content and data in the slides tends to frown out the audience as well as the presenter while presenting. Also, it is advised to leave out excessive use of transition.
2. In a formal presentation, too many different colours should not be used. The use of too many vibrant colours does not make a good impact on a formal group of audience. However, it is recommended to use bold colours like black and blue or pastel shades of green, pink etc.
3. Proper attention should be given to the font of the texts, their sizes and uniformity should be the same in each slide. The font size of the headings and the main text should differ to make them identifiable.
4. The pictures of the slides should be in proper ratio and should not look stretched. To avoid this, one should stretch the pictures diagonally and not from the middle.

Hey! Your presentation is almost perfect. Now, let’s look at the things that are not to be done while presenting:

1. The very first thing (I should drill this inside my head with a drilling machine) that one needs to remember is that it’s okay if you forget a part. It’s not the end of the world and there’s no need to botch the rest of the presentation for that one mistake.
2. It is very important not to look back multiple times while presenting. It is never a good thing to show your back to the audience or even half turn. This makes the presenter look unprepared and under confident.
3. One should always stand straight and never slouch. That just shows lack of enthusiasm.
4. There is no need to read out every word written in the slides. The audience can read those. One can just choose out their favourite points and then elaborate on it.
5. Lastly, one should stand at one point. Nobody wants to see you tap dance while delivering a presentation. Fidgeting on your toes interrupts the attention of the listener.

You and your presentation are fairly ready if all these points are religiously followed. “Presenting and public speaking is a learnable skill. Anybody can do it with a little bit of practice.”, said Rama Arya, Executive Director, The Communique and also the lady behind all these tips. As for me, let’s see how my next presentation goes.

The Buckets are a family of seven. They live in a wooden house which leans on every possible side with utmost danger. It has only one bed which is occupied by the two sets of grandparents that Charlie, the youngest member of the house have and the family has one earning member, that is, Mr. Bucket. Mr. Bucket worked in a toothpaste factory where his job was to fix the caps of the tubes until recently when the company got a machine to replace Mr. Bucket. After Mr. Bucket loses his job he takes up odd jobs to sustain for his family and the only meal they can afford is cabbage soup.

In this situation, arrives Charlie’s birthday. It’s a ritual that Charlie gets one chocolate bar as a gift on his birthday every year. But, this year it’s harder for Mr. Bucket. Meanwhile, Willi Wonka, the mysterious chocolate maker announced a contest. It was 15 years ago that Mr. Wonka had closed the gates of his factory due to some theft by his competitors and its after so many years that he has come up with a contest which gives five children the opportunity to enter into his factory and see the source through which he makes all his delicious chocolates. Charlie’s paternal side’s grandfather was one of the employees of Willi’s factory and decides to spend his last saving on Charlie’s chocolate bar. And as luck had it, Charlie wins a golden ticket.

After this, the story revolves around how all the lucky five children goes into the factory with Willi Wonka- the man himself and how each of them fall prey to their own greed. And in the end Charlie emerges victorious as the owner of the chocolate kingdom.

Johnny Depp’s staunch acting as Willi Wonka makes the audience go bonkers. The people acting as Oompa Loompas did an incredible job as well. Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket has did his part wonderfully.

This film is an integral part of my childhood and I remember it being telecasted on Pogo almost every Saturday, not to forget the adrenaline rush of taking a bath in the three minute breaks. This film reminds me of all the non-complex days we had as children and it is never boring too revisit those memories again and again.

In the recent past, there have been quite a handful number of successful brand campaigns. These campaigns took over the media and the audience in a jiffy and ticked all the boxes to ultimate fame and success. Campaigns like Vicks’ #TouchofCare and Ariel’s #ShareTheLoad were born in India and after a point spread far and wide to other countries as well. So, what is the success ‘mantra’ of these campaigns? Here are the five steps to design a campaign that could be the talk of the town for a long time if it’s done correctly:

1. Audience Insights and Narrative Creation: The first step for a successful campaign is collecting audience insights. A particular target group among the audience should be identified along with their demographics. A campaign can never be properly planned without knowing what the audience thinks and demands. And if the audience does not relate to the campaign then it’s already a flop. Hence, one should always take in consideration the audience’s view point. After the insights are taken, a narrative of those insights should be created. The narrative should contain the most common points gathered from the audience interaction. By that, the thought process of the majority audience can be understood.
2. Campaign Theme: The next step is to decide the theme for your campaign a.k.a the particular message that you want to give out through the campaign. It often happens that the central message of the campaign is sidelined by promotional activities as a result of which the interest of the audience fades out after a certain point of time. Also, the campaign theme and the campaign slogan are two different things altogether.
3. Content Production: The third step towards creating a campaign is the production of great content. Now a days, the average attention span of a consumer is very less. Thus, in order to grab their eyeballs the content should be very attractive. Thus, there should not be pages filled with long texts but instead pictures, infographics and videos can be used. Also, content does not only mean the production of images and videos but the documentation of every step too!
4. Implementation: This is the most critical part of the campaign. One needs to identify the proper vehicles and channels of media in order to send out the campaign. If the platform of implementation does not go well with the chosen target audience, then the campaign is already down the drain. Therefore, the content of the campaign should properly be distributed for each concerned media platform and then be implemented.
5. Measurement: The last but certainly not the least! Measurement helps to gauge the success rate as well as the failure rate of the campaign. It also helps to strategize the future plans by assessing what did not work the previous time. Without measurement, it can never be evaluated what is relevant for the audience.

The field of public relations is highly dynamic. But, the content consumption style of the audience changes even faster. With these steps in mind, one can design a fail proof campaign with some adaptation here and there in sync to time, the target audience and their likings and demands.

Sounds very disturbing, isn’t it? How can parents be bullies to their own kids? But, this is a true fact. Some of the bullying that kids are subjected to comes very early in life from their parents. People who have orthodox mindsets, a narrow mentality and are misguided themselves try to impose their thoughts and beliefs on their child as well. A lot of parents do not understand that when they give birth to a child that child will grow up with his/her own perspectives, perceptions and mindset. Instead they continuously try to suppress their child’s voice and put words in their mouth. This aggressive parenting often does bad than good. Kids go into depression, develop anxiety and a dozen of other mental issues because they have no access to someone who would listen and understand their side of the story. This hugely affects the self –esteem level of the child. It doesn’t resolve even as the child grows up. A lot of kids are taught that being dark-skinned or being fat is a bad thing. This is so deeply inculcated in the child’s mind that when the child grows up there remains no way through which the person can accept himself/herself the way he/she is. This leads to a deep dark well of life long trauma within oneself.

Also, bullying by parents have some categories too. They often compare one sibling to another. Like, “If you could only be half as good as your brother!” For some people, this might work wonders where the person gets motivated and starts working harder but in most situations the result is opposite. Continuous comparisons with siblings puts a lot of mental pressure in the kid’s mind and the kid starts half assessing himself/herself. Overprotective parents are also another form of bullies. While it is acceptable when parents are protective of their own children, it is also unacceptable when that protection goes overboard. Parents need to understand that children will have their own way of growing up, they will have their very own mistakes to commit. They will never learn unless they make those mistakes. There are some parents who raise their hands on children. “You tell me what happened. I won’t beat you.!” Isn’t this a very common line? Here is where the problem lies. When parents make a promise of not beating up the child when he/she tells the truth, a bond of trust is formed which is immediately shattered when the child ends up getting beaten even after he/she has confessed the truth. This creates a scar and a fear in the child’s mind due to which they never again take the chance of sharing anything with parents. Nothing is a bigger failure as a parent if their child is not transparent with them.

To conclude, people get subjected to bullying almost every day. Sometimes in the generic harsh way and most of the times in a very light way which feels just like a little funny skit to the person who is doing it and the others. For the victim, it might be the biggest thing in his/her life. You never know who you are hurting unintentionally and what kind of impact is that creating in the victim’s mind. Maybe you think you are doing it for a little bit of harmless fun but maybe that person has been subjected to that kind of “harmless fun” for an entire lifetime. Maybe the girl you just called fat is overdosing on diet pills every day, the boy you just made fun of for crying lost his mother in an accident. You never know who is going through what situation in life. People are getting aware about bullying, colleges are making up anti-ragging policies, corporates are whirring up strict rules against workplace bullying but the rate of change is very slow. Parents need to be more attentive to their children, people who get bullied should always open up to someone they are comfortable with and people who bully should understand that their little fun has a lot of grave consequences. 

How does bullying start? How does it go on?

It starts with teasing. Usually bullies target those who they perceive as weak minded and know that they won’t be able to fight back. It transitions into bullying when it is done to the victim repetitively almost every day. Small things like name calling, body shaming, passing racial comments, forcefully possessing somebody else’s stuff are just some of the few as examples. The people who bully get so habituated with doing this find it quite hard to stop.
It is not only in middle school or high school that bullying happens. It often goes on to college where it is commonly known as ‘ragging’. Surprised already? It is there in offices, social circles- basically at every step of life. Only the form changes. A study by Forbes in 2016 showed that 75% of workers face bullying in the workplace. A staggering number, isn’t it?

Why do people become bullies?

Now, this is a very difficult question to answer. There can be numerous reasons as to why a person becomes a bully and finds it enjoyable to traumatize other people. Studies have shown that people who come from broken homes often resort to bullying others because that’s the place where they can feel heard. Also, stress and trauma from the family front are often known to make people bullies. People who are bullied by their family are more prone to bully others outside. Another reason is low education. It is not like bullying does not happen in big cities where people are subjected to high standards of education. But most of the time bullying comes from those who are from small towns and less likely to be educated.