If communicators do not inform and educate people, everybody will be consumed by the “hatred around us”, the man behind an enduring brand told an audience of marketers in the city on Wednesday.
“There is a hunger out there. Hunger to consume, hunger for knowledge and considered information. To all of you here, as advertisers, what it has taught us is that don’t dumb anything down because you feel you need mass appeal. Raise the bar, inform people, educate people, because if we don’t do so, we will get consumed by the hatred that we see around us,” said Sanjoy Kumar Roy, managing director of Teamwork Arts, the organisers of the Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).
Roy was the keynote speaker at BrandEdge, a conference on brands, organised by the Public Relations Society of India, in association with The Telegraph.
Through the day, BrandEdge saw several communication experts share their thoughts from the dais.
A highlight of the conference was the launch of a book, Open House, by advertising guru Piyush Pandey, chairman, global-creative and executive chairman, India, Ogilvy.
Pandey was in conversation with Harish Bhat, brand custodian of Tata Sons. Bhat asked Pandey, creator of several iconic Indian ads, the secret of his appetite for learning.
“I am amazed by Piyush’s restless mind. It comes through on every page of the book. India is such a vast country. How do you keep learning?” asked Bhat.
Pandey said learning at home was most important. “Knowledge is right there. Just keep your eyes and ears open and a big heart to imbibe everything happening around you. That spreads to your colony, city, state and the nation...,” he said.
In 2021, when JLF was “entirely virtual”, over 27 million people watched it online.
Offline, the organisers knew their audience.
Nearly half were from Rajasthan, followed by Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore. Internationally, the online audience would be primarily from the US and the UK.
Now, apart from the US and the UK, the online audience has a significant representation from places like Germany, China, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Japan, places, which, in Roy’s words, “we never spent one digital dollar marketing to”.
The change in the consumption pattern prompted Roy to assert what he thought was the responsibility of brands.
“By being silent today, every time somebody is hung or attacked, we are complicit. Each of you is a communicator. It is your responsibility to create that new conversation... to be able to be inclusive and... make a unique offering,” he said.
He talked about his recent visit to a bank in Georgetown, Washington DC. A senior manager there was not aware of what Delhi was, said Roy.
“This is what we try to do. Can we educate people? Can we use the arts to push back on ignorance? Can we push back against hatred that comes from ignorance and the whole fright of different religions, different people, different colours?” he said.
The conference witnessed a fund-raising programme, called FlowEdge, for budding entrepreneurs. Out of 60 pitches, eight were shortlisted by a panel of investors.