When expressions find a way- the new media avenues

This weekend, one of my batch mate from college came out with a collection of short stories she has written over the year and compiled in a book. The book came out as a kindle e-book titled, “Do virgins taste better and other tales of whimsy”.  What has got me excited is the fact that she has made it to a point where her thoughts and ideas have been able to reach a larger audience circumventing the vicious nets and monopolies of publishers. The answer came in the form of Amazon and its CreateSpace service.

My class had quite a few talents with literary skills to write books and scripts, very few actually have taken it up as a full time profession. My roommate in college went into advertising, but had a compilation of photographs coupled with his feelings behind them expressed as poetry. The concept was too alien to publishers, and he was reluctant to share excessive details suspecting foul play. Another of my roommate is journalist who having extensively travelled in a riot torn UP has inside stories and anecdotes which no news channel will every carry. The works for both of the above have original ideas but the flight of expression is yet to find wings. I see the new avenues in media as a viable options in the days to come.

The story has been similar to many of the upcoming talents who have the ideas and concepts for a larger stage but find no takers. The Viral Fever (TVF) Media Labs is a sensation on YouTube as a channel which has a very steady and loyal bunch of followers. Their popularity is marked by the fact that a video from TVF crosses 100000 viewers in a day at max. But the origins of the second largest network of youth entertainment in India lies in the fact that the concepts presented by its founder, Arunabh Kumar, were rejected by MTV and other youth channels. By means of YouTube, TVF today has a reach so massive that online portals like Snapdeal, Common Floor or even movie stars like Shah Rukh Khan, Parineeti Chopra, Ayushman Khurana, Ranveer Singh have come on their shows to connect with youth and promote their movies.  

There is no doubting the fact that making a film is an expensive proposition and has a lot more in terms of financial hurdles. But some like another batch mate of mine, Faraz Ali, have taken up spending their time, effort and own savings to find a route to achieving things. The alternative he has found takers has been short film festivals. One of his first efforts, Mehrooni got a lot of critical acclaim after being shown at the Mumbai Film Festival and Royal Stag Large Shot films. The encouragement has taken him to make Makhmal this year which not only had big names like Jackie Shroff and Shafquat Amanat Ali attached to it, but also got opportunities in film festivals overseas (Including the New York 30 under 30) as an avenue to showcase his art to the world.

Another space where alternate media is making an impact is music. Recently, Vayu, a college junior of mine, launched a music video on YouTube of a song he had written and had composed almost 8 months ago. Apart from the fact that he is a lyricist having written for mainstream Bollywood, he had the desire to write about things he felt close to and ultimately wrote about dope. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtHf8QBJj0Q) The challenge he faces now is promoting his song but with no support of a big production house and only friends and well-wishers backing the video already has more than 62K views and becoming a cult in a small way.  Not to forget, platforms like Sound Cloud are also helping him gain more popularity. 

On the whole, the sphere of media has grown in a big way and is helping people to bypass the traditional road blocks and monopolies of publishers, music labels, channels and film producers and distributors. It is now up for the people with ideas to come up with the best of their own content. Success may be defined once people get to witness what you have, but a lot more avenues to help the right talents see the light of day. 

Trial by Social Media

We often have regarded the Jessica Lal murder case as one of the first instances of trail by media in India. If you have seen the movie, ‘No one killed Jessica’, the makers of the film have been completely unapologetic in showing that the murder case had lost its place in the news to larger events happening across. It wasn’t until a channel took it serious and took up the story in a manner exposing the ones involved that justice finally came through.

The pivot point here; a news channel- a part of the organised media had to be involved to take notice and act as a conduit to escalate matters and get people on to the streets to fight for justice. This process of waiting for a news channel or organised media to intervene has actually got bypassed to a fair extent today by the hyper-drive status of social media. Commoners use Facebook and WhatsApp and the popular ones have Twitter following to be applied to leverage social media to a very high extent.

TV channels like Bindaas, Channel V and MTV all today have at least one show where there have been some episodes on how people have used social media to speak out against powerful and influential people around them, report workplace abuse etc. Much like any tool, they also show cases where social media has also been abused to malign people or their reputation as an act of vengeance or to inflict social embarrassment.

If this is the case with individuals, how can corporate houses be left far behind.

Vishal Gondal is a name that found fame as the ‘King of Indian gaming’, thanks to the success of his venture, Indiagames in the late 2000’s. But this gaming wiz also has to his credit to be the man taking on Audi India in a case known to the auto world as the ‘Sleep-walking Audi Q7’. (http://forbesindia.com/blog/business-strategy/the-curious-case-of-vishal-gondals-sleepwalking-audi/)

Gondal had given his prized 65 lac worth luxury car for servicing and as typical of a gizmo freak, had the facility to track the same over GPS. The night before the delivery, he got a speeding alert from the GPS. The next few hours gave him the horror of seeing the car rally across the cities arterial roads and even land up in suspicious scrap yards of Kurla before getting back to the service centre. Gondal’s reflex action, the GPS track went onto Facebook and Twitter where he was blessed with loyal followers who were up in arms with what had happened. Every person who had service issues with any car manufacturer joined hands and the entire fraternity had to take notice. 

But Audi claimed the car never left the workshop and have termed the GPS tracker as defective. In the online war that followed, Audi tried to delete all hate posts on their page; but it simply added to public ire as the smart ones took screen grabs before being deleted. Even though the head of Audi in India spoke of taking action, nothing happened. To this day, Audi has not apologized for any wrong doings on part of their staff even at a cost where it has dented its reputation. A case where an apology and some make good could have cleared the air, still remains unsolved. The insult to injury, Gondal posted pics posing next to a Mini Cooper and handing over the advantage to Audi’s rivals, BMW.

Apart from denial of the truth, Audi faced a lot of flak on social media and also resulted in a loss of face and customers in the coming months. Lessons to be taken: if an apology works- just do it. And more importantly, never delete posts: people are most upset when this happens; especially with woes.

Today I have come across another brewing case: Neha Tomar (apparently a Gurgaon based lawyer) taking on Amul Milk. When a bag of Amul Gold milk went bad (sour) in the Tomar household, they tried to return it back to the vendor. The vendor refused and an attempt to make cheese from the sour milk took things from bad to worse- the curds turned into an elastic emulsion similar to melted mozzarella cheese.  Pictures of this were posted on Facebook on 10^th October with an appeal for caution and action against Amul. Sympathy vote: it has got over 77,000 shares. (https://www.facebook.com/neha.tomar.39/posts/10152355551565785)

Between 10^th to 14^th October, the Facebook page of Amul has been plastered with this post by various people who saw the Ms. Tomar’s post. Things reached a level that Ms. Tomar has even taken a petition to the Health Minister of India with a call for support for 500 names to pass the legal action. Amul in the meantime had been more of organising its stand but with no ill language or posts towards all this on Facebook.

Today afternoon, after four days of the first post and pictures appeared, Amul has come out with an official stand on Facebook which is both solid and scientific in its defence and openly exposing the flaws in Ms. Tomar’s claims. The milk was expired, some irregularities in the dates mentioned by Ms. Tomar in her post, a video to replicate how and why any kind of milk can turn into this lumpy elastic mass and finally; the behind the scene action taken by Amul officials to actively engage with the customer complaint. The most crucial part, disapproving of malicious intention and trying to reinstall the faith in the brand and its legacy of being built by farmers themselves. (https://www.facebook.com/amul.coop/posts/10152808817269446)

This is what separates Amul as a brand from the rest of the millions in India. A complaint was taken seriously, investigated and the reply was made in a solid and well researched. Sure the shares at present are slow (only 1500 odd so far), but the message is loud and clear: no attacks on the brand are taken lightly or left unattended. If the medium of the offensive was social media, it is the same medium employed to manage the damage and answer to the world.

In my opinion, this is amongst the best of the reputation management action on social media I have seen so far and unless there is any drastic change on stands soon- it will be etched as a live example for me to share for at least some time now.

Unreality TV

Cable TV came into India in 1991 and caught the frenzy of the Indian masses. Till that point, the four Indian metros had a choice of two channels while most of India had only one- all state owned. The programming was more of a monarchy run from Mandi House and content was what the head at Doordarshan wanted to show rather than what people wanted to see. I remember the days went from bad to worse in case of a state mourning- a day full of shehnai, veena and sitars echoing a sad tone.

This has changed over the last 20 years and now I am not even sure of all the channels I get on TV. Being a part of media, I do track developments, but with the kind of choices available, it is impossible to know every small change or addition. But in all this, I do have one point that I am upset about. The biggest attraction that came to me as a transition point between the Doordarshan and Satellite TV has got diluted- music channels.

Okay, I agree that music is my weakness. No wonder MTV was like a major attraction in my early impressionable years.(Well a part of the reason for writing this is I hate what comes on it over a weekend) Yes it was a certain amount of cultural change in terms of attitude, clothing and vocabulary that were coming into our lives from a five minute video on MTV. No amount of blurring or smart edits kept us away from realizing where there was possibly a passionate moment or nudity in a video.(at times the blurring made it more obvious that it was something forbidden that was happening here)

One of the changes in the Music Channels that I certainly am not comfortable with is their shift away from music into a domain of reality shows. I would say that I was comfortable when Channel V came up with shows like super singer; it was an organic shift; a music channel hunts talents and put them up on a stage, cuts an album. Viva made it big, Asma did not. But this was a much better platform than Sa Re Ga Ma at that time- the latter has become a popular breeding ground for talent now.

MTV made it big with Roadies. Raghuram always says he is what he is because of a troubled childhood (he said that on stage in my college but it might be just sarcasm) - well his brain child definitely attracts people I believe certainly have been through some trauma. The success opened the flood gates and out came a whole avalanche of shows that had only one motive- be different, even if it meant weird or fake or staged. A channel called ‘Real’ was launched. A GEC like Colors launched with a reality show. 24 hours surveillance camera’s made Big Boss and mega hit.

What pains me is the fact that if this is entertainment as demanded by audiences today, we have become sadists. I want to see a certain person undergo an agony, some embarrassment or witness a catfight and feel good about it. Firstly I am completely aware that it is staged- don’t believe me… well how else does someone who faced pranks in “Axe ur Ex” feature on “Dare2 Date” within three months? Most of the participants are on these show for cheap fame- I mean why else would a guy go the full monty before a packed auditorium on a reality show as a task??? (does anyone recall a case against Channel V where 2 girls striped on a street???)

What is very much disturbing is the way these unreal incidents are portrayed. Take revenge on your Ex- pure sadist behavior to feel good. Plotting against people to eliminate them, playing the honey trap, acting the seductress and tons of beeps on being voted out- no wonder Dolly Bindra was once most Googled by Indians. (Until Poonam Pandey came in)

I know this debate is going be endless, more so; not have any kind of resolution. But if the generation before me felt that MTV was the cause of social changes and rebellions on the rise in Gen X; I really am not sure how the Unreality of TV today will play its role in shaping Gen Y.