And the winner is…

Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at this year’s Oscar and created one of the most controversial moments in the history of this award. This slap gate probably gave the current Oscar winner a run for its money. The slap has dominated the public discourse in media, social media, and all other forums and communities around entertainment. Instead of talking about the winners, the films, and the stars, everyone discusses this smack. Most of the audiences described it as unexpected, uncalled for and unacceptable. Will Smith could have registered his displeasure in a more civilised manner without slapping Chris. Hence, the overall public sentiment is with Chris Rock. Most netizens empathise with Chris, applaud his behaviour, and criticise Will for his action. Will Smith won the academy, but Chris Rock won hearts by conducting himself in a dignified, professional way and continuing the show despite being humiliated. It was a moment of biggest personal crisis for him. But he displayed exemplary character in dealing with it. Today’s businesses and leaders deal with a world where reputation is precious. Yet, they are frequently confronted with unexpected, unplanned, and precarious situations that jeopardise their reputations. This could happen at a press event, a product launch, a market visit, a meeting with stakeholders, or by being mired in unassuming social media controversies. This incident can serve as a valuable lesson in managing one’s reputation in such a fragile and precarious situation. Managing your emotions The most crucial lesson to learn from this incident is to manage your emotions in an adverse situation. It is essential to maintain composure and respond calmly during an unplanned attack on one’s reputation in the public domain. Responding vehemently to such an attack can lead to a worsening of the situation. This event is also a reminder for the leaders to not get carried away by their emotions. It can lead to a momentary lapse of judgment and destroy your entire reputation, goodwill, and social standing. While Will Smith was overpowered by his feelings, Chris controlled his emotions and saved Oscar. Own your mistakes and apologies Accepting and owning your mistake is critical. The best course of action is to apologise in public as soon as possible. Nothing is wrong with it. However, unless you make this amend, your omission will continue to embarrass and torment you. Furthermore, you will always be in the public eye, and your every move will be scrutinised. It’s important to note that this is a time-sensitive action. However, it will salvage your reputation and help you recover quickly. For example, will Smith did not apologise to Chris for his action, immediately, and took couples of days, which led to a significant loss of reputation as people on social media and other platforms started posting strong reactions instantly. There are many examples of the brands and leaders who have been blown away by their outburst but have managed to regain it by acting more dignifiedly. Many public spats or controversies on social media have resulted in the significant loss of reputation and imagery in the Indian context. Recently, Bhavesh Aggarwal, the CEO of Ola Electric, was trolled by the netizens for calling the senior media journalists’ petrol media on the criticism of his electric scooters. Likewise, the leaked abusive phone call of Ashneer Grover, founder of BharatPe and leading start-up honcho, with a banker over the allocation of shares in an IPO led to his loss of public image. Neither of the CEOs offered any apologies to the concerned individual or the general public in both incidents. Presumably, this could have been managed well with an apology and rolling out the course correction immediately after the fiasco, subverting the respective egos. It is important to note that the winner in the battle of reputation will always be humble, own his mistakes and swiftly rectify them.

SOCIAL NETWORK

I watched the movie Social Network yesterday on television as it was premiered for the first time at Sony Pix, and regretted that I should have watch this movie at theater. The film is about the founding of Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Though I heard a lot about movie earlier but never thought that the life of the founder of the most popular virtual social space would be so dramatic in reality. The drama was compelling with Oscar deserving performances. Irrespective of the fact that the film portray the character of Zuckerberg in gray shades but get all the respect and accolade for the clarity of thought that the character had. Mark created this website after been rejected by her girlfriend so the social network ardent should be thankful to her as well.

The idea is the key for the success of any business, resources are required later , these just supplement the idea and since Zuckerberg borrowed or stolen the idea from his college mate Winklevoss twins without giving them any credit he landed up in the law suit. That brought me to one question why Winklevoss shared the idea with Zuckerberg simply because they did not have the skills of converting their idea into reality and needed the talent and skill of Zuckerber.

I am a Google loyalist therefore I think that the concept of social network was pioneered by Google and further certainly someway or other had created the ground for germinating and refining the idea of social network.

Anyways, the other thing that I noticed an advertisement of Airtel in the breaks, which was flaunting the fast, easy and anywhere accessibility of face book on Airtel network as the USP of Airtel, this surprisingly made me realize the power of Facebook as a brand and of complete social networking concept that is being leveraged by Airtel and many such companies.

Many companies be it fortune 500 or a start-ups are leveraging Facebook for enhancing there reach to customers. They are putting advertisements, creating fan pages, introducing and launching new products online and why not? It is the fastest word of mouth publicity, with one click thousand people get to know about your company. Most importantly the fans can interact with companies directly on there web page.

There are many reasons for the success of social network sites but the most important reason is that you get to create a society of your own choice virtually that you don’t get in reality and it has long way to go.

Does Electronic Media Behave as fourth Pillar of Democracy?

This is one question that has disturbed me over a period of time. In a democratic country like India media plays the important role for raising the voice of people, asking questions, informing people and forming opinion about any issue.

Therefore two things become very important one is:
• The nature and gravity of issue raised by Media in public Interest
• The sincere and genuine effort of representing the issue or story

The present situation is such in the electronic media industry is getting over-crowded with many news channels coming into existence, making it very competitive space. The news channels are not only competing with themselves but these are also facing generic competition from entertainment channels for getting the maximum eyeball.
All news channels wanted to get the maximum audience therefore this has lead to two noteworthy changes in the news that we see:
• The focus has shifted from content to present-ability (making news a sensation).
• The News channel has brought an element of entertainment in the news

Since the competition has increased ,the profits have reduced therefore news channel specially Hindi new channel not keeping any concern for the content have identified the cost effective way of finding news in the form of few adventures video taken from You tube and making it as 30 minute entertaining news program. For such news they don’t need any journalist on field so saving salary, and other expenses.
English news channels are still better in terms of presentation if not in terms of content as they mostly bring arm chair critics to their panel and discuss few issue that they thing could appeal to their target audience.

All this lead to a paradigm shift in the attitude of whole electronic media industry and the mentors that every news is a product and it has shelf life and therefore it brings me to the question that Is electronic Media behaving as fourth pillar of Democracy.

Gift of God

Filmfare has given best actor award to the God of Hindi Cinema Amithab Bachchan for his outstanding performance in PAA. Many believe that after 60 he has given two of his ever best performances in BLACK and PAA. I wonder what motivates him for this. Love for cinema and by not considering himself larger than life (Being humble self) he call him self student of cinema….
Well I could think of couple of other reasons behind it…… He is the only star from 70 or from the past any generation who had made himself contemporary. Have you ever heard him saying” in Only in my time outstanding films were made “ or “In our time we had great directors” No…..I have heard him saying That”I would like to work with Farhan Akthar or I asked for a job to Karan Johar”. (The God I always benign and humble). In fact he never compared the two era. On the other hand his other colleagues like Vinod Khana, Dharmendra ,Rajesh Khanna have never been able to come out from there glorified past and good old days. His willingness to experiment is also one reason we have seen films like Black and Paa. In 70s scope of experiment was less and directors were not open to different subject. So they made Amithab Bachchan the Angry Young Man which was well suited to the that social scenario .
Though I believe that till now his best performance is in Agnipath .AB Baby would agree with me on this since he also feel that his Paa’s best film is Agni path. I have watched Agni path n no. of times and whenever it comes on TV I just glue with it. I just can’t get enough of Vijay Deena Nath Chouhan . I wondered what made this film so special. This is one of his last films in the Avatar of Angry Young Man. In this film also he has larger than life image but what’s new??? Before also he has performed these kinds of role in films like Deewar,Don etc. So….in Agnipath he has the conviction and confidence that comes with age. In his films of 70 he has adrenaline pumping dialoges from Salim Javed which were delivered with punch by AB so the ratio of quality of dialogue and delivery in creating a scene was 60:40. The dialogue played more important role than delivery but in Agnipath with his conviction and confidence he has given such a delivery that an ordinary dialogue looks like extra ordinary. I think considering that only The very talented Director Mukul Anand experimented with his voice. See…… his proclivity for experimentation …….His style of walking, talking, sitting ,staring ,loving, crying, dying….everything is a class. I think this is the most stylish act portrayed by Bachchan.Though this film belongs to AB the other excellent character is Krishna Iyer YM YA……Mithun Chakrobarty…..with his most energetic performance……For this film Amithabh Bachchan got National Award ……and his best film …….ever…..(I know we can argue on this forever)But don’t forget he is God of Cinema………………n His every film is Gift of God ….. n he will keep surprising you with his gifts ……
Cheers to God n His Gifts …..