Hello everyone and good afternoon here from COP27 Challenge Shake. My name is Christoph Henrich and I have the honour to moderate this concluding first week side event of the IEA at its Atoms for Climate Parillion.  How the melting price fear affects local communities and ecosystems. When I moved here in 1974 with my family the glacier came down as far as there and the ice was blue. Everything has changed. Now we have lots of caterpillars of a kind I've never seen before. My llamas swallow them and it makes them sick. Guillermo Aroquipa a 73 year old farmer from Bolivia. I spend 3 to 4 hours a day fetching water and my neighbours do the same. I'm experiencing body pain and backache as a result of water fetching workload. I'm here, Peru, from Nepal. There's less water now. Seven of my eight children have left the region because there is no way for them to make a living. Most of the men of the village have also gone, heading to the conjoined urban sprawl of nearby La Pazenal Alto in search of work. Returning just once or twice a month to see their wives and families. The Guida, Quispe, a 60 year old mother, grandmother and farmer. Between 1980 and 2010 25% of glacier area decreased in Nepal. At least one third of the glaciers in the Hindu Kushimalaya region will be gone by 2100. This will have a serious implications for downstream water availability and dependent sectors. As these quotes show, climate change in mountain regions is already a reality. It has a severe impact on the local biodiversity, on the ecosystems, the communities and the farmers living in these areas. Globally an estimated one billion people are living in mountainous regions. And these are not the only people affected by climate change. Several billion more are actually dependent on the water resources or natural resources as a whole that are provided by mountains. And these resources such as water for example flowing downstream, being used for industry, agriculture or energy generation. What does nuclear and isotopic techniques have to do with this? Well these techniques can be used as a very effective and precise tool to assess the impacts of climate change in mountainous regions. And can answer questions like what is happening with my wetlands, what is the impact of the wetlands if the glacier is retreating. Or analyzing the sediments that are released from glacier retreat. And see whether they have an impact on post a potential risk for glacier lakes such as glacier outburst floods from these retreating glaciers. These questions we are looking in an inter-regional project on assessing the impact of climate change in the International Atomic Energy Agency. And we are working mainly with two mountain regions which is the Himalaya and the Andes. And I'm very glad to have two of the dear counterparts from these projects here. Can we have the introduction side quick? Thank you. First of all Mr. Bino Teyuyu from Trivon University, Pokhara in Nepal and Mr. Eds and Brahminas from University of San Andres in Bolivia. Of course we want to ensure that the scientific evidence that we are generating by these projects is being picked up by policy makers. And hence I'm very very glad to have Ms. Satnam Shiva Koti here who is a joint secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture in the Government of Nepal. And last but not least we are not doing this project alone. We are working with our friends and partners from the international community because it is utmost important that we work as many stakeholders as possible to transfer the scientific evidence into effective policy. And hence I'm very glad to also welcome here Ms. Diane Kopansky who is a program management officer at the United Nations Environment Program. Now we'll be listening to three presentations first by Bino followed by Edson and then Diana. And then I'm glad to have a panel discussion to discuss a few questions afterwards. So having said this I hand over to Bino who will go to the podium to present. Thank you. Thank you very much Kristoff. Distinguished participants, panelists. Having said the scene about the whole story what we are going to talk today let me start with my own story. As you can see in the slides that isn't this amazing. What you can see is that's the piece where I work and moreover I would like to show you the backdrop which is the Annapurna Himalaya Ranch. And this is this spectacular scene which we can see from our doorsteps that is partly the reason why I could not leave my job. And beside that being a professional from the civil engineering background while I joined the Forestry Institute and I came to know that forest basically is a potential for the mitigation of the climate change. That's another reason why I would like to continue as a faculty in a forestry institute. And Pokhara being one of the top 10 actually tourist destinations in the world and the Annapurna Tech which has been listed by the Lonely Planet as one of the top 10 trekking destinations. So we can imagine but as I said the mountains is not only for the recreational area and the tourism. And as I said beside the tourism activities as well as the recreational it has a lot of to do actually mountains and you know mountains globally is the home for about a million people. And they do provide wide range of the ecosystem service and the products. So as you can see in the slides there we can see a number of goods and the ecosystem services that provide. So in brief if I just point in kind of biodiversity is host around 25% of the biodiversity of the land. And in terms of the forest it goes above the 28%. And when we see the crops six out of the 20 important crops they are grown in a mountain area. So this is what shows how significant is the mountains. And in particular next when we talk about the water services from the mountains it's phenomenal. Like about half of the world's populations they depend upon the water from the mountains for their kind of the drinking irrigation project industry project and under the energy sectors. So and when we see the irrigations I mean the mountain is the one that supplies 40% of the water worldwide to the irrigation sectors. And globally when we see like in Latin America the hydropower is the one which accounts 85% that produces the energy. And similarly in Africa East Africa in Kenya as well like 7 million people that depends upon the fresh water from the Kenya mountain. So this really highlights globally as well how significant is the mountains in terms of the water resources as well. And when we come to the Hindustan Himalayan region where I belong to it's incredible. If you see there like the Hindustan Himalayan we call it as a third full of the planet or of the earth as well. So that means it holds the massive amount of the water in the form of the ice and snow. And in a way it is also called as the water tower of the ocean because I mean it supplies the water nearly to the 3 billion people through it's 10 major river systems. So this is how if something goes wrong in the Himalaya region then we can you know imagine that the catastrophic. And unfortunately this is what happening because of the climate change. So and I mean due to the climate change we have been observing a scientific study that shows that there have been quite a lot of changes in terms of the retreating of this snow in the mountains. And it's not the only sciences but the local people have also clearly observed things. And this is a video that I'm going to show which was prepared by our student and the students from the University of George Masons which is purely educational materials. But in this material the Tendi Sherpa who is a Everest climber as well as he is a trainer expedition leader and he has also witnessed. Let us hear him what he says. At every year because it changed so much just from day to the day it changed a lot. Some of the place the glacier wind back 200 meters in 20 years you can imagine 200 meters and the glacier were during 97 98 those glacier was like 80 meters deep. But now they are down to 30 35. So as I said I mean this is what happening not only in Nepal but if you see along the Hindustan Himalayan range and this kind of changes rather decreased in the snow caps and the ISIS that we can observe. This is one of the pictures that I'm showing you from the north and east of the Mount Everest which clearly shows over the period of the 1980 years the changes. So I mean this kind of things really will be detrimental to the whole planet as we have already come to know that the billions of people. They are livelihood the ecosystem services that has been provided they all will be jeopardizes. So that's why I mean we have to really think about the seriousness of the impacts. And when we see the impacts well as I said along the Hindustan river only so it's around 3 billion people they will be shortage of the water. And the water crisis issue has been emerging a lot actually when we see particularly in the Hindustan Himalayan as well and not only in Himalayan but in other mountainous area say for the Andes say for the Alps. This is what is happening. So this kind of the crisis in Nepal too I mean we have many examples whereby there has been we have to relocate the whole the village from one place to another place. And I would like to show you again another video clips where a country representative Dr. Ghanaguru. He is the WLF country representative and he is also from the Himalayan region and he can say from his own experience and as a professional on this background. So please I would like to request to play the video. This is Dr. Ghanaguru an Nepal country representative for the World Wildlife Fund. Dr. Gurung grew up in the high mountains of Nepal. Mustang region is a beautiful place a nice landscape where most of the people from Nepal see mountains to the north where we see mountains to the south. People begin to see ground water source is not anymore source and many cities are actually getting dried up and water tables getting dropped and dropped and dropped. What is not recharging anymore? Nepal many villages are running out of water and that's why some places in Mumbai Mustang where few villages have need to relocate it. They are actually displaced because they are running out of water and that's the beginning of the impact being felt by ordinary people farmers, livestock herders. So I mean given this scenario now we all have to collectively respond how we are going to deal with this kind of the problem and as from the academic field I mean I prioritize to the research. As the new tools and technologies are emerging so I mean which can add the value not only in terms of the cost but in terms of the efficiency effectiveness as well. And here we have to really employ these kind of the instrumentations because we have to treat mountain as a once of the planet. We cannot of course neglect it so here our this project as Christophe mentions before now we are trying our best to understand the climate impact by installing a very well sophisticated Neurons and sensors, cosmic CRNS, cosmic strain neutron sensors which will basically be one step ahead and that will enable us to do quite a good research and here as we are talking about the installation of this kind of the high good instrumentations and we have to have a good collaborations among all of us be that the government, be that the academic institution, be that the local stakeholders and that's what we are aiming. And as per our plan the sensors will be set up something in March or April and we will have a kind of the meetings among our stakeholders for effective operations of that machine. And luckily the instrument has already been used in my fellows country in Bolivia and I hope my friend will explain about its applicability and that will help at least to us acknowledge this kind of the instrumentations. With this I would like to stop my remarks. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much dear Binot for giving us this shocking well but very important and insightful overview of how the situation looks in the Himalaya and what are the plans that you're having under this project. And now I'm very excited to announce Etzin as the next speaker because as Binot has said Etzin has something to present on that device that Binot had mentioned because he has installed it already a year ago. Etzin, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Kristoff. I want to thank IAA to give us this opportunity to present our inter-regional project and the first results of our project. This is a nice picture that we have with our new device is the Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensor. And this is the place where we're working now. So the Bolivian anti-plano is located at 3,500 meters above the sea level and comprise around one third of the Bolivian land area. It's located within the Andes and enclosed about two mountain ranges and adjacent to the cities of La Paz and El Alto, this is the Cordillera de los Andes. It's an extensive mountain range about approximately 120 kilometers with the snow-capped peaks that can exceed even 6,000 meters above the sea level. This is the Himalaya of the Huayna Potosi mountain with the altitude of 6,000 meters. And it contributes with melt water along with rainfall to supply water for Tunidama. It's an old glacier lake and in the right side toward the Amazon basin, its water is also used for generation for hydropower. This is the city of El Alto and the city of La Paz and in this case Tunidama with a capacity of around 26 million cubic meters. It supplies water for human consumption to the city of El Alto. It's located at 4,000 meters and part of the city of La Paz located at 3,600 meters. One important thing is that about one part of the Bolivian population is concentrated in those cities. However, at the lower part of the snow-capped Huayna Potosi mountain, there are also small communities that use water from glaciers and extensive wetlands for their property activities. In the case of Tunibilash, this is a glacier, Tunibilash is located at 4,400 meters above the sea level. It bases its economy on rising camelids and growing potatoes in a small scale. Above the Tunibilash, in the bottom part of the glacier, there are still a group of families that are settling in this place. They are supposed to be more extreme where they have used glaciers and wetlands for a long time. This is my friend Guillermo. He is an 80 years old resident who was born in this place. I have seen with great concern how the climate changes over time, his environment. Guillermo, with great concern, showed us the current state of the glacier. He told me some stories about his grandparents and he told me that in this period he has even reached the place where he is standing. Locally, I am discussing the glacier retreat drastically in the last decade. This is the case for example of the glacier Chacaltaya in the upper part. We can see how the glacier disappeared or the case of Uyakaya glacier in the bottom part. If you can see on the right side there is a small circle where it is my colleague. We are surveying the front of the glacier and you can see the difference of how the glacier retreated in the last decade. Guillermo knows Guillermo to better understand what is happening with the climate and how he could prepare to face this impact that has hit his quality life. With Guillermo, he asked science, he asked the academic sector to help hoping to have some tools that will help him to detect, for example, extreme events, that means, fruits, frosts. However, the challenge is complex because the relationship between the Andean glaciers and wetlands has not been fully studied in this altitude. Those are some pictures of previous projects conducted also with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The previous use of conventional metals, like isotopes for example, and other techniques have already reached their limits of applicability and more precise and less labor intensive methods are needed now. And thanks to the joint effort between the law and science and the mission together with our policy experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In December 21, the first cosmic radiation sensor in the Andean region was started at an altitude of 4,500 meters above the slurry. And this novel instrument will make it possible to accurately quantify the moisture content of the soil in wetlands and landscape scale with a representativeness of about 30 hectares. So now Guillermo is finally happy to see the equipment already assembled but also my colleague Fabiana, who is an Olivier engineer from the Ministry of Environment and Water. And even for my colleague Trenton Franz, the expert of the International Atomic Energy Agency, he has also a new experience to work at this altitude and this very particular ecosystem. And now this picture, the great day has arrived, the equipment is working, and it starts meeting with its satellite antenna to a data reception center. Guillermo is very proud to have this important device located very close to his home and he's sure that with this new information he will be able to complement his local knowledge and better adapt to impacts to climate change. But it's not only Guillermo and the residents of the Tunis village who will benefit from this information, but also the inhabitants of cities of La Paz and El Alto will also benefit from this information because this instrument will be part of a more ambitious project that is the development of an early warning system that will help to detect and characterize the arrival of extreme events in this region. And after about a year of observation, the results are very promising, a comparison made between the moisture content of the soil at the foot of the Waian Potosi mountain and the rainfall measured at a meteorological station located 24 kilometers from this point compared with the weather station located at the airport. And as you can see in this figure, there is a clear correspondence and representative thickness between the moisture content in the soil and precipitation. And the best experience of its experts from the International Automation Agency has also allowed it to develop a virtual platform to quantify the soil moisture content in the entire area considering all the catchments because the cost-efficiency of data will make it possible to calibrate data from satellite Sentinel-1 with which the monitoring coverage area can be extended. And this effort currently provides two very valuable tools for real-time monitoring of soil moisture content in the study area. And there is a real-time reception of the cost-efficiency and sensual measurements. And on the other hand, there is a virtual platform based on the data from Sentinel-1 satellite. And soon we will be able to real-time soil moisture measurements. We will be able to obtain these measurements in this site. This is the Tunibilesh. And we will use the Abolyan Communication Satellite, the MS-3PAK attack, as part of the early warning system at the community level. And Guillermo and the residents of the Tunibilesh will have also two satellite antennas to receive this information in order to complement the early warning systems. So this device will allow them to have internet connectivity to obtain all the information. And finally, we think that the more important thing, the main objective is not necessary to understand what is the characteristics of the scientific basis of the technologies that we are using. As the case, for example, the Cosmic Racial Sensor. The most important thing is how can we use the results of these devices to provide more information to local residents and how can we adapt face-to-the-impact to climate change. This is what I want to thank you. We are very excited and motivated to learn more about how can we translate science into policies. The importance of partnerships. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. First of all, I want to congratulate you on the work that you have achieved so far on that project. But second of all, I could not have done a better transition to hand over to the next speaker, Diana, who will now give us an overview on what UNEP is doing in the area of climate adaptation and exactly how you set up the importance to translate this data into policy. Diana, the floor is yours. Thank you. We should be able to share some of the incredible also felt regionally. For example, you can see here the high Tatras of the Kopratian Mountains, which run through Poland and Slovakia. Climate changes led to much higher temperatures. Temperature changes in the tree types are showing this. You can see some dead spruce trees here. And of course, this is giving challenges for the people that live in this area, and also affecting tourism, especially ski season in the winter. We know as well that Lake Titicaca is closer. We know that Lake Titicaca is also suffering from higher temperatures, changes in precipitation and loss of water volume. This is obviously going to be affecting people's livelihoods and the health of the ecosystems upon which we depend. And at UNEP, together with the collaboration of the government, we work with academia, civil society organizations to try to find regional solutions to abate climate change, to support climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in the mountains. This can include data sharing, as we're seeing here, also working with expert visits and transfers, as well as helping to define modes, methods and guidelines for restoration techniques. The challenges are regional in nature, but they also need to be solved by many. So I wanted to just emphasize this transboundary element of working across mountains. UNEP's work on tackling the climate crisis in mountains focuses on, first of all, strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity by working across and with many partners. We're also supporting the national adaptation plans and adaptation policy processes and fostering these important science policy platforms for regional as well as global exchanges to happen, where science is available to inform the best possible outcome for decisions. And you may have heard it. We're working on the adaptation at Altitude. It's a collaborative global program. It's funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. And its main objective is to increase the resilience and adaptive capacity of mountain communities and the ecosystem across which we depend to climate change. And we're doing that by gathering data, information and knowledge on effective climate change adaptation. We're also facilitating evidence-based decision making for strengthening mountain adaptation in national, also regional and global policy processes. And this program has four components. In data, and we're doing informing and monitoring, we aim to improve the availability and the use of mountain observation data and information services. In the regional exchange and collaboration area, we facilitate science policy dialogues in four mountain regions and have supported inter-regional collaboration and sharing of experience. In the area of knowledge and sharing, we support community of practice on climate change adaptation in mountains and we have a global database on adaptation solutions, especially for mountain regions. And in the global policy mainstreaming, we foster global advocacy for inclusion of mountain adaptation relevance in policy processes. From the UNFCCCC, where we're here today, to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, we're also working on the Convention of Biological Diversity and supporting the upcoming Global Biodiversity Framework and the Sustainable Development Goals. Mountain targets, mountain specific...


So, welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. Have you ever felt mediocre, untalented, or a step behind your peers? Has fear ever caused you to set your dreams aside and well play it safe? My guest today knows exactly what that feels like and is proof that you can turn things around. In just a minute I'll speak with hotelier, humanitarian, and internationally known artist Jeremy Kohert. Jeremy went from a struggling student to a world renowned photographer who shot the likes of Taylor Swift, President Obama, and even Pope Francis. And now he's sharing his story through his book, I'm Possible, jumping into fear and discovering a life of purpose. Today we're going to discuss how to break free from the cants and shouldn'ts holding us back to become the people we were meant to be. So Jeremy, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. You know, you and I met in a very interesting way and that was very serendipitous and a lot of fun. Do you mind mentioning how we met? Of course. Yeah, it's a crazy story. I've been on my own health journey and I was on my way to LA to be on a Hallmark Channel show and somebody told me to read your book and so I got the book to read on my trip to LA on the flight and back to Nashville. And so I've got your book, I'm flying out to LA and I get to the show and on set I'm backstage kind of waiting for my turn.  And I realized that moment that you and I were the only two guests on that show that day and it was just, I literally could not believe how small the world was in that moment. And so yeah, that's how we met. It's pretty crazy.  You doubted you'd be anything other than mediocre. What kind of struggles did you have as a kid? Yeah, I was just a very quiet, shy, average kid didn't think I would do much in life, didn't make great grades. And so I had very low expectations for myself. And you know, it took a long time to overcome all that. But yeah, growing up, I just was a kind of a BEC student, never a straight A student, you know, that kind of thing. And I lived by the two words I can't, I can't play baseball, I can't play piano, I can't do this, can't do that.  Interesting. This kind of came from internally that these words, so what wasn't coming from your parents? No, it was all internal, just my own self-doubt, fear, you know, all that stuff. So what did you think you were destined to do? I wasn't sure. I figured it would be in the arts, whether it be music or art itself, you know. I was definitely into music growing up, but I wasn't really sure. I was kind of game for whatever. So while you're from Nashville, so I hope you were into music. Yeah, I actually grew up singing professionally in a little kids group. We sang on a Willie Nelson record and John Denver and all these famous artists. So I was a professionally trained vocalist as a child, which is pretty crazy. Wow.  I don't know. I don't.  I think I'll take some pictures. Yeah, we are. We are jumping around. I mean, there's obviously a lot, a lot in between those moments, and it's of course all in the book, but I, yeah, I had a band in college with my brothers and when I could tell that they weren't as serious about it as I was, I decided to turn my attention towards the arts, visual arts. And so I studied graphic design in college, you know, monitoring illustration, and at that point knew that visual arts is what I wanted to do. So graphic design is actually what I did a long time before switching to photography because I actually took one photography class in college and I got a D and nearly failed. And so it wasn't until many years later that I rediscovered photography and fell in love with it. So yeah, you got to help me with that. So you almost, you almost failed photography and it sounds like you were quite a good graphic artist. What was the turning point that you say, you know, I'm so bad at photography. I think I ought to take it up as a career. Yeah, well, it was, you know, photography was one of those required classes in college. I didn't actually want to take it, but I had to and I didn't do very well. And so that was 98, 99, and then it wasn't until 2001 that the first digital camera came about. At that point, I already knew the, all the world of digital editing, I knew Photoshop because I was a graphic designer, I knew all the digital tools. So once a digital camera came into play, that made a lot of sense for me to start playing with. And so I would actually use a camera to scan in images and textures to use in my design. And then living in Nashville, all my friends were musicians. And so once they found out I had a camera, then they would ask me to start shooting them. And then I turned out to be good at it. And then their labels would start hiring me and the rest kind of took off from there. I was discovered by an agent in Hollywood and then she put me on a roster and the next thing I knew I was shooting, you know, big celebrities in Hollywood and around the country. That's fascinating. That was actually what my question was going to be because my guess was that you were going to take pictures to work in graphic arts and one thing led to another. So I should have said that first because then I'd look really smart. But so, yeah, that's fascinating. Were there people along the way who, when this started happening, you know, guided you in this direction? Were there people who really made a difference in your life going this direction? Yeah, of course. I mean, obviously my parents had a massive impact and I talk a lot about that in the book. But then I found this guy who was kind of a, not even a mentor, he was a hero. Somebody I idolized and looked up to and I got to meet him at one point and we became friends. And he's the one that said you should buy this new thing called a digital camera, which that changed my life. And he was also the one to say you should quit your ad agency job and start your own company. And he told me that at the age of 24, I'm now 42 and I've worked for myself ever since that day. He said you should quit your job tomorrow. And I did quit my job tomorrow. And again, that was 18 years ago and I've never, never looked back. Whoa. What? I mean, quitting your job at 24. And doing something that you almost flunked out of in college. I mean, take our listeners and viewers. What goes through your mind? How do you do that? Because a lot of folks are in that position. How the heck do you do that? Yeah, I think oftentimes when we're most afraid to do something, that might mean we're most meant to do that thing. We hear a lot of actors in Hollywood say they chose to do this film because they were terrified of it. And I'm often drawn to the things that I'm really scared of, you know, I'm drawn to jumping into that dark place, that dark place of fear and just kind of not knowing what's going to happen, but being excited. And I like the idea of risk. I like the, even as a kid, I loved, you know, walking into a haunted house. And back in the 80s, they were actually really scary. People could actually grab you and, you know, these days there'd be lawsuits involved, but I remember in the 80s, I just loved like walking into these haunted houses because even as a businessman now, that's what it feels like when you're starting something new, you know, in your world when people are starting a new way of eating a new lifestyle, like it all can be very, very daunting and scary to try something new. But I've found over and over again that I'm just really drawn to that moment, to that feeling.  And I find that even through failure, you're still learning a ton. And so it's really not failure. So have you, now you credit your parents, like you mentioned, with a lot of this, are they, it sounds like they're the real backbones that are there to give you the confidence to leap out into the, into the void? Yeah, for sure. And how, what did they think when you quit your job at 24? They were, you know, worried for the obvious reasons, you know, worried about me, are you sure that's a good idea? Because I had, you know, health benefits and all, you know, all the things insurance, all that good stuff. But I was, you know, I was pretty, pretty hard headed and knew that I needed to do it. You know, it was kind of drowning in the corporate world. I just, it didn't inspire me. It didn't motivate me. And I knew that I enjoyed working with my friends a lot more. So I knew that it was time to jump.   And you think, it sounds like you were kind of born just to take leaps into scary things. Maybe it's definitely, I mean, it's definitely still scary. Like right now, I'm sure we'll get there in a minute, but I'm pursuing a new career, a new journey that is more terrifying than anything I've ever done.   But I just know that those things are part of the journey. You know, they're at 9am tomorrow. When I want to get back to work, they're all going to be there again. But it's just being a professional, that knowing, knowing you're still going to be battling those inner voices. So there, your career as a photographer, were there, were there fearful moments when you were going to take a picture of a star who was intimidating or President Obama or the Pope? How do you, how do you get ready to photograph somebody like that? Yeah, it's, it's wild. For sure. I've had some wild encounters and I do get star struck. I do get nervous, but also I have to remember that they're just another human being like myself. And they also have their fears and insecurities and I just have to treat them like I would treat anybody. You know, I think that's the most important thing is treat the, you know, janitor in my building the same as I would treat, you know, President Obama or whoever I was photographing at the time. And I'm very laid back. My countenance right now in this interview is the same as it is on a big photo shoot, you know. So taking pictures is not changing lives. It's not saving lives. It's it should be fun. A lot of people take away too seriously.  Let's make some cool images and see what happens. So you're so I take it you're not kind of like Austin Powers with his camera going work it, baby, work it. You know, sometimes I kind of have to play that role for sure. I've done some fashion shoots and the client wants me to be a lot more talkative and encourage the model more. So I've had to I've had to find my inner Austin powers a few times. Yeah. Tell me what people on a regular basis can overcome a feeling of, you know, defeat and forge ahead. You got to give give us some tricks because you're right. Everybody fails. And quite frankly, if those of us who are listening haven't failed yet, you haven't been at this long enough. Exactly. I just feel like my story in the book is everybody's story. Like once I've the reason that this, you know, I did the talk. So my buddy, let me rewind. I did my buddy years ago, Johnny Cup, asked me to speak at his conference. I said, dude, I'm not a speaker. I can't remember a talk like that's just not my thing. But then I came back a few days later, I was like, you know what? I think if I drew a talk in Photoshop and made a time lapse video, that could be really cool. And so I did it in the story. The video was about my childhood and how I couldn't do anything. I did bad in photography. I got fired from my first ad agency job, was told I wasn't creative enough. You know, just never had a lot of confidence. But then I overcame all that and went on to become a very successful photographer. But then we're less like success to me didn't mean as much as I hoped it would. Or I thought it would. And so what did matter? And it goes into my journeys as a humanitarian photographer and somebody who does projects that try to help others in need. So I made that talk and then that launched my career as a speaker. So I've now presented that story all over the country. And the reason it's successful is not because of me, but because that story, like you're saying, it is everybody. You know, we all have people look at you, they look at me and they think that we've got it all figured out. And that we're just on this pathway to perfection, you know? But they they have no clue that I'm still wake up every day with all these issues still, you know, insecurities and doubts. So what does it mean to be a humanitarian photographer? Yeah, I guess it could be interpreted a lot of different ways. I think for me, it just means when you use a camera to help in times of need. So I've done wildfire humanitarian projects. I've done hurricane disaster relief projects. I'd like to tell stories for. So, for example, after the wildfires in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a couple of years ago, they destroyed just it was devastating, much like the California wildfires. And I went down there and just told stories of people and what they lost through drones, using a drone to photograph the damage with a white mattress in the middle of all of it, with the person laying on the mattress. So you could really see the perspective and scale. And then we built we built crowdfunding pages for each of those people. And then I try to spread the word to Time Magazine did a huge feature on that project. And so I think it's just anytime you're using your camera to to offer humanitarian aid in some sense. Yeah, and you're you're quite the humanitarian now. And I understand you've you've got this exciting new project. You want to talk about that? How is that an offshoot of what you've been speaking about? A little bit, yeah. So basically on May, I'm sorry, April 30th, 2012, I was in Los Angeles for a photo shoot and I was walking through a hotel to the meeting. And just randomly, I had just a ginormous idea for a new hotel brand. Granted, keep in mind to have no experience in hospitality, nor does anyone in my family. I don't even have any friends in the hospitality industry. So this was as random as random could be. I mean, I just out of nowhere had a really big idea for a hotel. And the idea was that he'd be in that moment was like, there should be a hotel where everything in the building is connected to causes and nonprofits. So that when people choose this hotel brand, they are changing the world around them for the better. And I had the idea to call it the purpose hotel. And so it was really I knew it was a good idea, but I was still terrified of it. I was 35 years old at the time. Freelance photographer wet wet photographer goes and builds a global hotel chain. So I pocketed the idea for three years because I was so afraid of it. It was too big. And then in 2015, I started taking steps towards that. We launched a Kickstarter to the public and we raised nearly 700 grand to kind of get the ball rolling. That money is obviously gone to all of our many startup, you know, architects and designers and attorneys and websites and graphic designers, all kinds of stuff. And now we're well on our way. We should break ground on our first hotel in Nashville next year. And so there's a lot happening. But, you know, it turns out you can build a hotel from scratch. It's pretty crazy. So how? Yeah. So you don't know anything about this, right? Yeah. So and so you say, I'm going to open a Kickstarter campaign and I want people give me money to do something I know nothing about. What what goes through your head? Where do you know, where do you get the inner strength to to pull this off to to pitch yourself? And I actually want to take an excerpt from your book. You use you use the old saying fake it until you make it. Is that kind of your mentality in all this? Yeah, I'm a photo career wife, for sure. On the hotel front, obviously, it's a much bigger business that involves a lot more people. And so to answer your question, probably my biggest strength is how well I know my weaknesses. And so I go and find people that are that fill in the gaps of my weaknesses. And so with the hotel, you know, when when I made this the decision to launch a Kickstarter, it actually took us about a year before we launched the Kickstarter. And during that year, you know, I got a business partner who is extreme left brain and knows the hotel industry. And together, you know, we we got to go on now. We have a CFO and advisory board, a lot of other people that do know what they're doing that do have decades of hospitality experience. And so it's definitely not not me anymore. I'm a part of a much bigger team, but it did take me to kind of get the vision going, find the put the pieces together.  And so it's a lot of work. That reminds me of a song from one of my favorite reggae artists, Shaggy. And Shaggy's got a song that his mother said if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And just hearing you say that just brought that song into my mind. And I think, yeah, what you just said is brilliant advice. Surround yourself with with smarter people and it'll make you smarter. Yeah, I can't even convey how funny it is for me to be in hotel meetings now with all these just brilliant business people. I don't even know what a lot of the words they're saying means. Like I'm over there acting like I'm working and I'm actually like googling the words they're saying just so I can understand what they're what they mean. You know, so yeah, I'm in way over my head. But again, thankfully, I do have a business partner and a CFO and a lot of advisors and people on a team that they know what they're talking about. But you're not just the pretty face of this operation. Are you? No, so I've spent seven years. It's not just the idea that I had. It's probably a couple hundred ideas within the hotel because I've spent these seven years really thinking about, OK, what happens when they enter the room? What happens when they walk in the elevator? Which organizations are going to be involved? What would those organizations do? How will the soaps be connected? The blankets, the art, the furniture. So I'm really the creative director, if you will. I think through all the creative elements, the I care about what people are going to smell, how they're going to feel, how they're going to be welcomed, what they get, what the staff is going to say to them when they walk in the hotel. That's really where my head lives, you know, so I guess you could call that the the visionary, the creative director. Yeah, when it comes to the day-to-day operations, that is definitely not my role. OK, so getting back to something you said earlier, are there are there other misconceptions out there about successful people? You've obviously mentioned one that this automatically didn't happen for you. Any other misconceptions about successful people? You certainly see successful people in your life. Yeah, I mean, gosh, I think there's misconceptions now every day about all of us because social media is the the king of misconceptions. We're all, you know, posting our highlights and the best moments of our lives. And it's really can really cause some serious, even for me, some serious depression. Because anytime you go on social media, you are you are looking at all the things you didn't get to do, all the people you didn't get to hang out with, all the events you didn't attend, all the parties you didn't attend, all the cars you don't drive, all that, you know. And so it's it's kind of poisonous, I think, for a lot of us, you know, and I really feel for young people, you know, you and I get to grow up without social media, which I think was amazing to not have it growing up. And so I really feel for people. And so, you know, I don't know why I got off on that tangent. Could you ask me about, you know, kind of celebrities, but or successful people? And I mean, there's so many concepts, misconceptions. Like I said, they're all insecure. They all have their their battles they're facing. And we just from the outside get to see the, you know, the winds. So, yeah, it's important for us to remember that. Even even as a guy whose job it is to, like here, here's how a photo shoot works. So, you know, let's say whatever blank, beautiful female celebrity walks into my studio, they've hired the best hair makeup people, right, in the world to do their hair makeup. The best wardrobe stylist did to make them look literally perfect. Then my job is to light them the most flattering way possible. And then we take 2000 photos in one day. Then we narrow that, you know, down to one photo. Then that one photo gets into the best skin retoucher and the planet that then goes in pour by pour and fixes their skin. Then the poor teenager reading the magazine looks at that photo and thinks, oh, I wish I looked like that. Little does she know that that celebrity also looked like crap when they walked in the door for the photo shoot. You know, and so it's amazing how much work goes into making celebrities or successful people look the way they do. Nobody, even the models actually, they all look like everyday people when they walk in the door. Should we have a caption at the bottom of all these pictures saying, warning professional celebrity on a closed course, don't try this at home? Yeah, exactly. Thankfully, there is a trend now where a lot of magazines, I've seen Target do it, they're starting to show photos that are not retouched. They're showing men and women that are not super thin. There is a trend towards showing real life, which I think is amazing. Yeah, and I think as you just kind of ripped on, we've got to do something about the power of social media. I'm not smart enough to figure out what that is, but it's certainly capable of ruining an awful lot of lives. Besides the good benefit, there's a lot of bad benefits. I don't know, luckily my children are grown, but I have two grandchildren that luckily are very young yet, but I fear for them in the coming years. Luckily their parents are pretty dog-grounded, so we'll see. Yeah, exactly. All right, so give me one more example. I think this hotel concept is fascinating. We hear all about recycling and we hear all about hotels that are using indigenous people. It sounds like you're kind of putting this all in one concept. Give me an example, what can a guest expect? I mean, what's gonna be in the room that makes your hotel so different than what's out there? Yeah, it'll be pretty thorough. So for example, when you walk in your room, when you access the internet, there'll be free internet where you can upgrade the internet, but when you upgrade, that money will go to fight against human trafficking through an organization called International Justice Mission. When you order room service, you'll feed a child a need through food for the hungry. Your blankets will be sewn by survivors of human trafficking. The artwork will come from humanitarian photographers and other artists out there. There'll be a charity water well in the lobby that teaches people about clean water and the importance of that. So kind of wherever it makes sense to make a connection to a humanitarian cause, we will do that. We're talking to organizations where they teach homeless men how to build furniture. So the desk you sit on to work at your hotel will most likely be built by a homeless person who was employed to build that desk. And so the goal is to create as many jobs out there for people locally, domestically and internationally. And if the hotel doesn't do that, then it's just into the hotel brand, which I find quite boring. And so we have to be successful in our mission to help people all over the world. That's fantastic. And thank you for mentioning charity water. I'm a personal supporter of charity water and profits from Gundry MD go to charity water. That's awesome. You know, with Gundry MD, we've built now over 1,000 wells. It's incredible. For people who had dirty water. And I've had the privilege to go to Ethiopia this year and actually see this in action. So good for you. It's a phenomenal organization.  Yeah, Scott Harrison is a dear friend of mine. He's one of the first people ever told about the hotel idea. So Scott and I are very connected and he wants to build an actual functioning well in the hotel. So we're really excited about that. Well, that's gonna be fun. Maybe he'll let me come and help drill it while you're there. And so we now have two degrees of separation. Absolutely. And obviously this, I would think goes without saying but in the hotel, clean eating is gonna be truly a massive priority for us. I don't believe something should be called the purpose hotel and we should be selling junk food in the hotel. And so I'm really excited to push healthy living, clean eating hardcore through a hotel. That's fantastic. You and I met because of a health issue that you were facing and you don't have to but if you feel like it, can you update me on how things are going? Sure, yeah, I found out just this year that I have a disease called Friedrichs of Taxia. And for years ago, somebody noticed that I couldn't walk straight. And I was athletic in high school and college. I played a lot of sports and so that was news to me. I was like, what do you mean I can't walk straight? Of course, again, and sure enough, he was right. I couldn't walk in a straight line. And ever since then, it's gotten a lot worse. I sometimes walk like a drunk. And so I am on a long journey to figure it out, you know, to figure out what can help. And I'm a big fan of what you do and what you teach. And so far, I have struggled just personally to find the discipline to perfectly follow your diet but I believe 1,000% that it works. And I believe you, when you told me that your plan has specifically helped people with the Taxia, I very much believe that because I did quit a lot of things hardcore last year. I quit gluten and dairy and soy and corn and coffee, alcohol, sugar or fried foods, you know, all of that. And I saw just a 1,000% turnaround. All my symptoms went away. And then I've also obviously tried the lectin-free and it does work, absolutely. I just travel a lot and I struggle to follow diets when I'm traveling, sitting with a client at a restaurant and there just simply are no options for me. So it's definitely a struggle but I'm definitely a huge supporter and believer. Well, let me tell you a success story from yesterday. Cool. And I think this may give you some more motivation. A young 34-year-old gentleman came to me with his wife and he had some neurologic symptoms and I won't go into them. And we did some very specialized tests from a company that looks not only for leaky gut but looks at whether or not you react to lectins but also looks for a lot of markers of brain injury, autoimmune markers of brain injury. And when we first did this test actually about two months ago, he was on a gluten-free diet but there was tons of gluten in him because he traveled a lot and he was shocked and we found that in fact he was sensitive to a number of lectins, including spinach. So there's a lectin and spinach that I won't go into today but he had two markers of brain inflammation, one of which was a demyelinization which correlates with developing MS. And that got his attention and so his wife said, look, for the next two months, I'm gonna cook all your meals if you're traveling, I'm gonna put them in things wherever you go, you can heat them in the hotel, you're gonna do this.  I am a smart guy, I'm a good businessman. This was the hardest thing, it was like withdrawing from drugs and I can't believe how hard this was and unless my wife had kept at me, I would have stopped and it was really hard.  So all I can tell you is it is worth it, I just saw it again yesterday, it's really hard and good for you and listen, I'll volunteer to help you with the restaurant and what should go into those foods. Oh man, we would love that, we would really love that. Because as you know, I'm on a mission for this and heck, if you're gonna have a charity water well in the hotel, I'm there. Absolutely, yeah, we can't wait to partner with him but I'll take you up on that, I will definitely hit you up because we've already had a lot of meetings about the restaurant and the food and all that so that would be an honor to work with you on that. Well, I was the nutritional advisor for Six Senses Hotels and Resorts and the entire Eat With Six Senses program is mine and my colleague, Patrick Wahlberg, so I know how to do this and implement it so I'm happy to help. I love it. Yeah, what do you hope people take away from reading your book? I hope they find themselves in my story and I hope that they see that truly anything is possible. I'm building a hotel from scratch, a global hotel chain, like if I can do that as a failure in school as the guy who got fired from his first job and the guy who nearly failed photography, if I can do all this, then just imagine what you the listener can do. Yeah, is there anything scaring you now or is this hotel scaring you to death and don't wanna think about other things? The hotel is definitely still scaring me every day. It's a just, I can't even express how big and complex it is, but I'm doing another project in the Bahamas, hurricane relief project in the Bahamas that'll be quite complicated as well and it's certainly scary, but also exciting to think that we can possibly help. What do you do for yourself? What's your downtime other than having two dogs? Well, I have four kids and so my- Oh. I have a 13 year old and 11 year old that are biological, then I have an adopted son who is eight and an adopted daughter who is seven and so we are fully busy with sports and all the things. And any downtime doesn't sound like that. Yeah, not a lot of downtime. I travel a lot, my wife's a real estate agent so we have multiple careers that we're juggling, but anytime I'm with my family in the outdoors that's pretty much a good downtime spent for me. All right, yeah, spend more time outdoors. That's right. I agree. It's been great having you on the program and to see again and where can listeners find out about you and your work and how do we contribute to the hotel or urge you on? Yeah, thank you for asking. It's all pretty easy. I'm at Jeremy Cowart on all socials. I'm at JeremyCowart.com. The book you're holding, my new book, I'm Possible can also be purchased on my website. And then for the Purpose Hotel, it's just the PurposeHotel.com and the Purpose Hotel on Socials, so. And is this gonna be a worldwide hotel? Is that your vision? That is certainly the vision because it's simple. The more hotels there are, the more people are helped and so yeah, absolutely, as many as possible. Love the concept and I love what you're doing. Thank you so much. Keep us informed. We'll do it. All right, take care. Are you too? Okay, it's time for the audience question. Liz851 on Instagram wrote in and asked, I'm new to plant paradox. Does the food have to be organic? Where I live, we don't have access to many organic items. And if we do, they're very pricey. Will I be able to do the program without buying organic? Great question, Liz. And I talk about all this often. So one of my favorite sayings is do what you can with what you got wherever you are. No, you don't have to do organic to do this program. Do I think the more organic you do, the better? Yes, in fact, there's some very good human data looking at families who were asked to eat organic for two weeks and the level of pesticides and heavy metals and herbicides in their body, in their blood dramatically fell in two weeks time just by changing to organic. Now the other good news is major retailers like for instance, Walmart have now pretty much insisted that the organic foods that they have and their organic suppliers are gonna charge the same amount for organic as conventional products. And you're gonna see a movement of other major retailers following Walmart's lead. So Walmart's almost everywhere. And if it's not in your town, it's probably in the town next door. And it's probably well worth a trip to go to a Walmart. Nothing for or against Walmart, but good for them for making organic possible for families who otherwise can't afford organic. So, but do what you can do. Get rid of junk food and if a conventional head of Romaine lettuce is all you can afford, that's a whole lot better than a bag of Cheetos, okay? So that's the message. Review of the Week. We got the Review of the Week, PH0813 from Apple Podcasts writes, I start every Monday morning off with your amazing podcast. I've read all your books, thank you very much, and continue to apply the vast knowledge you provide in them for my health and diet routines daily. I have learned so much over the last few years about the food industry and thank you for being a reliable and valuable resource, for making this truthful information readily available. Well, thank you for writing that. That's actually why I do this, to get you the information to improve your health. And please, if you're enjoying these podcasts, write in and tell me, I actually read this and it really motivates me to keep doing what I do. And if you've got a question, please write us. I read your questions and we'll have a podcast about it, I promise, we'll get to you. So thanks so much for writing, I really appreciate it. Before you go, I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts, because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you.


Now it is time for our first session with a very powerful keynote speaker. Well, he's the Executive Director of Foods and Refreshment for Hindustan Unilever and the Vice President FNR for Unilever South. He joined the company as a management trainee in 1999, post his MBA from IAM Kolkata. Over the past 25 years, he's had a stellar experience spanning customer development and marketing across a range of categories. He's held leadership roles in CD across general trade and modern trade. He was previously the Executive Director, HUL, and the Vice President, South Asia for Customer Development. Through his leadership, he has successfully transformed HUL's customer development function moving to a technology backed strategy and data-driven approach to problem solving. Well, he completed the Senior Executive Leadership Program from the Harvard Business School, where he represented the batch as a speaker at the Harvard Club Dinner. He is a big buff of Bollywood movies, cricket, and is a big believer in technology-led process innovations. Well, ladies and gentlemen, now let's put our hand together for none other than and welcome on the stage and screen our speaker, Mr. Srinandan Sundaram, the Executive Director of Foods and Refreshment, FNR Hindustan Unilever, Limited and Vice President, FNR Unilever, South Asia, and he's going to be talking about content marketing from creation to commerce. Well, with this, we humbly welcome our speaker on the stage and screen. Thank you so much for joining us, Srinandan. With this, the stage and screen is all yours. How are you doing today? So thank you everyone, and thanks for that kind words of introduction. I really hope I'd be able to live up to it. What I'm really going to speak to all of you is about content to commerce, and really more than anything, share some of the principles and some of the approaches that we take at HUL, which I'm sure a lot of you will find useful. But before we deep dive on to content, I really thought it'd be useful to understand why this particular topic. And if we just draw a macro view, when we talk to a lot of our partners, you've got on the one hand, where you see the YouTube logo, saying people are speeding up to 2x or 3x and consuming content, and it becomes really difficult for us as advertisers then to be able to draw the message when people are really zooming at it fast. Then the other bit, which all of us I'm sure are aware, is increasingly we are becoming much more restless and our attention span is a lot lower. So from the world of 30-second advertising, the attention span that time used to be 12 seconds. Now the attention span is 8, and if you listen to the world of the Facebook and the Google, it comes down to 3 and 6 seconds. And therefore it becomes much more difficult for us to drive the message that a brand wants to give when the consumer is willing to give you this lesson, attention span. But here's where the inherent duality exists. On the one hand, when it comes to seeing advertising in isolation, we're getting 3, 6, 8 seconds to see. But on the other hand, each of us and our consumers are perfectly fine binge watching if the content is relevant. And therefore, if you look at average time spent consuming TV, look spending on OTT platforms, that time is significantly higher. And many of us have spent hours binge watching something as recent as Squid Games where you just don't want to swap the remote. You don't want to change the channel, but you want to spend hours watching it. And therefore, at the center here, sits what people are consuming. And the truth is people are consuming content. And hence it's only logical and it makes sound business sense to try and see how the brand can leverage content and therefore present itself. And that's really where my pitch is. It's because this is where the party is. Either we go down the three seconds, which is important. We continue to do what we are very good at, which is 30 seconds, but equally go to the emerging party, which is about 30 minutes, three hours and four hours. Now that's really the setup. And that's my view of looking at how content is so crucial for brands to be able to explain their own narrative and their own story. Now the beauty of this is it requires a fundamental shift in thinking. What's the fundamental shift? They're used to a certain ecosystem of brand, a creative agency and a media partner, where you work in isolation or with two, three partners to create content like a 30 seconder. You then work with a media agency who deploys it in the best possible manner. That world changes a lot more when you start looking at how to partner with content. And therefore what we did as a company is really look at a much more collaborative approach on content creation because this is a space where we as manufacturers, as marketers are not the experts. And one consistent approach, and this is the fourth year in a row that this is happening, is about content day, which is really bringing the experts into our company and therefore being able to understand their point of view and therefore educate us on what's the best way to weave in content. I'm just gonna play a short video to give you a sense of what it is like during those days when we do the content day. While you see a lot of visuals which are about the physical content day, COVID hasn't helped creating the physical ambience for the last two years have been virtual, but we've stuck to this discipline of making sure there's a content day where experts come, share with us, share with the brand team, what brands can do in their space. Every time there've been some interesting ideas that have come our way to get our brand message across. So far, I really like the YouTube creators stall. I think it's interesting to say, how do you leverage these million-plus creators to bring brand-purpose message alive? My God, this place is just alive with so many things. There are creators, there are publishers, there are platforms, all of these. I really love the vibe. Usually, you don't expect that brand events are gonna have so much energy, there's music, there's all these fun little booths. Great talent on stage, right from Gully Boys, Mati Bani, that's Nirali Kartik. I love it. I wish I could come here. So you've got a sense, and I think the larger message here is, we can't create content ourselves, the broader ecosystem we've got to reach out to, which also means we've got to be crystal clear on what is the essence of what the brand wants to say, because that's what the content creator is gonna take and try and figure out how it best leaves into content. Now, this can be a very, very wide area, so I thought for the benefit of the audience, we share the structure and the approach we use. So our path to breakthrough content is really around these pillars. One is on purpose, and I'll give you some examples with some results to tell you how this works for the best of the brands. The second is platforms, then pop culture, eventually partnerships and performance. I'll move to the first one, where we nearly would truly believe that brands with purpose grow. Now, you could say that that's a pitch or a corporate pitch from a company, but I'm gonna share an example of this being actually put to test that scale and the impact it has had on the brand. India, a country where 90% of marriages are arranged. They say marriages are made in heaven, but not till they are approved by families. Dars believes that beauty should be a source of confidence, not anxiety. It launched Stop the Beauty test campaign with real life rejected brides to challenge this unfair tradition. Partnering the largest matrimony platform, Shadi.com, we created history by making every bride profile nudge every bride seeker with inspiring real beauty messages. These rejected brides became the cover of leading fashion publishers for the first time. Purpose platforms like Humans of Bombay feature their inspiring stories. Popular influencers came forward and encouraged other women to share their real stories on social media. Stop the Beauty test was a fully integrated, high-scale, high-impact, and highly engaging campaign. Dove created history by challenging matrimony and media platforms and killing the beauty biases and stereotypes with its real beauty stands. It built confidence and stirred conversations with women posing a question. How much beauty is enough? Yes, you saw an example of real scale and you saw the results at the end. So it delivers what is good for society and picking up a key theme, but at the same time does incredible benefit to the brand. Now, when you see the video, at what point it is a brand pitch and what point it is a great content, is an ever-ending debate, but that's what powerful brands can do. They can spark a movement and therefore generate a host of content which our consumers would love to see. The second bit is on creating platforms for engagement. This is another area where content is really king or queen, I might say. And just to share an example again from a very different category within the HUL fold, I'm going to share this example with you. In the world of home care, Clinipedia began as an exclusive web destination, housing over 2,000 pieces of solution-led content that were prioritized as per growing search categories like laundry, floor, and kitchen cleaning, made in multiple formats to be easily demonstratable. Now with the intent of furthering discovery, Clinipedia had to be present on the platforms our homemakers consumed most. On YouTube, where she's five times more likely to seek cleaning solutions, we created DIY videos for trending searches. As homemakers spent one out of four minutes on social, we customized our solutions as gifs and infographics to make them instantly shareable. As no two news feeds looked the same, her social persona determined what solution she saw. We partnered with Daily Hunt, a content aggregator since 60% of our homemakers were more comfortable with vernacular consumption. Fueled by Consumer Insights, optimized basis platform, personalized by identifiable traits, Clinipedia today is a virtual content engine. That's again a category approach in using a platform. Moving forward, I mean, having spent about 12 years in sales, I had to make this pitch it's from my own stable and one of the things that we're doing on a brand called Boost. Sports is entertaining because it has always had a way to measure success, speed, strength, distance, and a lot more. Apart from the one that keeps every legend going, Stamina. Boost is a chocolate health drink brand for kids that stands for Stamina being the secret behind champion cricketers. So we joined hands with a team of data scientists and analysts from Sports Interactive to develop a first of its kind currency that measured Stamina. Introducing the Boost Stamina Meter. The Boost Stamina Meter made its first appearance as the Indian Premier League, the Super Bowl of India. Stamina scores of 184 players were displayed in real time. Leading commentators and experts reiterated the impact of Stamina on a game. With 500 plus contextual creatives, Boost Stamina Meter killed a one stop destination for all things Stamina. The campaign garnered 35 million video views, a whopping four billion impressions, aided awareness increased by 1000 basis points, market share increased by 900 basis points. It generated four times the value of a typical IPL campaign. Not just that, Boost Stamina Meter created an answer to a very important question in the world of sports. What's your Stamina score? Yeah, sports. That's therefore the one you saw on popular culture with cricket. The other bit which we're learning and building a lot of content around is partnerships. And this is really commerce with cord cutters because increasingly there's about 25 million audience who doesn't see most of television and they're onto completely different genre. And here's an example of a hygiene brand called Life Boy delivering its message. Traditionally, Indians eat food with their hands. However, only 35.8% Indian households wash hands before eating. Life Boy, India's number one hygiene brand has always relied on traditional media to educate consumers on the importance of hand hygiene. National lockdown led to a rise in online food ordering. We saw this as an apt opportunity and struck an alliance with India's number one food delivery app, Swiggy. We built brand awareness by nudging the consumer with a 10 second contextual brand video while he tracked his food order. We transformed 2.1 lakh Swiggy delivery agents into ambassadors of change, reminding consumers to wash hands. We served the consumer with an additional reminder through push notifications post delivery. The consumer asked for their intent for purchasing Life Boy liquid hand wash. We created a listing for Life Boy products on Swiggy's B2B app Staples Plus. The video reached 4 million consumers. The brand received a phenomenal positive feedback. Life Boy liquid hand wash packs reached 1.8 million households. Life Boy stood out by breaking away from the usual go-to-media avenues and made hungry Indians ask one another. Khaane se pehle haad doeya kya. Traditionally... And of course, then more conventional is deep to see. This is easier. Most of you are aware of this. We have our own DTC with lackmayindia.com, which is really personalization at scale to drive imagery engagement and of course commerce. And therefore, in this case, it's much more simple. There's an algorithm which determines what's the remarketing creative is. You deploy the creative, enrich data profile with the attributes and then you bucket individuals into cohort so that what she is most keen to see, that's what is served through the entire portfolio that we have as lackmayindia. So here are a few examples that you saw covering the different forms in which we can weave our message into content. And just to bring that together in one bit, this is at the heart of what it is, which is the path to breakthrough content can come for brands through their purpose. It can come through a platform so it need not just be a brand, it can be agnostic to brand within a category. It can definitely come with pop culture. It can come through partnership and you can do it through performance marketing. And I think the common thing around all of this is requirement for us as marketers to be really clear and pithy about what is it that our brand stands for and then be much more open, inclusive and inviting for various content creators to dabble with our brand. They'll get close to what you intend to do as a brand if you're very, very clear on what your brand stands for and it is evocative enough for content creators to create content. In many ways, it requires a lot more humility to say that I will control what the central theme of my brand is and then open it up for consumers and content creators to make sure they're able to engage with it and therefore put it out in front of consumers to consume and spend time with. And remember, spend time with is the biggest problem that each of us face and I would bring back your attention to three seconds, six seconds, 30 seconds and then 30 minutes or more. And since our consumers are spending time on certain kind of content and binge watching, the other side of the argument is you really don't have choice. You've got to be able to view in content otherwise the time people are spending to understand what our brands have to say is diminishing by the day, if not by the minute. In summary, my personal take on it is content is critical to drive new age commerce. New age commerce is not just about lower funnel marketing. It is as important to build brand attributes, build the brand positioning through upper funnel and lower funnel. And therefore for this to be done effectively with a large population of our consumers either watching content on the phone at the rural side of the country or watching content without TV in the extreme top. In both cases, weaving in content is the best bet for brands to pitch their story and for consumers to spend more time engaging with the brands. That's what I had to share. Thank you. So much, Mr. Shunandan Sundaram for joining us and giving us this experiential sharing you had, it was great to have you today to kickstart. Thank you once again.


If you don't know about me I used to be a huge underachiever but through obsessive self-improvement I found my success earned a college scholarship played for my national futsal team a youtube channel with over 100 million views I've helped players worldwide and I'd love to help you improve faster and achieve more. If you like this content check out the soccer success planner you can download it for free there's a link in the description below and for advanced training check out the online soccer academy. If you like this content check out the soccer success planner you can download it for free there's a link in the description below and for advanced training check out the online soccer academy.


The underfunding of schools in Los Angeles, California. South Mississippi. In Minnesota. North Carolina. Missouri. Washington, D.C. The underfunding of schools in New Mexico is devastating to our children. I don't know about you, but when I hear the phrase, the underfunding of school, my head and my wallet explode. Tax revenue per student in public K-12 schools is up 24% nationally over the past two decades, and that takes inflation into account. In New York, where I live, real per pupil revenue has increased by a mind-boggling 68% over that same period. The public schools here are now shelling out more than $30,000 per kid, or more than double the national average. And that doesn't even include the $16 billion extra that New York's system got in federal and state funding for COVID-19 relief. Yet New York's public schools are still as terrible as the Mets, the Jets and the Giants, with only a third or fewer of students up to grade level in eighth grade reading and math, according to their scores on a nationwide test that's the gold standard for measuring performance. $30,000 a year puts the lie to the argument, pushed by unions and progressive advocates that more money will fix schools. More money hasn't helped the rest of the country boost their scores either. None of this is a mystery. The connection between bigger spending and better outcomes is weak at best and nonexistent at worst. Certainly the new money in New York hasn't gone to fundamentally reform what gets taught or how or under what circumstances. According to a report by my colleagues at the Reason Foundation, teacher compensation is way up in New York, especially when it comes to health insurance and pensions, which have grown by 147%. Nationwide, a dozen states increased spending on teachers' benefits by over 100%, and only three states kept the increase below 10%. Costs for things like administration, support staff and transportation are up 24%. Dumping more money into a broken system is like trying to fix a leaky pipe by pouring more water into it. What needs to happen is a revolution in how education is conceived and delivered. Over the past 20 years, New York has allowed publicly funded charter schools, which must attract and keep students in order to stay in business. The best charters have wait lists even though they get less money than traditional public schools. But like most places, New York caps the number of charters and it doesn't even allow education savings accounts, tax credit scholarships and vouchers that would allow more families to escape traditional public schools. Increasing the amount and variety of school choice, though, is exactly what New York and the country need to be doing. We're not going to seriously improve educational outcomes for our kids if we don't fundamentally change how we educate them. When you look back 20 years, virtually every other service in our lives from coffee drinks to media to medicine has gone through multiple revolutions. Everything is more geared toward the individual. It's more responsive and not just cheaper in real terms, but better too. K-12 education is still basically the same as it was when today's parents were in school. The only difference is the price tag, which just keeps going up and up.


Welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcast, the newsroom for telecom and data center professionals. I'm Laura Noland coming to you from VirtualPTC 21. Joining me today is Mizu, Chief Marketing Officer at Colt Technology Services, the industry leading network and voice services provider. Mizu, welcome to JSA TV. Hi, Laura, thanks for having me. Let's get started just recently back in November. Colt unveiled a new organizational structure and three-year strategy. So what does that mean for the company and your customers? Sure, before I dive into the actual strategy itself, let me explain a little bit about how we came up with the strategy because I thought it was quite unique in a way. So our CEO, Kerry Gilda, she was appointed as a CEO in May last year. Last year. The first question that she asked us was very different. It was a very simple question, but very powerful. So that was a question. She asked, what kind of company do you want Colt to become in three to five years? And she actually asked us what sort of company we want Colt to be. And that's how the strategy discussion actually started. And we came up with 10 work streams to think through our strategy. And I was fortunate enough to call on one of our strategy work streams, which was about network expansion and network optimization. So if you think from a very traditional marketing role, it was usually involved when we identify market dynamics or go-to-market strategy for specific services or products that we are launching in a market, et cetera. But it was more to do with, where do we want to expand our network as a next step? And where do we want actually, how can we optimize our connectivity to serve the bigger needs and demands from our customers? And that actually made us think through what we want to achieve as a company. And I think it was very different approach to, I've been in this industry for almost about 20 years now, but it was very different approach to any other sort of approach I've seen. So we started to look into it and it was completely cross-functional. So we had to break the silo and speak to, for example, technology department and operation department to understand what we can do to expand our business to specific areas and talk to sales team and to come up with our strategy in that specific work stream. And Kerry consolidated this view and basically came up with our strategy which addresses four areas that we think is the right way to go. So it's really built by all of us and we have special attachment to this strategy because it's not something that are given from top end or it's not really given by consulting firm that usually comes in when we come up with a strategy as well. So that's what I wanted to share because I thought it was completely unique. And when it comes to the actual strategy I mentioned about four areas but one of them is really about becoming enterprise enabler. A lot of companies go through digital transformation because the environment that they in has changed quite a bit from last year due to the pandemic as well. According to Gartner there are about 60% of entire workforce actually working from home. And it was actually expected to reduce by the end of last year but I think due to the second and third wave of COVID I don't think that has actually reduced across the world as well. So we had to really think through our strategy to see through how we can actually help enterprise organization to basically adapt to this new world and hence we decided to actually look into for example services like SD1 which allows those enterprise firms to design the network infrastructure to be able to accommodate different type of demands from the home employees who are working from home or people that need to use for example corporate telephone number in order to communicate with their customers as well. We've taken that into consideration and focusing on for example services like SD1 or cloud-based solutions. A lot of thoughtfulness and strategy and planning that went into the brand. So hot off the presses, fast forward. The new brand just live a few days ago. So as the CMO what does the updated branding really say then about the company's trajectory? Sure. Our brand actually had changed a couple of times previously. We started our business in 1992 and Colt actually stands for City of London Telecom. So when we started our business from our headquarters in London and then we refreshed our brand to be called Colt Technology Services in 2015, oh sorry, 2010. So basically that was the time we realized it's more than telco service that we are providing. So we renamed ourselves as a technology service provider and also we've stayed away from mentioning about London one single location because we expanded our business into Europe at that time. And then we actually expanded our business to globally about 2015. So it was about six years ago when we started to use the previous brand. And we basically developed ourselves as a telco service provider who each covers 20 different countries and also 52 metro cities locations. And we wanted to actually embrace the facts of us supporting enterprise companies going through all the digital transformation that they are going through as well. And we wanted to actually embrace the sustainability as well as the diversity of the company as well. As you can probably see, our CEO is a female and more than 50% of our senior executives are actually female as well. And maybe as you can see, I'm not originally from UK, I'm from Asia and that represents really nice coverage of many different regions as well. And we wanted to actually come up with a brand that can represent that diversity and sustainability that we are building to give back to the society and care about the environment that we are in while we emphasis on supporting our customers as a technology service provider. Wonderful. Well, you did touch on Mizzou just a few moments ago, SD WAN. So last month, your team launched SD WAN 2.0. Why is this one better at better SD WAN experience? Right, SD WAN previously or originally was really about optimizing all the routes on the MPLS network or IP based network. But with the fact that employees are now connecting from home and the flexibility required for network connectivity has shifted completely. So we wanted to make sure that we invest on the services that support our customers to go through this journey. And so SD WAN 2.0, we can actually support those requirements of connecting to the employees working from home and also addressing some security concerns and needs out of this platform as well. And that's how it evolved from the previous state 2.0. You mentioned Colt CEO, Kerry Gilder, she just spoke on the writing the title wave of new realities panel about the changes 2020 broad and then what's in store for 2021. And by the way, PTC attendees who couldn't do the session, you might wanna go back and check out the recording for sure. So Mizzou, what would you say then, just building onto that, what would you say about what's ahead for the industry this year? Absolutely, one of the key factors that we are looking at is the shift to cloud. We have been focusing in this area, but I think the movement will continue to grow. And especially with all the digital transformation that all the companies are going through now, they will actually move more applications to the cloud and hence a lot of enterprise firms will actually want to have end to end true experience by use of cloud services and also connectivity to support that as well. Wonderful, we want to learn more all about Colt and what you're working on and the new brand and so much more new products. So where can our viewers go for more information to get an update? That's a very good question. Usually we say come and visit our website, but in this occasion, I actually recommend everyone to actually subscribe to our page on LinkedIn because if it's website, you're going to have to keep coming back in. But if you're subscribed to our channel, you actually get automated notification based on your preferences as well. So I would actually recommend you to take a look at our LinkedIn channel. There you have it, go check them out on LinkedIn. Well, thank you so much for your time Mizzou. It's been a pleasure and come back anytime. Thank you so much for having me, Laura. It was really good pleasure. Thank you. Thank you viewers for tuning into JSA TV and JSA podcast. Happy networking.