Allow me to call on stage the session chair, Mr. Vikas Mehta, CEO, Mulan Lintas. Can we have a huge round of applause for him, please? Thank you. Also, please join us in welcoming our panellist on stage, Achit Setia, VP, Marketing, Mintra.  Come on. Thank you. Country Manager, Director, HP, Sukant Ohech, Chief Marketing Officer, South Asia for Signify Innovations, formerly known as Philips Lighting, Rohan Arora, Marketing Head, Bosch Alom, India, Karan Kumar, Chief Brand and Marketing Officer of Fab India, Prashant Puri, Co-Founder and CEO, AdLift. Can we have a huge round of applause for them, please? Thank you. I shall leave the session to Mr. Mehta now, sir. All to you. I was wondering, this looks like an over-furnished living room now. No, please. Good evening. Thank you all for having us here. I know we are running a little behind schedule, so we've been told to cut this discussion down to 30 minutes. What we're going to try and do, and we have some fabulous people out here, and I'm going to try and help all of us make the most of their time. We're talking about a subject which is, I think, more relevant today than it has been in a very long time. At the same time, it's not a subject that's new because marketers have always spent a lot of time, effort, resources and money. Finding ways to reach people better and entertain, engage and sometimes interrupt them. What I'm going to start with, and I think we have a fabulous mix of companies here. There is fashion, there is retail, there is technology, there is what some might call B2B products and there are enough solutions on the table in terms of performance marketing that we have. What I'm going to try and do is start by exploring the spectrum of targeting, as I call it, and I think we'll then get to social media, is what data-driven environments have allowed us to do is explore the entire range of how you want to reach out to your audiences. On one end of the spectrum, and bear with this sort of half-visualization, but one end of the spectrum is what we've always done as marketers and even in the days of mass media that was possible and it remains possible in the social media environment, which is identifying a macro level of segments and doing what I would call carpet bombing to an audience where it's a bundled set of messages manufactured by a manufacturer and you throw it out at people hoping some of them will stick. The other end of the spectrum is obviously what some of us call the audience of one, which is you draw out through attributes, personas that can allow me to target a single human being with a custom user journey as you may be following. What I would like to start with and I think there is a huge debate about which end of the spectrum is the right sweet spot for a business to sort of make it the centre point of their marketing mix. What I'd like to start with is asking each of our panellists that in your particular industry and your particular business, how do you go about finding your sweet spot and if you're lucky enough to have found one? Where does it sit? Hi everyone, I'm Prashant and I'm a performance marketing agency called AdLift. So that kind of Vikas gives me the opportunity to work with different business models, different businesses, this could be B2B, B2C, each with very varied KPIs. And ultimately the sweet spot boils down to what your key performance indicator is. We manage budgets starting with a lack, lack and a half going to CR. The lack, lack and a half actually allows us to think outside the box where we push ourselves to figure out how do we drive the partner's KPIs in that budget and then start to grow that out versus a branding exercise which is more engagement, impression driven. So in today's day and age while we were chatting outside when we were talking about bullseye and really laser targeted capabilities, this has evolved in the last 10 years. When Google started, the targeting capability was intent. So if someone's searching for blue shoes, that's your bullseye targeting, then there was location which was mapped into that. Today we're in a social media world where we can target right from folks who are accessing or consuming data through 4G, 3G and iPhone X, 6S, newly wedged. So tons of targeting capabilities to really zone in on that one, one is to one if you wish that is your core KPI. That's a very interesting point you make because I want to come back to you in a bit about how do you advise the client how to find their sweet spot. Before that, Karan in your industry, how do you go about finding the sweet spot? I think at the end of the day it boils down to how much can you target, but at the same time how much can you service the target audience that you identify. Yes, it is possible to identify specifically Vikas on social, but do I have a relevant message for you? Or do I have better ROI talking to people like you who are all possibly have the same interest and possibly have the same motivation? For example, when does somebody want to use a contact lens? It could be that I have an interest group which is about saying Friday night I want to go for a party, not sit at this conference, but I want to go for a party and therefore I'm looking for a contact lens because I don't want to wear my glasses there. At the same time, a different set of audiences are looking at that because they possibly want to attend a wedding and it's a different creative. At the same time, there is an audience who is looking forward to a weekend with the family and therefore may be looking for a solution. At the same time, there's a person who is preparing for an interview on a Monday and is possibly looking at the best look for that interview or for that meeting. It is best and most efficient if I can accumulate these groups and target them at a group level rather than at an individual level. It's possible but it just doesn't give me the ROI. Do you think in terms of cost per transaction, does that value player role in the choice of how much of your marketing dollars are going to be deployed behind precision versus broad-based targeting? Absolutely because at the end of the day, every person that I target has to lead to an acquisition cost. The cost of targeting that person, the cost of serving that ad to that person and taking them through the journey. If my cost of acquisition is x and my transaction value is, for the sake of argument, 10x, makes sense. But if the cost of acquisition at that individual level turns out to be at five times of what my transaction value or my lifetime value is going to be, it just doesn't make sense. I know it's not a very romantic question from a creative standpoint. It's a very hard-hitting science CFO kind of a question, CFO kind of an answer but ROI has to play a role at the end of the day. Forgive me for calling you Karan earlier. Now let me get to Karan. How do you look at things in Fab India in terms of the same perspective? I'm just trying to figure out where to begin. The way we look at it, the way I look at it is there are various reasons to be on digital and social. Targeting is one of those reasons. Because I think as brands when you try and be on this ecosystem, you try and be in this ecosystem for various objectives. The objectives could be very different. One objective could be just simple reach and awareness. The other objective could be engagement. The third objective could be conversion. Simplistically put, three broad objectives. For each one of these three objectives, your definitions of ROI and your definitions of targeting and what kind of performance metrics sorry about my throat, are very different. So insofar as we are concerned, we choose our objectives, marry them with platforms which are best suited to deliver those objectives and set metrics in place for each objective. So there is no simple answer to this ROI question. The ROI question for an engagement campaign is very different from an ROI question on a conversion campaign. And an ROI question on conversion is very different from an ROI for reach and awareness. Your metrics of performance could vary from actual sales in case of conversion to brand uplifts in case of reach and awareness. So depending on what your objective is, you need to be picking your courses accordingly. So like you said, it's about probably picking horses for courses. Let's talk about Signify for a minute. And I think you also have an interesting mix where your business has a huge amount of dependency on end users but also on the influencers who actually play a big role in the purchase decision. Now tell me, how does the game of targeting in your case work between these two different audiences? So as you said, maybe on this panel, we are one of those oldest companies who are around. So before our name changed to Signify, we are Philips, Philips Lighting. We like to call ourselves a 125 years old company, 125 years old startup. So we're trying to get into this startup space because a lot of you might be familiar with lighting as the traditional lighting product that you bought for your home. But just for information, lighting has made a huge transition. Today we are obviously talking about connected lighting, which does a lot of things and it could actually personalize. You know, even in an office space, if all of you are sitting, it earlier used to be the same design. Today, the light sitting under which you are sitting can be personalized to give you the right colors. But let me not get into lighting here. So we believe that digital and social especially goes well or delivers ROI only when it's an integral part of the overall marketing campaign including some of those spray and pray kind of media that you talked about, right? Also for us, I think we don't look at social as, you know, only one platform. We use different platforms differently. For example, as you said, we have a lot of B2B products and we use LinkedIn, for example, for thought leadership where we're not even talking about the product anywhere. We're talking about technology, we're talking about innovations, you know, and those kind of platforms. Whereas of course on our Facebook, we would be more product-led very clearly. And maybe on our Twitter, we are providing a lot of updates of what's happening in our world. So I think we are looking at all these to create different kinds of engagement for the kind of audience that we have so that, you know, it's just not about the products any longer, but a lot of dialogue. You know, we launched a product which had a very unique shape. Now one is to talk about that, but then we realized there was a photographer who had, you know, just like a lot of photographs being clicked out here. He had used those lights very efficiently and, you know, he had made a video of itself saying that how this light actually helps him shoot a thing. That is something which we are now trying to amplify on our social platforms. That's a very interesting point you made also about how it actually works in the context of an overall brand strategy where social media is one of the components. And I think we'd feel that consistently across the organizations even in this group as we talk about. I don't think too many of us are thinking about a social strategy. Most of us are actually working towards a brand strategy and then seeing where does social probably make the most sense. And from that point on then to figure out what's the most efficient way of targeting it. Now speaking of targeting and let's come to the case of HP because I think while most of, and if I may with your permission still call it legacy businesses, are still in the sort of huge shadow of mass media driving a large part of the attention. HP is probably on the other end of the spectrum where a large part of their marketing dollars have always gone behind digital. So since both the quantum as well as the length of time that they've spent and you must have spent working on this. Are there any things which sort of HP has learned which probably we haven't touched upon yet? I think the best part of HP is our 70% marketing dollars actually go on digital. So I've worked across different industries. It used to be close to 20 at best 30% and we used to say digital is taking too much and we don't have money left for TV and print. But HP being because of the devices because of the Gen Z whom you're targeting for the new devices and the new technology features which is coming is also for them and when you do more study on them you realize they are all digital natives. So they are always on on digital. So the only way is to survive or manage the brand relevance for them is to study them well on digital and then target them and then reach them. What we do at HP really well and that's something which I would talk where am I in this spectrum. We have very clear upper funnel and lower funnel. Upper funnel is all about brand. How do I reach and then how do I engage with them and each of the TG because of the data the big data which you have the installed database which we have that's the advantage which HP has because all the devices you buy they can be tracked for the serviceability aspect of it. So that becomes the big data which goes in millions and that data can be really analyzed to actually customize it and not just customize. Customization I would say is old school thought. The traditional media used to segment and target and customize and position but it's all about personalization. So this entire process of dynamic creative optimization and the programmability of that entire stuff is done really well and that is what is the uniqueness of HP marketing. That's upper funnel. Right. And that ultimately comes back to RAD which we call as retain and then acquire and then develop them further and then feed it back into the big data. You know the bit you said about HP being a data rich organization and I completely understand that with every user you're capturing a huge amount of data. And then right next to you we have a company which not only captures but also generates data real time and if HP is sitting on big data I don't know if there's a term called massive data but let's come to Mintra. Tell me with the amount of information you capture as a platform already about people on your platform. How do you actually filter out that information overload and make sense of how to keep some sanity about targeting? I think it's back. I'll still go back to your first question because that's important to just at least add a perspective to and I look at it a little differently from how do you sort of think about targeting versus you know spray and pray. So to my mind it's actually two axis. There's an axis of why and what of marketing which is your objective and what is the message. And then there's an axis of when and where which is what time and you know on what platform you want to basically give that message out. I think from times immemorial every marketer wants to target the user as close to the user journey from a relevance perspective as possible. Even the people who are traditional ATL marketers choose the time of the day, the show, the channel where they want to target so that they can get the maximum bang for the buck. So if you ask me targeting has never been a desire to be there or never been a question whether you want it or not it's always been a very innate desire. It's just that technology and digital allows you to do that much more effectively and be able to measure it. That's the only change and it's only going to grow more and more. So if you ask me on which side of the axis I would like to be you know targeting is there 100%. Even if there is a common message you know for the same objective which has to go to everyone you would still want to choose the context in which you want to give that message to the audience which is targeting even if the message is not different. So that is just from a overall perspective of how we think about targeting. Coming to the second question that you asked which is how we look at the entire data I think for us it's both about what we do on the platform because there is a lot of engagement which happens on the platform and what we do outside you know which is on social and a lot of the digital channels and I think for us it is trying to create a full user journey from when they actually first see our ad to actually when they come and engage and re-engage and sort of also churn out from the platform. And data can be extremely complicated. I think what I have realized over the period of time is if you just keep it simple there is a lot of very first principles data that you have readily with you. I think big data comes you know second or third in the entire journey. It is a very simple first click data of what user is trying to tell you or what user is trying to search from an intent perspective is powerful enough for being able to create enough you know relevant messages and if you can do that well I think we can actually get 60-70% ahead in the journey then trying to solve you know world of problems through big data is what I have seen you know although big data has a huge role to play in everything that we do. So like I think both you and Nelima the interesting bit of what you're talking about which is actually a good next thing to talk about. You both spoke about between customization and personalization of messages depending on A the awareness of who the user is and B the understanding of where in the user journey are we discovering that awareness. Now what that means also in practical terms is we are now looking at also a model that needs probably to evolve which needs to mass customize our messaging and therefore what we are talking to each of our users right. Rohan let me ask you a question on that. Now with that diversity what do you think it does to the subject of storytelling which we know is equally important to sort of as marketers we have a duty to entertain our audiences right. So how do you deal with the subject of storytelling where there is pressure now to customize messaging into hundreds of thousands of assets. See at the end of the day the job the marketer is to tell a great story that changes perceptions changes behaviors changes attitudes that's the holy grail that we are all trying to achieve here whether you're on the creative side or you're on the client side right. What targeting allows us to do is to tailor that story but the story still needs to be powerful enough at the end of the day right. I think the biggest change that these platforms are bringing is the way people consume media and I know that sounds very obvious but the one big change that it makes for the marketers is that even advertising is now no longer seen as advertising at the end of the day advertising is content that needs to entertain people right. We discussed this you know backstage that over time it just seems that marketers got a little lazy we all were guilty of that right we started out in the 70s 80s trying to entertain our audiences with interesting ads right and then we thought okay you know what I've got that slot rather than spend effort and money and time on entertaining and building a great story let me throw money behind making sure that the consumer sees it I think with social media the game is changing again today it just takes three seconds according to Facebook for somebody to move on to the next thing in the newsfeed newsfeed today is just an infinite scroll right three seconds that's all you have. So rather than solving for telling your story in three seconds I think what we need to focus on is once we have the right audience what do we say in those first three seconds to make sure that people stay on for the balance 27 seconds or 57 seconds or 10 minutes right. That's a great point you're making because there's a lot of conclusions being drawn basis the restrictions being dictated by formats that if Facebook says it's three seconds or if YouTube is saying it's seven I think it's also a function of the moral we draw out of that story which is is that the time I have to vomit my entire message or is that the time I have to actually capture somebody's attention so that they are intrigued enough to actually hear the rest of what I have to say. Now while storytelling becomes therefore a tad more complex to hold people's attention in such a sophisticated environment the other aspect of targeting is also bringing back the journeys to consumption funnels and sales which is where probably businesses which have a pure online or a pure offline footprint have had legacy metrics of measuring that impact. Let me talk about the retail footprint of FabIndia for a minute and of course all the messaging and targeting that you do on social media eventually the metric of success is how many footfalls does it drive into your stalls right. How do you draw correlations and conclusions on ROI in that context Karan. I'm glad you asked this Hello. I'm glad you asked this because I think for businesses like ours which have a very large physical footprint one of the key challenges always has been and will continue to be to drive the best returns from the investments that you made in real estate. And I think there are two ways of dealing with this situation one way of dealing with this situation is to ensure that people that you already have shopping at your stores return to your stores more frequently and buy in greater volume and value. The other challenge of course is to get new people to enter your stores as first time shoppers and get them to obviously purchase. One of the ways one of the ways in which we've tried to deal with this is using the large database that we have of shoppers with us the mobile numbers for example that people share with us and use that as a device to target current shoppers on let's say platforms like Facebook where you are able to reach out to your current consumer your current shopper through custom targeting and get them to consume ads or get them to consume stories or communications which drive the brand message which could sometimes be on just purpose led storytelling or sometimes could be on trying to convert a particular occasion of sale. Thereafter also to use what you've used for custom targeting to create mirror audiences or lookalike audiences. Now these are people who are not your shoppers or your current shoppers but these are people who exhibit a certain amount of similarity in terms of interests likes predispositions and thereafter to get them to also be served communication which you think is going to be of relevance to them the trick in all of this of course is to personalize that communication personalize that communication as best as you can basis interests and thereafter you look at what kind of lifts you have on both salience which can be captured online as well as well as actual conversion that stores those are some of the things that we've done in the past we've done it now for the last couple of years and has worked out pretty well. So if I were to actually add to that, if your business model is obviously a little more complex because you are having engagements on social but measuring impact in stores if you look at an organization like HP it actually gets a little more complex than that because your retail footprint is physical, digital, within e-commerce it's exclusive versus multi-brand and of course there is the personalization that you spoke about that there is top end of the funnel storytelling which is about awareness, equity and building and then there is the bottom of the funnel which is driving people closer towards the transaction. Now if the FabIndia matrix is a 2x2 matrix yours is a lot more complicated how difficult does that make optimization in your case? I would answer this in two part. One is definitely storytelling because ultimately more you are going through big data more you are trying to customize, personalize the messages more it's like overload of information which lacks emotions which ultimately doesn't bind people and drive preference in any which ways. It's driven a lot by what's on the offer. So more online more on offer, I'm sorry, Mitra and everyone they've got used to getting such good deals there on very difficult to actually satisfy customers and consumers there so it's important to balance the mix of what does the brand really stand for with the storytelling and ultimately drive conversion which is the lower funnel so little bit of difference I have in some of the panelists which spoke there that what do I capture in three seconds actually I can't capture anything in three seconds I recently did an experiment with Diwali when we were doing this ad for humanity and how technology can help bridge humanity. I was really surprised that in this era where no one is concerned about what's happening to humanity suddenly the video was actually 45 second video and we could see the traction going on those content too. A lot of videos which we post online also is close to one minute we were posting a video on security in your devices that video was close to one minute 30 seconds and I could see good traction and then there are videos which I do wherein even five seconds people don't want to see it. So now is it three second philosophy is it storytelling I would say it's storytelling still powerful and how do I actually track that more powerful is my story better is my dynamic creative optimization that is where I can actually personalize from the same story how do I make it relevant to you in that context and then finally say how much I can drive the lower funnel which is which is the ROI. Now ROI is always very very driven by sales and there is a separate motion and funnel which we need to run very very effectively. So I have a mix and match model like Fab India there is SMS and then there is retailers and people and customers you read that is a hygiene which we'll have to manage there's no running away from it to drive ROI.  Yeah I just want to I think it's a point that's very well made and it's been made slightly earlier as well I just want to reiterate on that from a targeting point of view from a social media presence point of view I think there is a difference in advertising and storytelling and both have their own place under the sun. I couldn't agree more. Both have their place under the sun but both are very different animals that need to be dealt with very differently so while in the case of broadcast advertising and broadcast advertising can happen on social digital as well there's no reason why it should be limited only to newspapers and televisions there is always this challenge of you know what interest will I get in the first three seconds five seconds seven seconds somebody said that I think and I can't agree more is not about what you're delivering in the three seconds but it is about are those three seconds good enough for you to get the person hooked on for the balance 27 seconds. If those three seconds are not good enough then the rest of the 27 seconds will never be seen but that's advertising on storytelling and we do a lot of that in Fab India as well we do a lot of stories which are one minute a minute and a half in some cases even three minutes which are about craft trails how is Indigo made how is chicken curry made how does a craft cluster work how does a karigarh work some of these stories are longer format story relatively longer format stories you know anywhere between two minutes to an hour minutes three minutes and these stories have got fabulous fabulous views fabulous engagement fabulous comments fabulous shares so I think there is a difference and I just want to reiterate that that advertising and storytelling are different things they don't necessarily need to get mixed up with each other and depending on what the objective is there are ways of handling and doing that successfully. And I think in today's environment I absolutely agree because in today's environment a brand cannot afford to be on a spectrum of looking at them as either or it's got to be looking at the whole touch point environment in a way that I can actually start the story in a place it's like any great story has three parts right set up conflict and resolution. Today what you can do is actually use the touch point diversity to make your overall story travel across platforms and make it more intriguing rather than draw the line with formats and let them be a divide. Let me come back to the company that's been doing both advertising and storytelling for 120 years. Shukanto some people would say and look I know I can vouch for it first hand how exciting the category of lighting is but to an average person there's also a risk of eventually it being an electrician or a carpenters company how do you deal with the subject of engaging people through stories rather than interrupting them with your message. So as I think Karan has been talking about this also and I think all of us are talking about it both have their own space and storytelling clearly is an area which we have been actively using on the social media platforms clearly we have a you know you talked about just not we were talking a lot outside to my home I talked to the electrician but let me give you a more complex example so when I am selling to a government we were lucky enough to get the opportunity to light up the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Now the customer is of course the Rashtrapati but the work has been done by the Central Public Works Department, CPWD then there's a contractor. Here's to the audience of one. Yeah literally and everybody has their own preferences what they want to see because architecture lighting is as creative as it can get right there is no science behind it very clearly. Luckily for us I think a lot of the government officials today are also on these platforms so it is not you know somewhere we feel they are all fuzzy etc but you know some of these officers clearly have their own twitter handles they are doing a lot of promotions and we pick up stories of what has happened when you know we have lit up such historical monuments elsewhere and you know when the users themselves are creating that content and telling us those stories they become powerful media to reach for example if it is an architect involved another architect talking about how he has used these products and sometimes you know we are not even mentioned in those stories which is fine with us very clearly we are looking at the impact out there and those user generated stories are what you know actually we can get them hooked on and we try to play on that versus our own own stories that we can create and the more we can get them to talk about it I think that's where we have seen a lot of success there. So let me now bring us back and I think I love how we've we started on an extremely rational subject of data and targeting and how we are now into the romantic space of storytelling let me bring it back right to the data and Prashant I have a question for you where most marketers obviously are spending a lot of imagination in finding and telling those stories there almost seems to be this sort of drive between the beautiful world of stories and the statistical world of targeting would you want to talk about any example or a case where you may have actually seen a happy coming together of both I do in fact and I call that story boarding so from storytelling if you are doing a good job of it you want to start to story board it and a recent example is a campaign that we did about six months ago over a period of six months with an insurance company starting with father's day moving on to Raksha Bandhan and then Diwali and what we did for the first time for them or even the brand tried out was so we did digital first videos so these didn't air offline this was for consumption on social media and then we said hey why don't we bucket this campaign into two parts one is performance very performance driven which is even though it's a video we want to generate quotes we want to generate insurance quotes for you and then the other is a brand play and based on these two segments we make a decision on whether we want to do the same thing again pick one bucket versus the other was the general preface so when we launched the father's day campaign folks that had viewed that video for about 10 seconds saw the second one and the ones that saw both saw the third one and then the brand monies that was put was like an A B test was your show up or show up and throw up or pray and spray model and obviously the story boarding worked out because this is someone that engaged with the brand video for the first time there was recall engaged again the same people and then the third time over again so there was a strong brand recollection that happened from that perspective and not to mention obviously performance metrics so what you would have done with three videos setting aside the same amount of budget aimlessly hitting on the folks that didn't watch it for more than 10 seconds like bounced off in 3 seconds or spent a lot more so a lot of performance efficiencies were drawn into that so I think there is there's a marriage between storytelling story boarding and data which is what again is your bullseye marketing I like the way the sequential stories and if you were to look at it from a cost point of view you could literally argue that for every subsequent piece of story because of the impact the first story had created your cost per view or your cost per reach progressively started coming down which is a very emotional piece of content creating a very rational argument in favor of itself so while that's fabulous I think the bit and a company which does partly because of the business it's in and I think fashion lends itself naturally to both great visual content as well as the entire mythology and storytelling of fashion and Mintra obviously has been probably one of the earliest companies off the block when it comes to customizing entertaining and interesting content for people and literally using that to not only entertain them but also drive values and sales your experience Hachin that you want to talk about where again this happy coming together of data and mythology worked really well for you guys I think customizing the messages is an extremely important part of our campaign targeting you know and as I was sharing with you you know backstage also one of our biggest events is end of reason sale in June last year when we did that end of sale we after we had a clarity on what's the overarching theme of the campaign then we looked at a lot of our data you know both from you know psychographic standpoint as well as from the actual purchase behavior standpoint and we were able to create you know almost 30 to 40 segments or micro segments of consumers for each micro segment of the context in which they would want to see the content or the message and the kind of message that they would want to see in that context as well as add to that a layer of the kind of visual imagery that will go along well with that you know context we created almost close to you know 40,000 different creatives to serve those set of segments 30, 40 segments now and when we sort of looked at the entire ROI funnel at the end of the campaign I think there was a 2x lift which happened particularly because of being able to get the right context and if you had done nothing but just put in the right context we would have hopefully got that lift but there was a 4x lift you know because we were able to customize the creative both visually and from a copy standpoint for that customer just to build on your point earlier as well and I think as I was saying in the beginning technology allows you to automate a lot of these things now which is the beauty of it right you would have really desire to do this by having like hundreds of people in your team to be able to do that on a regular basis tech allows you to do that and I think it's getting into a zone where you can really beautifully marry the emotional and psychographic data which comes from offline research a lot with the transactional data from the online and you know really get the right message across and that's something we are trying to do at scale now with every large campaign that we do. So to round things up I'm going to ask you one rapid fire question I need a one word answer from each one of you. Imagine this as a Venn diagram where one circle is the whole universe of social media content and the other circle is the entire universe of precision targeting that data which enables us to do. What's the one word you would put at the intersection of the two? I need a one word answer in any particular order. Context. Fabulous. What else? And after this we are opening up for I think we have time for probably two questions. One word. I told them outside there will be a trick question. You didn't tell me, you didn't tell us about this question beforehand. So you tricked us actually. And our eighth grade math is a little weak with the Venn diagram so So let me just sum up the few words that I thought stuck out and I think it might be a good way to summarize the big pointers that are coming out of it. Personalization is one clear theme which I think all of you laid a lot of emphasis on and drawing the difference between communication and content which is messaging versus entertainment I think is another thing we need to be conscious of. The one word that actually I would put in the middle of the two words is going to be empathy towards the two universes and lensing everything from the point of view of the consumers we wish to serve rather than the customers we wish to acquire. And I think any brand that's drawing that line very well is where the, that was like the common theme of a lot of the success stories that you guys spoke about. Well said. So with that we could take probably two questions if there are any or we could get out of your way and put you into the next session. Any questions? Yes please. Could somebody hand that gentleman a mic? Could you also point out to which panelist would you want to address the question? Till you don't buy. So we continue doing that till you buy.  Yeah so we get like weekly reports saying these are the 50 people who've seen the ad 15 times and still not bought. So we're like okay 50 more times. Leave them alone. I would say as consumer make the job of marketeers easier. Once you've seen the ad four times at least buy or at least give a comment to it at least do something about it otherwise you'll be haunted by 15 times. But on a serious note from marketing point of view obviously if I wanted I know that at least four to five times because you're also busy there are multiple things there are too many priorities and you might forget. So if you add it to a cart it's my job to remind you you might have forgotten. I would remind you three times four times but even if you have still not done it then I would rather save my money and target those who are really interested at least they have responded. So that's where the media optimization on social media can be done. Beyond that it depends if there is a brand who wants to target 10 times 15 times it depends on what's the KPI of that. So for me it would also depend on what the category is what the brand is whether it's a new brand whether it's established brand and so on. So typical media principles that you apply for TV advertising the reason why you decide for certain brands and certain campaigns you need a 3 plus versus a 7 plus similar things you would apply even on a digital campaign. One last question yes please. Before you answer that question let me compliment that gentleman for bringing it up because to be honest that deserves a session of its own and we consciously chose 45 minutes is probably not enough time to do justice to it but you could give him a Twitter response. It's a brilliant and relevant question today because social media and the importance of it. The devices which we bring to consumers has all security and privacy because of the same factor. On social media you can reach to the people only who have consented. If you have not consented we can't reach you. And you always have an option any website be it any of the players any of the competition brands which we see any of the other brands which you want to buy there's always a clause you have to check whether you agree or you disagree. The moment you disagree we don't reach you. So GDPR is strong and HP actually follows that very clearly globally. In India too it's applicable it's not that in India it's not applicable. So that's taken care of. Having said that the people who are interested to know more it's important as a brand we reach them because they are interested to know more. The people who are interested to get more customized messages rather than irrelevant messages to them. It's important that we serve them messages and content which is relevant to them. And the moment you find the content relevant it's important I keep you interested in my brand. So I will keep serving you the content which is actually then engaging to you for the brand. And once you are too interested to buy my product I have to serve you an option to buy the product as well. So the tracking of the journey will happen to the database where they have consented. Did I answer you? Yeah and if I can just cap that off I think the aspect of consent and this is something we are proactively recommending to most of our clients. Permission is a tricky subject and it boils down to the soul of the organization of how engaging stroke interrupts if you want to be. And I think responsible organizations are already moving towards the principle of opt in rather than opt out which is where you are seeking permission and not presuming it and I think at a fundamental level while policies and laws will take their time to evolve at a principle level that's the choice every company needs to make and then act according to it and while it may make difference to your transactions it can also have a reverse impact on your equity and it's for the company to choose what's more important. And if I may just bring that back to targeting I think it's a tussle between how much are you legally or regulatory wise allowed to know about a consumer versus as a brand how much can you let on to the consumer that you know about them. So ultimately I can personally target because you are saying that you know what you are going to this conference so how about dress for it but that's just a little too creepy. This is a conversation I was having at a different conference but alludes to this is we were talking about how ad blocking is bad for business whereas it's not it's awesome because you don't want to show an ad to someone who's already not in the game to actually see the ad so I feel brands are understanding that respecting lines that are being drawn by consumers frequency capping is in place for that gentleman over there who's obviously seeing the same ad so brands are adopting to that because it's beneficial for both sides of the table. Great so with that I think we have really run out of our time you can continue that over the bar in the next five minutes. I'm going to really have to wrap this session thank you guys for being a fabulous audience. You've been really patient thank you so much.


Welcome to Spotlight. I'm Colin Lauver and I'm Alice Irizari. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand no matter where in the world they live. Zhao Xiyong dips his brush into a patch of oil paint. Then he takes the brush and carefully touches it to the surface of the painting. The painting is of a group of yellow flowers. Normally these sunflowers are a symbol of happy things, but here the flowers hang down. It is as if they are as saddened as the painter himself. Zhao Yong is not making his own work. Instead he is copying a painting. It is by the famous artist Vincent Van Gogh. Copying Van Gogh has become Zhao Yong's life work. It is his business. Together he and his family have made thousands of Van Gogh paintings. They sell them to people all over the world. Zhao Yong's work may seem unusual, but he and his family live in Daifun Oil Painting Village in China. In Daifun, thousands of other painters copy work by famous artists as well. They spend much of their lives with western artists who are not famous in China. Today's spotlight is on Daifun Oil Painting Village. Dafen Village is a small part of the city of Shenzhen, China. It is less than half a kilometer wide, but it is home to over 8,000 painters. At one point it was responsible for 60% of the world's painting reproductions. But Daifun was not always known for its art. For a long time Daifun was mostly farmland. The village itself did not have many people. It was near Shenzhen, but there was not much there. Wang Jiang was a businessman and painter from Hong Kong. In 1989 he visited Shenzhen and he visited Dafen. He recognized that Dafen would be a good place to set up his business. So he bought several buildings there and he employed several people to make reproductions for him. These people were not trained artists. Many were farmers or laborers. Jiang had to teach them how to paint. As time went by more people came to Daifun looking for jobs. Jiang's business expanded and other painters like him began to travel to Daifun. They were trying to follow his example. Zhou Yongzhu is another painter from Dafen. He came to the village in those early years. He spoke about his experiences in the documentary China's Van Gogh's. In 1991 there were many people painting in Dafen. I also wanted a job so I came. But we have never seen oil painting in our hometown. We also did not know how to paint it. Every day we painted these things. Van Gogh, Monet, but we did not know these painters. At the time we had a lot of orders. We had to work on paintings. There were three lines with seven people in a line. Everyone painted a part of the painting. In those years we finished nearly 300,000 copies. As time went by more and more people came to the village. It soon became known for its oil paintings. Almost everyone living there had something to do with making art. But painting copies was not an easy life. Zhou Xiaoyong also came to Dafen early. He learned to paint and even started his own business. But even then he worked in difficult conditions. He would receive many large orders from foreign businesses. They would use these paintings to put in hotels or in homes. They would sell them in other countries at a higher price. Xiaoyong and his family would work very long hours to finish the orders. They lived, slept, and ate together in their art studio. They even raised their children there. They worked through heat and sickness for very little pay. Then in 2008 something changed. The world economy went into recession. People all over the world lost jobs or had a hard time finding them.  Before most sales came from outside of China. Afterward these sales fell off. This was a difficult time for many of Dafen's painters. Work was sometimes hard to find. There was much less demand for western copies. But this was not always a bad thing. Many of these painters had been copying other people's work for years. They had the skills to make their own work. But making copies had brought them more money. Now they had time to be creative. They could start making original pieces of art. Xiaoxiao Yong was one painter who began making his own work during this time. He began by painting a version of his first studio. Then he painted portraits of people in his hometown. Xiaoyong had copied Van Gogh for years. So his paintings were in that style. But soon he began to develop his own images and goals. Before Xiaoyong began painting his originals. He was unsure if he would be successful. He did not know if anyone would buy his work. He spoke in the documentary China's Van Gogh's about his hope and his fears. My life is my art. Just like this. Not now but maybe in 50 or 100 or 100 years time. People will like our paintings. Now people might say these people's paintings are not good. But if we wait 50 to 100 years then there will be a generation that understands us. They will like our paintings. But Xiaoyong did not need to wait that long. For many years people knew Daifun for its copies. But soon people in China began to go there for original works too. They wanted to buy work that was about their own country. Former farmers were now opening their own galleries. They were not just painters. Now they were artists. For some people these changes may be surprising. Copying paintings does not seem creative. But it may be the best way to learn. Eddie Kala is an American artist who has worked with people in Daifun. For him this development makes a lot of sense. He spoke about Daifun on the podcast 99% invisible. We always start copying. That is how learning works. If you learn to play an instrument, they teach you how to play existing songs. They do not say well write an original song. And so I think that is how all things grow. Today there are still many copy shops in Daifun. Reproductions of Western artists still hang in shops. Still these paintings sell across the world. But now Daifun has many galleries of original artists as well. It is still a place where people work long hours for little pay. But Daifun is also a place where people can grow and become more than what they were. What do you think? Is copying a painting art? If not, what makes art art? You can leave a comment on our website at www.spotlightenglish.com. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The writer of this program was Dan Christman. The producer was Michio Ozaki. The voices you heard were from the United Kingdom and the United States. All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. This program is called The 10,000 Masterpieces of Daifun Village. You can also get our programs delivered directly to your Android or Apple device through our free official Spotlight English app. We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye!


Colleagues, let us all take our seats. I know we are all enthusiastic about meeting again. I know we're all enthusiastic about meeting back here in person, and I am certainly very happy to see you all. Well, not all, but most of our plenary is back here in person. So I warmly welcome all of you to this hybrid. Plenary session in person or connected remotely. It is a renewed real pleasure for me to meet some of you here today in person after all this while. In order to make this meeting successful and safe for all of us, I remind those of you who are present in the plenary premises to strictly apply the COVID safety measures as they are advised by our administration. Those present in the meeting rooms have to wear a mask covering their nose, mouth, and chin at all times. When speaking, you are allowed to take off your mask for the duration of your intervention. I would also like to thank members joining online for your participation today. Today, the health conditions in Brussels, Belgium, and most of the EU countries gradually improve as more and more people get vaccinated. For this European week of regions and cities, we have a record of more than 12,000 participants registered and for the plenary session, approximately 150 members that participate today in person with all the other members attending our plenary session remotely. Of course, we hope that the numbers of physical presence will continue to grow during our next plenaries and that soon we will be able to welcome everybody back in Brussels again. We will soon inform you about the organizational details for the plenary session in November and December. I would like to give the floor now to the Secretary General for one very practical item that I'm sure concerns all of you. Thank you very much, President, dear members. It is a logistical point concerning the COVID. Some of you received the notification from Belgium authorities while arriving to Belgium that you must go for the quarantine. We looked at it, our doctor was on it, and apparently this was a mistake. We clarified the situation. Yesterday, all of you received an information what to do, basically. You are a member of an international organization, and if you have a valid COVID passport, you can enter the meeting. You have the information in the email, and if you have any question, Pedro is here to help you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Secretary General. So let's start with our 146th plenary session. And we start with the adoption of our agenda. Our first point is the adoption. If there are no comments, the agenda is adopted. We will now proceed to the adoption of the minutes of the last, the 145th plenary session that was held on June 30th and 1st and 2nd of July. If there are no comments, the minutes are adopted. Dear colleagues, having said that, we will now start our first debate on the 2021 regional and local barometer. And let me start with this item by sharing the information that, unfortunately, the vice president of the European Commission, Mr. Maros Sefiovic, will not be able to attend our debate today because of an urgent personal matter. Let's start with our video. Dear colleagues, dear friends, we all know by now that the pandemic has affected each and every one of us, every one of our citizens. Millions of lives have been lost. Our economies and borders have been closed. The innovative capacity of industry has been tested. The incredibly brave workers in our health care, emergency, and social services have been stretched. During this time, Europe has stayed strong and united. And if there is one lesson from this crisis, it is that the essence of Europe, its strength, solidarity, and the delivery of services for its citizens, happens in its regions, cities, and villages. This is why I am pleased to present today our 2021 Regional and Local Barometer, an evidence-based political initiative that takes the pulse of our regions, our cities, and our villages. Our objective is very clear to demand to the European Commission as the EU's executive to improve citizens' lives in the places where they live. By doing so, it ensures that the subsidiarity principle enshrined in the EU treaties guides us ensuring that all levels of government, EU, national, regional, and local act together at the level closest to the citizens. Dear colleagues, every day, on the ground, we provide quality public services. And we continue to do so despite increasing costs and decreasing incomes. Our Barometer this year tells us that in 2020, Europe's regional and local authorities increased expenditure by more than 125 billion euros. And so their revenues fall by 55 billion euros. This is what we call the Caesar's Effect. And this translates into a gap of about 180 billion euros. For instance, Dutch municipalities lost up to 350 million euros from parking fees alone during the pandemic. Local authorities in Cyprus lost 25% of their revenues, one fourth. In Bulgaria, the loss is over 15%, and in Italy, almost 10. Cities such as Torre Vedras in Portugal will no longer be able to provide meals for students. The Czech city of Gladno made no continue to deliver medicines and food to the elderly. The money, the money for these and for many other services like this, come from regional and local budgets, but also from national and EU budgets. So all three levels of government must work together for the recovery by ensuring that every single euro of taxpayers' money is invested where it is more needed. This shows why the role of regional and local authorities in the planning and in the implementation of the resilience and the recovery plans is indispensable. And this should be heard loud and clear by all the national governments of our member states. My point, dear colleagues, is clear. COVID poverty is a reality for more and more people around Europe. Our response must be effective. Budgetary stability of regional and local authorities must be restored the soonest possible. Fiscal autonomy must be broadened so that we can invest in the specific needs of people and not in a top-down manner. Dear friends, our barometer also shows the major regional disparities that we have in health. Cities may provide more health care, but rural regions so lower rates of deaths during the pandemic. So for now and for future crisis, we must reassess the health competencies all across the European Union. And let me be clear. Conceiving a health union only between Brussels and the 27 member states will never work and we will never support it. Because regional and local authorities hold legal responsibilities on health in all of 27 EU member states. And the same applies to Green Deal. The UN has said that we now have five times the number of weather-related disasters that we had in 1970. And they are seven times more costly for our economies. We all saw the summer fires and the floods that tragically hit so many communities around Europe. As 70% of EU citizens live in urban areas, cities are the biggest producers of greenhouse gas emissions. So dear colleagues, since we, the cities and regions of Europe, deliver 70% of climate change reduction measures and up to 90% of adaptation measures, please join me in our call to the national governments and to the executive vice president Timmermans, as the EU's key negotiator, to ensure that the regional and the local dimension is included in the Glasgow COP26 conclusions. Dear colleagues, the pandemic, however, exposed another dramatic divide, digital cohesion. Currently, only Germany, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands are actively curbing the urban rural digital divide. As the total coverage of EU households with high internet capacity is 44% in urban areas and only 20% in rural areas. So we need to act faster and we need to act now. With at least 20% of the funds under the EU recovery and resilience facility for digital transition, a strong regional and local dimension is crucial. Today, more than ever. Now, to respond to all these health, green, and digital challenges, we welcome the European Commission's EU missions to break silos and work together on adapting to climate change, smart cities, oceans, soil health and food, cancer, and other areas. We are also ready to develop a regional resilience platform that will support people to strengthen regional and local resilience against future natural disaster, climate change, and of course, health crisis. Dear colleagues, one final remark. This about our European democracy and the future of our union. Our barometer shows that 65% of leaders from regions, cities, and villages all across Europe feel that they do not have enough influence in the European Union. And 86% think that strengthening subnational government in EU decision making would improve dramatically democracy in the European Union. Both figures tell us a real story. The story of a democracy that can work only in partnership, unity, and cohesion. The story of our people who want the European Union that delivers results at the level closest to the citizens. Otherwise, more and more people will start questioning its very existence. This is why the EU can no longer remain a top-down, territorially blind project, as we unfortunately saw in the recent State of the Union by the European Commission. Only through a bottom-up and values-based approach can Europe rebuild today's citizens' trust. Dear colleagues, despite its imperfections, the European Union is and will remain our house and our only solution to the problems we have. But its functioning must be improved. So let's listen to our people and discuss with them how to transform our European House of Democracy into a real European House of Democracy. With the EU being the protective roof, the member states, the strong walls, and the regions, cities, and villages, its strong foundations. We can do this. And we will do this together, because this is the only way to improve our people's lives. This is the only way to respond to all this major crisis and problems that we face in Europe today. And this is the only way, if we want, to bring Europe closer to its citizens. We, the European Committee of Regions, regionally and locally elected politicians all across Europe, are here, present, and willing to do the job. Thank you very much. Dear President, dear members, allow me to apologize for not being with you in person today. The Committee of the Regions continues to play a key role in the work of the European Union. More than ever, Europe's local, city, and regional authorities need to have their voices heard at the highest levels. And I thank you for all your hard work. I will speak today on three topics. First, I want to thank you for your annual regional and local barometer. This evidence-based report is of a great importance to the European Commission, in particular, by shedding light on regional divergencies, the Caesar effect in financing, and the levels of trust in different levels of government. As the European Union continues to emerge from the depth of the COVID-19 crisis, it is encouraging to see the report focused on recovery and creating a further and more resilient Europe. Here, I would like to stress the value that the Commission attaches to the role played by Regions, cities, and other local authorities in keeping people safe during the pandemic. Then I also set to be the key to our overall economic recovery, not least through the implementation of the national recovery plans at the local level. For example, the local perspective can provide much-edited value when it comes to financing projects linked to the twin green and digital transitions. At least half of all next-generation EU funding will go to those two areas. It is also important to reflect on how the pandemic has impacted different sectors of the European economy at the regional level. To that end, this year's barometer also included a recommendation for a revision of the European Economic Governance Framework to reflect the post-COVID-19 reality. This was confirmed by President von der Leyen in her State of the Union address last month. As regards the Conference on Future of Europe, it is clear that members of this committee can reach Europeans with whom it would be otherwise difficult to engage. This is very much something we want to make full use of. Ultimately, we will draw on all our experiences with this collaborative exercise for the future. Second, we are now finalizing the 2022 Commission Work Program, and I want to thank the committee, as always, for its useful input which has helped inform our work. As President von der Leyen highlighted, there are a number of critical priorities where the Commission will focus its efforts over the next year. These include continuing the EU's vaccination efforts at home and abroad. Further concrete action under the European Green Deal, leading the digital transformation to create jobs and drive competitiveness. Ensuring technical excellence and security of supply does helping euro build its open strategic autonomy. And focus on a more modern, more competitive and fairer economy which entails continued implementation of the European pillar of social rights. Making 2022 the European year of youth with a new ALMA program to help young people who are not in any employment educational training to find temporary work experience in another member states. And stepping up our cooperation on security and defense and deepening EU's partnership with the closers' allies. And finally, robustly defending European values and fundamental freedoms, including the rule of law. Please rest assured that we will take into account the local and regional dimensions in this process. And third, we must also think in the longer term. The 2021 Strategic Four Sides Report, our second annual report of this kind, focused on the geopolitical dimension of resilience and what it means to be resilient in an increasingly multipolar and contested global order. Its findings have very practical implications for the EU's regions. The report provided a multidisciplinary and long term view of what matters for Europe's open strategic autonomy. Its first part looked at key structural mega trends which will have a major impact on the EU on its path towards 2050. Namely, climate change, digital, democracy and values, and shifts in the global order and demography. These mega trends will affect every corner of Europe, albeit to different extents. The report that went on to identify scenarios where the EU should act to enhance its open strategic autonomy and global leadership, giving us the best possible chance of achieving our longer term policy objectives. These areas include, for example, promoting training and education policies and safeguarding resilient and sustainable food systems. Such examples which are also highlighted in the committee's annual bottom and regional agendas. Next year's Strategic Four Sides Report will focus on establishing a better understanding between the green and digital transitions. This means asking ourselves how they can mutually reinforce each other, including through the use of emerging technologies. It is vital that the local and regional perspective is reflected in the four side process. Here the European strategy and policy analysis system will be important. We welcome the active role your committee plays in ESPAS, including, of course, the valuable presence of Marko Marcula at the conference in November. Your expertise is a crucial complement to the work done at the level of the commission and the other institutions. That includes the use for comments and contributions you made on our resilience dashboards. In particular, you proposed enhancing the regional dimension of resilience in these dashboards. We look forward to working with you to identify additional good indicators for this purpose. Finally, as part of our efforts to strengthen the EU strategic four side capabilities, we are currently finalizing the better regulation guidelines and toolbox to ensure that key policy initiatives are informed by four side. Let me finish by thanking you again for the annual barometer and essential part of our fruitful cooperation together. Thank you for listening and I look forward to continue our fruitful discussions in person and very soon. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now open the debate with our members. We will start with Michael Murphy from the EPP. Thank you, Mr. President. Can I first of all welcome your opening speech, a speech that clearly set out the impact and particular the impact on revenue and revenue raising structures of local authorities that challenges, but more importantly, the opportunities and it's crucial that local and regional authorities are at the heart of realizing those opportunities. And can I make one additional point as well, the importance of digital cohesion being a key additional dimension to cohesion. I just want to make two points in my role as econ chair as well, just on economic recovery. The barometer is very, very clear. The inadequate involvement of local and regional authorities in the submission phase of the recovery and resilience plans, the preparation phase. To date, this has just been a box-taking exercise. I hope that we can correct these sharp comings as we move to the implementation phase. Failure to involve local and regional authorities in the implementation phase will be detrimental to the recovery. I want to make a point on EU-UK relations from ports to port authorities to local enterprise offices, from the educational sector and SMEs, us locally and regional elected leaders, see the impacts of Brexit at the local level. This may not be a big ticket or high politics items, but they are what citizens feel on a day-to-day level. As you know, last night at the Bureau, I was delighted to be formally appointed on the forthcoming opinion strengthening EU-UK relationships at the sub-national level and remedying the territorial impacts of the UK's withdrawal from the EU. I will explore this EU-UK relationship at the sub-national level. In this regard, I have a question for the team of Mr. Shevkovich. I ask whether the commission can come forward with a proposal for structured dialogue with local and regional authorities of the EU-UK joint partnership council meetings, thus fulfilling the gap of a permanent structure of exchange between local and regional authorities and the governance of the EU-UK agreement. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you very much. The floor now to Marku Markula from the... Dear colleagues at the speeches by our president, Tapos Tolos Citigostas and the Vice President, Maros Shevkovich, they showed clearly that to ensure the EU's future as a sustainable continent and to be able to reach the EU's ambitious targets can only be reached by well-focused activities at the level of cities and villages, together with industry, all communities of practice and citizens. The future of cities and cities, as I call them, can and will be digitalized cities based on open, innovative collaboration and the competitive, sustainable growth businesses. New European innovative instruments are the cornerstones to accelerate this positive transition. We can really say that Green Deal is going local. New Bauhaus, European Digital Innovation Hubs, Aira Hubs, they all are the new instruments to be used together with smart specialization strategies. They together with using cohesion and resilience and recovery funds, wisely and attracting, mobilizing extensive private investments are the instruments provided by the EU. I especially stress the importance of the new European missions. All those five missions, they play a crucial role on this transformation, especially the Mission Climate Neutral and Smart Cities, without forgetting the other missions. We, the COR and the COR members, we need to take a strong role in implementing the missions. The next years are our opportunity to cooperate, to co-create, to co-invent the welfare future for all European citizens. Thank you. Thank you. The floor now to Karl Heinz Lambertz, please, from the PS Group. Dear President, thank you very much and congratulations on your speech. We cannot hear you, President. Do you hear me now? Can you hear me? There's a problem with your sound. Until we fix this, Andreas Kondilis, please, from the Renew Europe Group. Thank you very much, Mr. President.  If we were not like that, if we were all alone, either a small country or a small region, or a small country, we wouldn't be the same. As you know, Greece comes from a second crisis, the crisis we had during the summer with the affected countries all over the country, and we successfully faced it because we had help from our European friends, whom we thank from here, and we were able to face this crisis and the health care of the fires because it was in the first line of the effort and self-control, the first and the second step, the delivery and the delivery. We want, as we were in the first line of the effort to face this crisis, by spending many times our typical activities and taking initiatives, we want to give us the opportunity to be in the first line and to face the challenges. That is, to have participation in the lack of decisions and the positive role, and the common sense, typical and essential. And the means, the immediate access to the means. So, we have these tools, the measures and the procedures, the procedure for the government to be able to face the big challenge that is in front of us for the need. Most of Europe and most of the procedure for the government was the approach to face the crisis. And most of Europe and most of the government we ask and we suggest that it is and it seems that this measure shows that it should be the approach for the success of the need. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Marche. The floor now to Mr. Marsilio from the ECR, please. Thank you, President. Most of the European countries, especially Italy, have immediately... And the problem with your sound, Mr. Marsilio. Why not? Can we try, Mr. Lambert from the PES Group, please? Do you hear me now? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can I ask the administration to look at the problem because it might be a problem of the room here? Okay. Let's move to Mr. McCarthy from the EA Group, please. Thank you very much, Mr. Guelga. I would like to thank you, Mr. Lodder, for the opportunity to meet with Europe. I would like to ask you again, Mr. Lodder and the Commission, if you would like to talk a little bit about the problem of the real-time situation and the region that has created policy in Europe. So, I would like to thank the European region for this. I would like to thank the European Commission for the opportunity to meet with Europe. I would like to thank the European Commission on over 21 versions of Minecraft distribution. I would like to ask the European Commission for the opportunity to meet with Europe, for all I know that the European Commission makes the ultimate sense of the world. All of a sudden, the European Commission national capitals. We believe direct access of EU funds to local government should be improved. We demand that active subsidiarity become a cornerstone of EU policy, not just thinking about it. And there have been improvements with the introduction of a subsidiarity grid. But I think we can go further. Regions and cities need to be systematically involved in definitions of policies and implementing recovery measures. By involving local and regional authorities, we can ensure that the cost of the Green Deal, for example, but not severely penalized territories with natural and geographic constraints and affecting the most vulnerable of our citizens. We need to make sure that confidence in the future of Europe brings the citizen closer to the EU in a practical sense. And it's not just a pure communication show. If you empower the regions, Mr. President, the EU will be a success. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. McCarthy. The floor now to Mr. Voss from the Greens, please. Yes, Mr. President, thank you very much for your introduction. I think you really did a great job. What is the meaning of the barometer for us? And the barometer is a solid component of the decision of the region and makes a very, very important contribution to our contentious work in the number of facts to consider. And this year's barometer is basically drawn mainly by how the pandemic has affected the regions and the communities, but also how it has affected the affected measures. And we can really draw the conclusion that we have to make the territorial dimension significantly stronger, that it has to be more integrated, and that the situation must be exactly looked at. And that is why we are very much in my country, but in many countries, the national action plans were made by the government, the national government, but the regions and the communities were not sufficiently integrated and that basically continued with the 5 billion euro Brexit fund, which is basically connected to the national household when I see it with us. We are very concerned that the important goal, namely the implementation of the Green Deals and especially the 37 percent for climate protection, can be missed. We have to, and I think you have to do that again and again, better look at the digitalization in the rural areas. But if I read the barometer correctly, then it is also very clear that we have resilient communities in rural areas. Therefore, we will definitely have to look at the supply chains, the issue of supply chains, the regional economic chains more closely. Thank you very much. The floor now to our Vice President, Mr. Cordeiro. Thank you very much, Mr. President Tsitsikostas, Mr. Collec. I believe that the presentation of this report, namely the one that constituted the intervention of our President, signifies its importance in considering the level of the regions and the level of the cities, at the level of local authorities, that which is also a vision of the State of the Union. And this State of the Union, in the context in which this report is presented, signifies the true abode, the true terror that was for local and regional authorities and for our communities, the situation and the COVID-19 pandemic. That is why, in what is presented as one of the main aspects of the risks of this pandemic, the cause of the cohesion, the fomentation of increasing disparities between people, between citizens, but also between authorities, this barometer is an extremely important instrument. In fact, this barometer cannot be just a portrait of the past. It must be an instrument of the future. An instrument of the construction of the future. And that is why, at this moment, it intends to signify, based on these data, the importance that, therefore, cohesion in Europe has. Cohesion not only economic, but social cohesion. These are the moments in which the capacity of the Union is proof of being a cohesion fomentator. And that is why dear friends and friends, this is a moment as good as any other, to signify the importance of embarking on this common project, with what it has of positive and with what it has of challenging. Make a clear sign that we cannot have a Europe only in what is good, but that we must also be prepared to arraign all the demands. And I repeat and reinforce all of them to face the challenges we face. This is, above all, an opportunity for all of us, for local and regional authorities, through this document, to help us to build a better future for our citizens and for our communities. Thank you very much, President. Thank you. I would like to try to give the floor to Mr. Lamberts. Let's try to see if the sound is on now. Mr. President, we cannot hear you. The floor to Mr. Kaiser from the PES Group, please. I give the floor to the administration to explain what's going on. Thank you, President. I'm so sorry. We are encountering a problem with the sound in the room. For the time being, we are not able to hear remote interventions. We are trying to fix it as soon as possible, and we will let you know immediately when it will be solved. Thank you. And our excuses. Okay. So I would suggest that the three speakers who have not spoken, as soon as we have the technicians fix this problem, they will be given the floor if, of course, they are available, which could happen in five or ten minutes, from what I understand.


This study found that patients with complicated MTBIs took significantly longer to return to work than those with uncomplicated MTBIs. However, there were no significant differences in neurocognitive performance or self-reported symptoms between the two groups. This article was authored by Grant L. Iverson, Raell T. Langer, Minna Walgers, and others.