The fifth panel discussion for the day on digital marketing and communication in the age of social media influencer. I'd like all of you to join me in welcoming our session chair for the session. Ms. Mamta Jhingra, founder, lateral sutra. May I welcome Ms. Jhingra on screen. Thank you. Thanks Kathy. A very warm welcome to you. I'd like you to introduce you to our panelists and take the session forward. Yeah. Thank you everyone. I am Mamta Jhingra. I head a specialist communication advisory lateral sutra. We've been in business for close to four years now and have gone strength to strength. Today I'm honored to be here sharing the space with our esteemed panelists. So can I start introducing everybody Kathy? Yes please. Yeah. I welcome and I really feel honored to be sharing this space with the esteemed guests. The first I'd like to welcome Mr. Pranav Kumar, his MD Allison partner, a global PR agency and has to his credit a huge body of work in the consumer and strategic communication. Welcome Pranav. Thank you Mamta. Very nice to be here. Thank you Kathy and the extension media team for hosting this event as always. Very nice to be here with all of you today. Yeah. Second on the panel joins Ms. Rajna Chaudhary. She's the founder and CEO of Media Value Works which is a digital marketing and a PR agency and she's an industry veteran. She possesses over 20 years of experience and has delivered many innovative solutions for large enterprises, SMEs and startups. Welcome Rajna. It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you Mamta. Lovely pleasure here. Thank you Kathy and pleasure being in this panel. Thanks for hosting me. Sure. Lastly, Shruti Khanna who comes to us with the experience of 13 plus years in CRM retail communication, consumer marketing and data research and analytics. She's the Deputy Manager of Digital and Retail with Ford. Mr. Anil. Welcome Shruti. You can come back in the meantime. I just get started without taking too much of time. So jumping straight off to the topic, you know, when my four year old on a nice Sunday afternoon came and pestered me and said that mama I want to watch Ryan as an entertainment video. I was completely flummoxed and I was looking for the answers that who is this Ryan and when I looked up for Ryan on Google and I found that he's this nine year old kid influencer who's earning 29.5 million and is one of the highest paid YouTuber who's known for his toy reviews and, you know, fun videos. Now there came a turning point for me that okay the influencer and influencer marketing and how relevant it is that it is impacting and pervading all of our lives. So in 2020 more than 46% of brand mentions which are featured ads were published by Insta with mere 1k to 20k followers. I would just want to, you know, head start into the session and ask each of you. So what is influencer marketing and how is it really turning our world around? I can take a quick stab at it. I mean I think we're living in an age of influence and I think that is only amplified by, you know, the forming of a new generation of influencers. I think from a communication standpoint when we talk about engagement, you know, we've always had, you know, journalists and other stakeholders but influences, you know, certainly are a a category in themselves and now we're seeing varying degrees of specialization, you know, within influencers, micro influencers, influencers across as we mentioned, you know, kid influencers. So really, influencers play a very crucial role today in the entire consumer cycle of, you know, making exchanges decisions. But having said that, we all know because, you know, there are other tactical campaign elements that you have to introduce to be able to engage with customers. But influencers are definitely, you know, gaining more and more prominence as are, you know, the platforms that they are really thriving on. So I think from a communication standpoint, you know, we really have to be creative in how we view, how best can we leverage influencer, influencer engagement, influencer marketing. Great. So just taking off from that point, are we saying that influencers is sort of coming of age and it is a new way of celebrity endorsement? Are they the ones who are actually eating into that space then? Rasha, would you like to go for it? Any of you? No. Okay, Pranav, are you taking that? So I'll share some of my thoughts and how we've been seeing this industry changing versions and versions and versions. And I think we as communication professionals, PR industry, digital marketing, we give it a name, but we've been transforming, I think every six months to a year, there's a new definition of workflow that's been happening. And that's exactly what Mr. Kunal Kishore just concluded. And I logged in and realized that finally it is how we are staying relevant every year, every two years. And the strategies need to accordingly align into the brand that we are handling. So coming to the current stage on influencers, yes, it's as customized as the brand, it's as customized as the strategy. Are you looking to win net new customers? Are you willing to, are you looking at leering your old customers? So it's the journey that it's a cycle and accordingly you need to micro strategize who your influencers are going to be. You know, you may want to have one set of influencers for you to launch your brand, but he's not the guy who probably is having the person or the appeal to sustain you on your journey. So it's as customized and extremely difficult unless we strategize it and we keep filtering. And that's what my thoughts were that, you know, we need to do an auto filter mechanism today, much more than what we ever did in the past because they were defined boxes earlier. Right now there is no place where you know where to draw the line. Everything is blurry. So who the influencers are, how are we going to embed their influencers come in our marketing strategy is all open and to be decided by the PR and the marketing professional as per his or her understanding. Right. So what would be the ideal fitment, you know, so as I like to go back again on the previous examples is when brands used to strategize or marketing professionals used to sit and, you know, put their plans through and look at the fitment with the celebrity. There used to be certain traits that brand had which sort of resonated with the celebrity. Now influencer is a face which is not one. It could be more than one. It can be multiple. So how do you really do the matching of the points that, okay, this influencer, you know, I can pick in on this criteria. So what is the what is the way to really find the fitment for the brand? What are the matrices there? I could use, sorry. Yeah, sure. No, no, go ahead. Please go ahead. Yeah, sure. Thank you. You know, I think from a marketing perspective, we really have to understand on, you know, what is the path to influence, right? And essentially, when we look at influencer strategy, you know, what kinds of influences serve the purpose of a particular demographic that we want to go after. But, you know, these days, you know, it's very easy to go by numbers because it is all about reach and how many lights and all of those things. But I think fundamentally at the core of it, you have to have some level of a methodology on how we select those influencers. So for example, at our firm, the Allison Partners, when we look at, you know, carving out influencer strategies for the clients, we have a very defined method in which we do that.   So it's really, you know, depends upon what the specific campaign goals are. But there's no one size, you know, fits all. Great. Well said, Pranav. Welcome back, Shruti. My question is going to straight hit you now, since you are the data and the number person, and you know, you're always crunching numbers. So what about the ROI in this whole era of AI and algorithms, where everything, you know, the followers can be bought, they can be influenced, the likes, the shares. So how does the real assessment as far as impact engagement and call to action for the brands is concerned? How do you translate that all into ROI? So, you know, Mamta, let me put it this way that if you want to go for influencers, you can't really put that into numbers play directly. It is an indirect play. If the influencer is putting your story to the audience correctly, if your influencer is being able to build the gap, bridge that gap between you and the audience, the consumer, then eventually down the line for as long as you want to do the influencer campaign. And you will see the results. So at Ford, how we do it is we don't, we don't believe in, and I'll speak for myself as we don't believe in going for the big influencers rather the smaller ones who can build the story for us. Because you want to have a longer association which can build your brand, which can build the resonance for your brand with the consumer. And, you know, it's a very interesting one that we did. In fact, in 2017, we did an EcoSport after the EcoSport launch, we did a 100 days of EcoSport campaign where we had more than about 50 influencers who took to the roads, drove the EcoSport and did an entire story telling for us. And the stories that came out of them, so each of them gave, I think, about two stories. And the stories that came out of them have been building, have been the building blocks for us even today. You know, the beauty of the vehicles, the beauty of how they've done the entire blocks and how they've built it up, we still use that content. So it's about stories, how you tell, it's about brand building and it's about how long can it continue and build that resonance for the brand. Eventually, we will end up in numbers, like we spoke earlier. You know, ROI is, you can't live without it. You can't run a business without calculating that, right? So bottom line, you will eventually get on to the ROI. But to start with, yes, you start seeing that you want to calculate an ROI only when you will start seeing the impact of your influencer story telling. So that's a very interesting point you have brought in Shruti and I'm going to take on from there, although I never thought and prepared for that. So the shelf life of a campaign, so how an influencer puts out a content can, you know, the campaign may or may not still be around. But because the impact of that content has been so far reaching that, you know, it can cut through the shelf life of the campaign. So there I would like to bring in another point, which is often how an influencer marketing, when the influencer's role or, you know, his own persona or his personality evolves into something else. So today, like we had been speaking about it, today, I could be a 25 year old, you know, young and happening person and I'm just looking at brands and creating influencing content for brands which are lifestyle or which are fashion and retail. And tomorrow I get married and I could be early in a family way and I could be a mom to be or a parent to be and I could start influencing my, you know, followers into that. And then, you know, I could the journey could be that I then get into fitness or, you know, other aspects of health and wellness. So how does it all connect with the brand really? I mean, the evolution of the influencer with the campaign or does it or does it keep changing really? Any of you please. So I think it has to be the influencer that you select who sticks with the brand values and the message that you're wanting to deliver.  You will have an opportunity to deliver a message for a longer period of time and sustainance with it. And which could mean inclusion of your brand if it fits in with the different phases of that particular influencer, right? It's a personal take or and it has to fit with your marketing strategies very clearly because as an auto brand or let's say as a, you know, if you're a if you're an F and B brand, if you're an F and B brand, you would not go with someone who is purely into fitness fitness because that will go completely against your brand perspective that you want to outlay, right? You want people to buy, not to get completely into fitness zones and not, you know, buy the product. So similarly, it has to fit in. And if that fits in with someone who's moving up a curve, I think it is beneficial because you see the journey and the growth within. So it's important. Yeah. And that's a good point. If I can just say it very quickly, also influences are also evolving themselves, right? You know, they're adapting to newer content formats.  You know, I think it's actually doing lockdown, for example, I think brands are using influence more because they also got increasingly creative of what they can do to adapt. That it's, you know, it's an English or, you know, it's in multiple languages.  So certainly influencers are also like, you know, phone brands, for example, today are not just engaging with, you know, consumer tech influencers, but in a lifestyle, fashion and so many other categories, there's just so many ways that influencer allow, you know, the brand story to be told in a very creative way. So I think that's very interesting from a brand perspective. Excellent. I think that's well said. My next point would be about the brand. So does influencer marketing really work for a particular brand or target of audience? Does it always work only for the millennials? Does it always work for the brands which are into lifestyle health, fitness, or how does this entire, you know, mechanism really work? Or is it is it only the global brands or is it only the local brands? So how does it really everything falls in place? I think I'll want to hear Rachna Ji on that.  What's that experience been so far and how do they take it? Thanks. I'll just try to reflect back on the experiences. Largely, we must, you know, we have this B2B and a B2C as one blanket sanction to understand that influencer marketing or any strategy for a B2B works very different. B2C would work very different. For B2B, the kind of brands we've been handling and, you know, a lot of ERP business and a lot of CRM business or BFSI focused or auto focused manufacturing focused, the influencer remains an influencer, but he's actually the most important influencer in the buying decision of the sales cycle. And he is actually in this business of B2B marketing that we handle. He is the CIO and the CTO of the organization. He clearly gets categorized as the key influencer. But that time the guy's influencer is the decision maker of the process of that entire business. That's the other side of the story, but we have to still work towards how do we influence him and he's the CTO or the CIO, you know, whereas in a B2C we have seen influencing is towards consumers or how do you influence a consumer. Now in this day and age, we have the experience, the customer experience of CX and the experience of UX, which is the user experience, the user interface. In the digital arena, the interface today is the window, the app, the screen that the consumer is watching and he discovers his entire brand. The discovery cycle of he trying to make a decision is quite a lot now influenced by the user experience of the app or the interface he has. And at that point in time, the influencer whom we use in the marketing strategy may or may not have any relevance while he's doing the, while he's trying to log in and view and make a decision about which kind of retail, which kind of t-shirt or what kind of stuff is he going in for. You know, so as marketeers, we need to be very clear about where we want to spend our dollars that we need not then get into the traditional mindset or we need an influencer who's going to influence my consumer, whereas today the consumer is actually largely influenced by a very smart app. You know, so we should rather decide on spending in the UX of the web interface and rather not spend money there. So it's for us to decide and we need to filter this out in our mechanism because the brand's success is finally what we are accountable to deliver in our ROI campaigns. And you know, that's finally we cannot go back and reflect back and figure out who actually that influencer didn't work actually my app really functioned well. So the number of downloads, et cetera becomes a huge thing today. And how you kickstart the downloads and how you kickstart a digital campaign may or may not always be driven by the influencer. So there is a little changing phase there in the CX and the UX is where the influencer market is getting slightly diluted or taking away the largely large brands, you know, big brands, you know, Marcus Nike, the big guys, maybe some big celebrity influencer can still be there because that placement is a different placement in the brand journey in the brand identification. But smaller brands who are quick and digitally launched just 48, you know, I think 24 months and the brand has become like it's like overshot the numbers. He is playing a different game. He is not playing the traditional strategy game. So we need to gauge from there what to propose as our strategy. I'm going to do a question on, you know, for who does these influencer campaigns work for, right? I think by and large what we've seen is that, you know, there are probably four industries sets which are more have more propensity for influencer marketing campaigns.  I think those categories are seeing a surge in, you know, influencer brand and brand marketing. Of course, Shruti will also agree that, you know, what is also a user of influencer marketing. And then in terms of, you know, who is really consuming that content from, you know, all of the influencers they follow.  But I think having said that brands are also sort of spreading the wings to even, you know, all sorts of age groups and demographics, right?   But we're seeing some very interesting examples come up as well. Yeah. So that just brings me to another point on the data and the numbers, which is, so if you really look at the sky sort of a situation, so in marketing mix, are you seeing influencers increasingly eating into the share of other marketing functions or other marketing tools? And if yes, then what would be the immediate? Is it eating into PR? Is it eating into convention advertising? Is it eating into our door? So where do you think the, you know, the shift is really happening? Any of you please? I think Shruti's best place to answer that. So, so let me put it this way that it is and the last numbers that I read, I think were almost about 40% of marketing budgets for some brands are going into influencer marketing. And this is during COVID, COVID and post COVID situation. But as for as a brand, if I talk, we strongly believe that our owners are real influencers. And if you will see how we sort of do influencer marketing, it's more of owner based marketing or storytelling formats through the smaller influencers. That works very well for us because if as an auto brand, if my owner believes in my brand, that's the key that I need for the people for the rest of the people to believe the best form of marketing has always been word of mouth. And we still remain to, you know, we still stick by it. And if an owner believes that, you know, the Ford, any, any vehicle or for any car or Ford is, is good and is uploading pictures is uploading content. We actually develop that content and almost about nine to 10 stories in 15 days, in about 15 days times are of our owner stories. So if I if I'm getting owners who are actually sharing their own content, they are my biggest spokesperson, right? So they act as the influencer for us. So if you talk to me about as Ford, is it eating into our marketing budget? I would say no, because we've always sustained on the fact that our owners are our biggest influencers. And we use smaller influencers. We use the smaller influencers to do storytelling for us, which connect more with the audiences with the right segments. And we do a lot of it through drive thruers through giving them the vehicles to drive around and build the stories and content around it. So to answer your question in short, for us, not as of now. Interesting point you raised, because we've actually done a report to understand influence across Asia Pacific. And in that, when we surveyed, you know, audiences, we found there was a category of consumers who we described as engaged enthusiasts, right? So these exactly are your customers.  So these really are sort of your super influencers who have the ability to harness tremendous influence for your brand, right? So I think just as your, your customers go for your Ford cars, you know, it's the same thing. So we're definitely seeing, you know, pockets of influence emerge within those categories also. So as I see, then it's the specialist influencer, it's the micro influencer, and now it's the nano influencer too. So yeah. So so in that sense, we it's very right to say that consumer can be your influencer too. For sure. Yeah. So my last question would be on the rise of social commerce.  So what does this search of platforms like Nisho, SimSim, Bulbul, how do you see digital marketing coming off age and the role of influencer changing there? I think you're on mute. Great. Sorry. Thanks, Anta. So on this social commerce, which is really kicking on now is eating into the industry because when you actually are doing, you know, when you are in journey or shopping or logging in, you will see immediately, you know, they start giving you points for referrals. And there's so many, you know, weekly incentives coming in, referral incentives coming in, it is motivating you to add 10 more friends and you get bonus and you get this. So all this is only just going viral. And you are creating your influencer cycle right over there in your own friend list and forwarding. Again, the other guy does it. So it's a chain which is building on and it is catching on, which may eventually it will add to being a little dent into the mainstream marketing budget that was done because through influencer through chain, chain, chain, chain, they are capturing a larger market share. So every time you buy a small little thing on Nisho, you add five more friends and five more friends, add five more friends and they are getting referrals and they are getting margins on sales and they're getting weekly bonuses. So why not housewives are doing it, young students are doing it? So I think it is so easy now. So we need to recognize this and realize and accordingly adapt to our strategies, you know. Yeah. So with the crash of TikTok that happened recently, my only question is that how many such platforms and for how long? So is there is there any kind of a sustained model that you can look at or is influencer marketing really here to stay or if yes, would it be always platform driven? So any of you could take that on a closing note? Well, I think in the modern hyper connected era, I think influencer marketing is here to stay. And so are social platforms. And as we discussed earlier on our chat today, that platforms will come and go and social media networks obviously do a great job of really coalescing cultural insights, what is the pulse on consumers on here at the particular given point of time. So TikTok was emblematic of the short form video, which has become so popular. So we'll see more and more platforms emerge over time. Like we talked about Clubhouse is emerging in the US, which is audio only platform. And very soon you'll have super influences on if I already have influences like Elon Musk on Clubhouse. So this is going to be continuing for the foreseeable future. As long as we're online and hyper connected, there will always be influence, there will always be platforms and marketers have to become increasingly more and more creative to be able to gain their interest. So yeah, I mean, sort of long answer, but yeah, then he'll stay. Anything on the parting note, Rajna, Shruti? I think influencers are here to stay. We need to very carefully define our marketing strategies, whether we want to market using an influencer as the core or using him as part of your strategy. As part of a strategy, I feel is more beneficial because it's longer stay, it's sustainable, and it remains in the mind rather than using it one time and letting it go off. So as a brand, you have to be very cautious to decide how you want to deliver your message in the longer run, not short sighted. And Rajna, how would you like to continue? So influencer is here to stay. We need to only identify who is the influencer for me at this point in time and who is going to be the influencer for me in future. So maybe his role, the role of influencing will always be a part of something will be a part of content will be a part of our industry. And we are at an edge here because if we adapt to the digital strategy, then we have a super edge over other only digital guys, you know, because in PR, in communications, if our skill is content creation storytelling, we are the masters on it. Then what we need to acquire is the digital skillset.  So that's absolutely. And it would be, you know, all of us need to go through the journey on learning and adding digital, complete digital ecosystem should be embedded into the PR industry. And then we roll it over there. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you so much. I would just like to conclude by saying that with the shrinking size of the new the newsrooms is a huge opportunity. And who knows tomorrow on your screen pops up a journalist delivering music in a more entertaining way. And it could be your personal journalists reporting to you. So the only constant as it is in every phase is change. So I think we as marketers are always get to that. And we got to keep boarding our buses sooner than later. Thank you that we come to the end of the session. Thanks. Thank you everyone.


Hey everybody, welcome back to another haul video. This time for October 2021, let's do it. Let's get started with some manga goodness. Here is To Your Eternity Volume 15. I am two volumes behind. I've read up to Volume 13 a wonderful spectacular series that I cannot recommend enough. It is beautiful, tragic, and really reminds me of just living the best possible life that you can live. No regrets, right? And here we have two volumes of one of my favorite rom-coms, Rent a Girlfriend, here's Volume 8, as well as Volume 9. Have not read these yet, but I'm really excited to continue this story from where I left off. Wonderful art and just really nice character designs. I think that's one of the main appeals for me when it comes to a series like this. Here we have that time I got reincarnated as a slime, Volume 17. I'm a little behind on this series. I'm mostly collecting it out of fear of it going out of print, the individual volumes. Here we have the ancient Maguscribe, Volume 15. Same thing with slime, I'm a little behind. I think the last one I read was Volume 7 or 8, something like that, so I'm really behind on this. I've heard some people have mixed feelings about this and have kind of abandoned the title, which is weird, but we'll see. Eventually I'll catch up and talk about it with you guys. Next up on the hall is Asadora from Naoki Uru-Sawa, here's Volume 4. Fantastic series. Check out my First Impressions video on it. I can't really say much because we're pretty much one volume behind the Japanese release. I do know Volume 6 comes out at the end of the year, if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, love me some, Asadora and Uru-Sawa goodness. Number 5, Volume 2 from Taiyo Matsumoto. I made a video on Volume 1 if you want to check it out. I absolutely loved it, the world and the characters. It's also unique and gritty and filled with Eurocomics references and homages. I cannot recommend this series enough. I will be reading this as soon as possible and cannot wait for Volume 3, which should be out in January of next year. And as usual, I'm very happy to see them including the more posters, as you can see here, the second one looking really cool, super detailed and wacky and funky, just as I like a Matsumoto manga to be. Pokemon Adventures, Collectors Edition, Volume 10, the last one finishing off the stories, if you will, covering up to Fire Red and Leaf Green and a little bittersweet to end the series there, but I do know that the next generations aren't as interconnected as we would have liked, but who knows, maybe they'll do Collectors Editions later on for those as well, you know, Gen 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and whatever else comes out our way. Lady Snowblood, Volume 1, 2, 3, and 4, yes, all of it. I have to give a massive shout out to my good buddy Josh for making this possible. He sent me a little care package my way and I am forever thankful. Josh has been a great friend for many years now actually, so I'm excited to dig into this a very famous series. I have to admit I have not read the manga, but I have seen and I do own the Lady Snowblood live action movies. And you might know that this is also the inspiration for Kill Bill from Quentin Tarantino and stuff like that. So yeah, I'm really excited to dig into this. One graphic novel here, it is Birthright Volume 10, the end of the series. Finally, I collected the entirety of Birthright. I don't want to ruin it for you guys, but it's really cool stuff. I do recommend checking it out. And here you have all the spines lined up with all the trade paperbacks. Some anime blu-ray goodness. Here is Inspector, one of my favorite anime from 2020. I really enjoyed this adaptation. I believe this was produced by Crunchyroll and it is essentially a noirish spirit, yokai infused detective series, solving urban legends and mysterious cases and all that stuff. I really enjoyed it. I think it's really good. Thankfully, we are getting a second season, so yay, more Inspector goodness. Golden Cowboy Season 3. I love this series so much. I wish I could collect the manga, but I really don't have space for such a long-running series, although it is ending, so I might consider it in the near future. Nonetheless, a great show. And as a treat for you guys, here's the digital code. If you are one of the cool ones to grab it as soon as possible, let me know in the comments section down below so I can heart that comment. Also, another gift from my buddy Josh. He gifted me My Hero Academia Heroes Rising, the second My Hero Academia movie. I haven't seen this. I'm really excited for it. Hopefully it's better than the first one, which I did like, but it falls under the Shonen Jump movies where nothing really happens. It's just a celebration of your favorite characters with flashy movie quality animation, but hopefully this is different. And I do know the third one premiered recently, so I'm excited eventually for that. And we got another treat from that care package. Here is Ultraman Tato. Hi, you're gonna have to forgive me. I'm not super knowledgeable when it comes to Ultraman. Like, I like the character and that's about it. I didn't grow up with Ultraman, the franchise, none of that stuff. But I've always been interested and I know there's multiple seasons or generations or whatever. So yeah, I am very much looking forward to this. Who knows? Maybe one day when I'm done collecting some other stuff, I'll give this a go and collect the rest of the series, I should say. From Arrow, this is something that I was really excited about. We got the announcement in August and I pre-ordered and it finally arrived. It is the Yokai Monsters Collection. And this was my first time ordering from Diabolic DVD. So shout out to Diabolic because that was awesome. Arrived in perfect immaculate edition. I didn't want to go with Amazon because they were charging way more than what was the retail price, I should say. And yeah, went with Diabolic. I'm a fan now. So we'll see if I make more orders from them. Next, I decided to add two more DVDs for my Toho section or collection in my movie library. Here is Varan the Unbelievable, which I believe had two separate releases. One with the American Edit and Dub, which I don't care for. And this one with the original Japanese audio. And of course, I got the Mysterians. The funny thing about these two movies is that they're no longer in print, along with the other Toho stuff. But even though they're old movies and not necessarily the best, but there's still campy goodness to be had. The thing is usually people are charging or asking, I should say, $30, $40 for these movies. And I was lucky enough to find a seller asking $8 per movie. I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll take them. Thank you. So with those two out of the way, all that's left to quote unquote, complete my Toho set, because there are a lot more movies out there that were released, but not available with a North American Region 1 DVD or Blu-ray. I am missing Dogora, War of the Gargantua's, Space Amoeba, and Orochi, The Eight-Headed Dragon. So those four DVDs are all that's left to have a complete official Region 1 Toho Kaiju DVD slash Blu-ray set. Really excited about that. You guys remember back in the summer, when I did the movie Arrow Criterion, Summersale Hall, I got a bunch of movies that I wanted to check out, some that I already knew about. And this was the only one missing. It is JSA or Joint Security Area. I ordered that in mid-July and it arrived mid-October. I ordered it from Amazon and it was out of stock, I guess, or out of print. So it took them that long. So it took them all this time to restock and send me my copy. But nonetheless, excited. This is a really great film and a wonderful release and I'm happy to own it. This was a birthday gift from the fam, if you will. Back in September, I am a huge fan of the Snyderverse movies. But yeah, I got the Snyder Justice League Blu-ray, 4K Blu-ray cut. I love it and this is what I wanted to see back in 2017 and I'm so happy. I'm so glad that I can now have Zag's initial trilogy on Blu-ray with Man of Steel and BBS. So I'm really excited about this. Two figures. One of them I've had pre-ordered for ages. And it finally shipped. It is my first pup-up parade. I hope I said that right. Pup-up parade. It is the traveler from Journey, one of my all-time favorite video games from PlayStation. And one final shout out to my buddy Josh. My first ever Nendoroid. I've always wanted to get into that. They're expensive and kind of in the same vein as a Funko Pop where you just can't have one and you get really addicted and you want a whole line of it. So I got to be careful because I do have another one coming my way. It's just taken forever because it shipped from Japan. But yeah, this is the Golden Kamui Asirpa Nendoroid. I am really excited about this. I love the series and she's a great character.  And it's just the right amount and size of cuteness where it just looks great on your shelf. So thank you Josh. All right that's about it. That's all the stuff I got in the month of October. As usual, there are things that did not arrive. If you've been following my channel over the years, this is a tradition on my haul videos. So you'll see them in the next one. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you for liking, commenting, subscribing. If you want me to review a specific product shown here, let me know in the comments section down below. Specifically the anime and manga portions. Thank you everybody. God bless. Stay safe out there. I will catch all of you on our next video.


from the Wynn Resort in Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering .next conference 2016. Brought to you by Nutanix. Now here are your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. We're back, Alan Cohen is here. He's the chief commercial officer and board member at Alumeo, CUBE alum. Alan, good to see you again. Hey, it's great to be back. So give us the update. What's happening with Alumeo? Everything all the time. Well, since we're here with Nutanix, right? I think we could talk about it in that context. A lot of what we've been doing now is helping people as they re-platform and they migrate their applications and their workloads. So obviously, Nutanix is a new source of re-platforming and a lot of migration. A lot of people moving off of traditional bare metal and VM environments into their environment. So securing elements there. But you know what's new now is attack surface. The new battle on security is your attack surface. How vulnerable is the inside of your data center? How easy is it to move around it? So that's a lot of what's been going on. Yeah, I mean, you know, pick your number, but you hear anywhere from 200 to 300 days after you get infiltrated, it takes that long to discover the infiltration. So hey, everybody's sort of pivoting to analytics and trying to find the perpetrators. Oh yeah, everybody's pivoting that way. Hey there, fellows. And no, but the issue is dual time, right? So think about it.  You'd be pretty ticked off. Imagine if you knew the burglar was living in your attic for six months. So a lot of what we do is we discover policy violations which frequently can be human error or it could be cyber incursions. So by really locking down your applications through micro segmentation, when something does something that it's not supposed to, we'll see it right away and we'll alert on that. So that's been a huge growth for us. So I was telling you about my little research project.  Right. Because they were tweeting about blockchain incessantly. I'm sure you've seen this, right? Yes. And so I asked them why and they're like, oh, new security models are really interested. I said, all right, let's gather and talk about, here's the premise we put forth, that from a board standpoint, and you're a board member and you're out with the customers, that CXOs, CIOs in particular CISOs, there's a shift in the conversation from thought penetration to response. Right. Is that premise valid? And it came back overwhelmingly. Yes, the CIOs understand that. Right. And that's happening. Okay, so that's cool. So what does that mean for you as both a board member, as a company? I'm actually a Lumio CIO. That's how desperate we are. So I actually care. So you spent a lot of time on IT. Absolutely, all day morning, noon, and night where it's always about IT. What's interesting is that, what's changing is that to start with is that the CISO is not something necessarily has a seat at the table with the board, right? They're frequently not in a position that reports into the CEO. So that's a really big discussion item. Yeah, they report into the CIOs like the Fox Watch and the Henhouse. And it can be very complicated. But think about it, so I was a board member at a public company for nine years. What does the board talk about? They talk about the CEO's performance and the management team. They talk about the business plan. They talk about financials. They talk about audit. And then they talk about risk. And risk can show up in a lot of ways. Now, cyber is a important risk variable that can completely botch your... I mean, if you were the board of Target after the breach and people said, I don't have confidence going into the store and using the credit card, that's a real risk factor. That's just as tough as the revitalization of Kmart and Costco, right? That's something that Target has to deal with. So boards actually have to be able to understand the financial and business risk of what a cyber incursion could do. I mean, think about Sony. They went back to using Blackberries and fax machines. Not exactly a fast way to build a media empire again. So boards have... I mean, once again, but boards are not technical. They're not going to be able to say this hack or that hack. So what they really want to know is if we are going to be hacked or we're going to have an incident is how do we respond to it? What is our plan? How do we communicate to our customers? And how do we vouchsafe and protect our data? So boards are going through huge educations right now. So what I'm hearing from you is it should be part of a risk management plan, not some separate stovepipe. And it's all about the response. You're sort of validating that. Is the lack of understanding of data's value, a barrier to properly securing my assets? Well, firstly, you can't secure what you can't see. So if you don't know if certain data exists, you really can't protect it. In fact, a lot of the conversations we've had this week when the Tonics customers, they've been telling me, we have ghost servers. We don't know where they are. And it's like, what might be on that? Crown jewels, personal bank account, the secret formula to Coke, right? I mean, like those are... CFO files. CFO files, the cube growth plans, you know, don't want Gartner to get their hands on them. Right? So people have very critical assets. And first of all, they don't know where they are and what they can communicate with. So I think what's going to happen is that people are gonna go through a movement, as you said. There's a huge focus on visibility and analytics, which is first, let me do an inventory of what I actually have and how exposed it is. And then you think about it, you have a kind of a risk pyramid. What are your most high value assets? So we have a large bank in the UK we're working with and we're being dragged in by compliance because of all of the hacks that have gone on, they have to actually show that they have a better protection plan for the databases of their customer information. That's what regulators do, right? If you don't do it yourself, regulators will do that. So people have to kind of create a hierarchy of what's my most valuable assets. Have I taken an IT assets? Have I taken a plan for it? And then the point you made is like, what isn't data in? Like what is an IT in? Everything that we do, information is a component. So it's almost, it's a cost of... It's like, what's the term? It's a factor of an economic factor, land, labor, capital, and data. And that's how you build products and services. And we're doing some work right now on data capital, how to value data. Data has no asset specificity. It can be highly valuable in one application and meaningless in another. So it's a complicated equation. What, from a board standpoint, or a CISO standpoint, or a CIO standpoint, you gotta... I'm just a marketing guy. How often should CIOs be communicating to the board about security? Well, most boards meet four to five times a year. Those are major board meetings in most Fortune 500 companies. And then there'll be monthly, between that they'll have conference calls about. Financing or certain events, and there's updates. I think the first thing they have to do is they actually have to build a structured plan on how to educate the board. So think about it, 15 years ago, whatever it is, we had Sarbanes Oxley and I was on a public board, you had to go through Sarbanes Oxley class. You had to go through all of it. If you had a hard time sleeping, read your Sarbanes Oxley binder. Today is sensitivity training. Yes, thank you, which I probably need a little of. Talking about that. You're going to have to start by educating the board on what data and cyber risk really means, and then you're going to have to build a methodology and a set of metrics to communicate it. So think about it. You guys, you run a company, you have a management thing. You have leading indicators. How many cubes did we do? What's the forward revenue? How many analysts do we need to do? So they're going to have to be forward-looking and real-time indicators of cyber risk and cyber threat and cyber reaction inside of the business. And I think just like Sarbanes Oxley took a couple of years, we're going to probably go through this same practice over the next couple of years to educate people. You can't expect board members to have the technical acuity of your IT and your CSO. That's not what they do. They're not usually in fact, generationally, most board members did not grow up as leading edge. Yeah, interestingly, 10 or 15 years from now as boards turn over and the next generation comes up, you're going to have a much more IT-centric board and they're actually going to demand that. Oh, that's interesting. So as opposed to the CIO speaking in more business terms, it probably has to do anyway, but you're saying the boards are going to be coming, are increasingly becoming tech savvy. I was on the board of a shopping mall company because they wanted a tech guy because they were afraid about being Amazon, right? They saw the entrance of e-commerce and they said, what did it mean to us? So I think boards are going to change because tech is going to be a key component and they're going to have to both educate them and then they're going to have to look for board skills. So you will have a cyber board member. Again, if it doesn't exist today in the next five years, people will hire board members with cyber experience to do oversight. What's the right, and I just do, I know you want to jump in, but what's the right regime here? It sounds like some audit committee or whatever risk committee should have the cyber, you know. It could be part of risk. It could be also part of product, right?  Can the competitors knock it down? The question is, is it vulnerable? Will be another question. Right. What's up, Stu? Yeah. So, Alan, we're here. Yeah, Dave's been on the whole security bin, so that's fine, but we're at an infrastructure show here. Nutanix talked about how security is being baked into their environment, but they see you and some of the other, you know, ecosystem partners as a good fit there. Where does security fit in the infrastructure layer and then where does aluminum match up for that? It's a good question. So I would have said two years ago, Nutanix as a company had much more of a focus on storage and then it started to move into compute. Now as it becomes a cloud company, the concept of what applications are running and how they run is critical to their vision. And that's, I think, what Dirich laid out earlier this morning and Howard and Sunil. As you start to focus on applications, protecting them, making them secure, managing the data for them, increasingly become critical elements. So I actually see Alumeo actually and Nutanix have been moving this way, particularly now in the large enterprise space. What we do, Nutanix, interestingly, is that we do infrastructure security without the infrastructure. We do it in software. We don't have a dependency on the infrastructure. So in today's announcement, Sunil, he said, here's how I'm going to integrate bare metal into Nutanix, right? It was a pretty big announcement. Well, we run on bare metal and we run on Nutanix. So being able to stretch your security across those environments, or I may decide to put my web tier of elastic apps in Amazon, but I'm going to keep the core app and the databases in Nutanix, being able to stretch my security and work those environments. So I think what we'll do is we'll help provide that micro segmentation and provide them with a heterogeneity element as they become much more of a platform company and they actually have to reach out and work with other compute formats, not just replatform for them, if that makes sense. Yeah, so I guess, look at what Nutanix is doing. Maybe give us your thoughts as to compare to, say, Oracle is putting security down on the silicon level or VMware, who you've got strong familiarity with and all the various options there. So I have a theory. You guys were a docker this week and for the last 15 years infrastructure, the last 25 years, applications were written to infrastructure. It started with Microsoft. Intel came up with a chip, Microsoft filled it out and every time they did that, we bought a new PC. Now the world is going the other direction. Now infrastructure has to chase applications. The application people are in charge. So if you think you're just going to lock people in at the infrastructure level and put it in the silicon, good luck.  What do I do about that? So you're going to have to be able to be adaptive and change with that. So, look, you want your infrastructure more secure. It's critical, but you actually really have to live and deal with the growth and dynamic nature of your applications. I think that's the core skill that security means. And I think that's something that we provide. Think about how Newtonics are just saying, let's take the infrastructure out of the way. Just run your apps. Ours is let's just take the security out of your way, make sure it follows your apps no matter what they're doing. So what, follow up on that. So taking the security out of the way and then what, giving you more time to respond, those response plans that we were talking about? Well, the first thing is you want to know, as you said, Dave, earlier, what happens when something wrong happens? You want to know it immediately because the longer the time goes by, the more risk. Like you can't go nine months anymore, like OPM and Target, and say there were people living in the environment just picking off information when they wanted. So you need to know immediately when something, or as close as you can get, when something wrong is going on. And then you want to have the ability to take action. So one of the things that we do is we actually, if we see something, let's say I had an HR database that was running on Nutanix and I also had an ordering application. If that HR database starts talking to the credit card server, number one, I shouldn't allow it to do that. Number two, I want to quarantine and take care of it before it does any harm. And I need to know that immediately. So you're going to have to be much more synaptic and fast in security to be able to live in the world because your infrastructure and your applications are just spinning up, spinning down, moving, and they're so dynamic. So I think you actually, so what's going to happen is you're going to have to move as fast as your applications. So you're able to witness and observe anomalous behavior horizontally across different assets, and then you help respond to that as well. So I can't, I won't spot polymorphous malware showing up on a server. The minute it tries to do something different, I'll knock it down. Yeah, that's somebody else's domain. Yeah, I mean you need both, right? No one company's going to do this by itself or boy. We're working on it, but we're not there yet. And then so you can compress that 200 or 300 days, is that? We can compress it to minutes. Do you have examples of that? None that I can tell you about live, but yes, we do it all the time. Rob, this is, I wonder if people don't know they're being infiltrated until, you know, I mean, I don't know where the numbers come from, you know, it's like, they're fuzzy, but there are a state of public numbers. It was the Verizon study. And there are numerous, yeah, there are numerous ones. Well, people will tell you. The issue is that a day is too long, nine months is really ridiculous. So you need to do that, but that means you have to be much more in touch with, you know, so think about it, you can't just be in the server level and you can't just be in the network level, right?  Because by the way, malware is not brilliant, most malware, it's extremely patient. And it just starts and it starts to port scan around and then pretty soon it finds a hole. What's interesting is that you actually have to protect your unprotected environment, not just your protected environment. So I know my Hadoop cluster is really valuable and I'm gonna firewall it, I'm gonna put a Lumio on it. But the question is that other server that can talk to it, I wasn't watching it because it's kind of innocuous. I have to watch all the sleeper cells as well, not just the known spies in the environment. Right, right. And as a board member, I just want to understand that dynamic, right? And how it's changing. You want to know the game, right? It's interesting, you got to play offense. So the key thing that a Lumio does is that we've taken the tools that hackers use, they think about, hackers think about computing and graphs, they say that's the critical asset. How many stops do I need to get there? What does the graph look like? Traditionally, defenders, like firewall vendors, they think in lists. Here's a bunch of IP address, this is blocked, this is denied.  You have to think in the graph. You have to look holistically at your compute environment and saying, what are the pathways to get there? Visualization becomes more important. Come on by the booth, we'll show it to you. You got to be able to see it, like an MRI machine. Awesome. Constantly running. Hey, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Always a great guest, really appreciate it. Thank you, gentlemen. All right, keep it right there. We'll be back with our next guest and the afternoon keynotes right after this short break.


No branch or tear of government can undertake the reforms necessary to enhance justice delivery on its own. The next 60 years, we'll see a vastly different country. We will be the fourth largest country by population in the world. And we can be one of the 10 largest economies in the world. We can be one of the most technologically advanced. We can be the safest place on earth to live and work. We can have a fair and just society, assuring all of our people regardless of ethnicity or religion of equal opportunities. None of that can happen without a dynamic and robust system of administration of justice and without our working together. Let us pledge today to step forward into this exciting future, working together as one.


Time travel, a trip to Japan, and Wario's lost his jelly. My name is Chris, and you're watching Display. His name is Mitch Manners, and he's traveling through time. He can't remember where it started, how it started. Each time he goes back, he leaves his memory behind, and in its place, he's given a vision, something he must do. Gamekeepers, a really awesome sci-fi series that just isn't getting the attention it deserves. It's super ambitious, really well produced, and the premise itself is truly interesting. While I can't recommend this to children, adults will love the slick adventure into mystery. Click the annotation right here to see the original video. A great way to produce original content when tackling gaming is to think of how games are designed, how the developers have intended you to experience them, and then taking that and throwing it out the window. The cinema is a great example because games are not conceived as filmmaking platforms, so it's no surprise that when someone goes against the grain and covers one of today's most popular titles that they get something truly unique. Enjoy. Another way of being unique is to resort to parody. Take this clip for example, where puppy pro gaming makes fun of the often ridiculous steps needed to unlock easter eggs and titles such as Battlefield 4. To view the original clip, click right here. Now for the third clue, you can find this in the map Crouch and Tiger Sunken Dragon in the club in the middle of the map. If you go down these stairs here, you'll notice that there are five chairs in a rather peculiar position. Can you see what it is yet? Look a little bit closer. I'll superimpose a picture over the top. That's right, the five chairs form the outline of Lionel Richie. As you know, it was born in 1924, so that gives us the numbers two and four. Okay, I'm up, I'm up, I'm up. Good morning, Kamek. Your definition of good? Oh well, our little camping adventure is over now. I guess it's time for our breakfast. Ugh, yeah. Alright bouncer, get us the breakfast. What? What? What? I don't know where it is. What? What do you mean you don't know where? What? Listen, you're in charge of it. Oh yeah. There's something really refreshing about experiencing a story told using plushies. It proves that your only true limitations are your imagination. Now while the pacing isn't fantastic, this is just but a tiny little nitpick for a video that is both unique and inspiring. If you'd like to see the entire episode, you can click on the annotation right here. Our next video offers up a great alternative to the typical let's build formula, inspiring itself off of Fire UK's elaborate use of mid-air dolly shots and camera pans. Now building can take hours if not weeks, and so by using well-composed time lapses, you can build now and then worry about the commentary and post-production, which is fantastic for people like me who have a hard time being interesting on the spot. Check this out. The horns, each horns, flows into the correct part of the pillar? Yeah. It's silly, but we enjoyed it. I like it. I do like attention for detail. Exactly. And here you can see that we redesigned the altar. If you are aware enough, you could have seen that we built something with a roof, etc. But we then redesigned it, and we used beacons, which you have seen. There's obviously a huge gaming presence right here on YouTube, but most people tend to focus on let's plays. However, whenever a big controversial new story breaks, people demand discussion. That's why people like Total Biscuit are so popular here, because they often go in-depth into the video game industry. Now on this clip, television ponders on why next-gen titles don't seem to have a long life, why people, you know, after a short amount of time seem to cast them away and lose interest. I'm going to be talking about why hyped up games have been dying out so fast since the coming of the next-gen consoles. I will have to make this video into a series and separate each theory into different videos because it will take too long to put in one video. But yeah, you guys must have realized hyped up big award-winning titles like Titanfall which only lasted around a month and Watch Dogs, which didn't even pass two weeks, died out fast. And this has been the story for a lot of games. Vlogs are something that everyone should study, even if you're not interested in making them. Why? Because the key to a strong and dedicated audience is your personality. Now it doesn't matter whether you're visuals or your audio are super impressive if you have the personality of a piece of cardboard. Now take Charlie Chaplin for example, he's one of the most famous actors of all time and he was mute, well at least in his videos. In this clip, Christina gives us a tour of Japan and we don't only learn about the country but about Christina herself. Check it out. Smurkey has recently become somewhat of a celebrity here on Freedom this past week. He won a sponsorship with the network and with good reason. Why? Because he's constantly active in the community and is very passionate about helping others grow. Now recently Smurkey started a campaign with Charity Water to raise money for clean water projects. This is a reminder that YouTube isn't just a platform for entertainment but for awareness. If you'd like to learn more about his campaign, you can click on the annotation right here. I want everyone to click on that annotation. Unfortunately this nice fresh clean water is not accessed by everybody. In fact in this water crisis, about 1 billion people are affected by it and do not have this clean water. Unfortunately the water crisis is spread across multiple locations across the globe. Thanks for watching. I'm proud to announce that Episode 3 will be exclusively about gaming. Now although I already have most of my pics already figured out, if you have original content that you would like to submit to the show, please fill out the application form linked down below. If you want a better idea of the kinds of content that I like to choose for display, be sure to follow us on our Facebook page at facebook.com slash display on freedom. There I'll also be launching an exclusive new series called Display Plus, a follow up series to display.  Thank you guys until next week, I'm Chris, take care.