You are founder of Brand You: Suresh Gaur

Chandigarh: The second day of the seven-day long Faculty Development Program (FDP) titled ‘Enhancing Visibility & Perception of the Self as a Brand’ started on an auspicious note with a Saraswati Vanadana sung by one of the participants, Dr. Keauty.

PR Guru, Suresh Gaur, started his talk by saying, “You are the founder & CEO of Brand You.” Elaborating upon how to go about enhancing the visibility & perception of Self as a brand, he touched upon almost all tools of communication that help in branding, like Press release, poster, case studies, letter to editor, corporate advertising, calendars, written speech, newsletter, house magazine, exhibition, open days at house, media relations, and many more. Gaur underlined that one must think twice before posting online because one’s digital reputation is at stake. He expressed that the formula of branding is PR = Pyaar (Love).

Prof. (Dr.) Anubhuti Yadav, Head, Deptt. Of New Media & Information Technology, and Course Director, Advertising & Public Relations, Indian Institute of Mass Communication, New Delhi, talked about Digital Storytelling: Telling Stories using Computer-based Tools. She shared how a variety of online communication tools, like Infogram, Flickr, Edmodo, Pictogram, Anchor, etc. could be used to reach out to the masses and let the world know of the ‘Brand I.’

Renuka Salwan, Director, Public Relations, Panjab University, Chandigarh, concluded the second day of the program. At the outset, she started by saying that communication is the lifeline of all our relations. She propagated that in order to achieve effective branding, one must think big, think fast, think ahead.  Communication has to be relevant and relatable and need to lead with sincerity, empathy and humanity in everything we communicate. Salwan used a number of anecdotes to clarify how varied tools of communication could be used for better relations with one’s stakeholders. She also said that one needs to be fearless for apt branding and refrain from sycophancy.