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Caf de Coral Holdings Limited has just announced the appointment of Joyce Chiu as assistant corporate director, corporate communications.

In her new role, Chiu will oversee the communications department, and will be responsible for leading communications and public relations efforts includingmedia relations, issues management, CSR strategy, and reputationmanagement.

Prior to joiningCaf de Coral, Chiu was theassociate PR director for LeEco (Letv) between 2014 and 2017.

Before that, Chiu was the vice president of Madison Communications Ltd, as well assenior PR manager at Shun Hing Group.She has also spent seven years in Ketchum Hong Kong leading the brand marketing team.

With an experience of over 18 years in the agency and in-house environments, Joyce brings extensive experience in corporate communications, brandcommunications, B2C marketing, engagement planning, and influencer and social marketing to the company, said the release.

Ovolo Group names new PR partner as it expands beyond Hong Kong...

Don Anderson, has been named regional managing director...

According to Euromonitor International, by 2020, the number of single-person households globally will rise to 331 million or 15.7%..

This following its September 2016 acquisition by Dentsu Aegis Network. ..

"We want agencies and brands to be mindful of the power they wield and to use it to encourage positive values in society." ..

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LeEco's former associate PR director Joyce Chiu joins Caf de Coral - Marketing Interactive

(Thinkstock Images)CogMat, one of Indias leading digital marketing agencies, has started its Gulf operations by winning Social Media Marketing mandates for PRAN Foods. PRAN is currently one of the most admired F&B (FMCG) brands among millions of people in Bangladesh and 134 other countries where their products are regularly exported, including the UAE. The retainer account was awarded by One and Zero Solutions (ONZ Solutions), concerning team handling digital activities for PRAN RFL, post a multi-agency pitch starting with PRAN FROOTO and then adding the PRAN LITCHI DRINK account.

CogMat will offer PRAN access to its strategic social media consultancy, creative talent, SMM expertise and social media data analytics for its Arabia pages for both the brands. As per the brief given to the agency, PRAN products appeal to both families and Gulf expats, as they are a value for money quick pick-up drink.

The Company Official at PRAN Beverages Pvt. Ltd, said, We like the work CogMat is currently doing for our FROOTO account including creatives made for the festive campaign around Ramzan and Eid, and thus invited them to pitch for LITCHIs social media mandate. CogMat understands our brands proposition and communication objectives which clearly came across in their creative presentation. We are pleased to start our journey with CogMat to take both our brands to an all new level on social media.

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CogMat ventures into Gulf operations with PRAN Foods - ETBrandEquity.com

This has been a tough week.

Starting with the terrible event that occurred last weekend in Charlottesville, VA, where clashes between neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups erupted into fights and violence and led to death of one protester.

Throughout the week, the event continued to gain steam when President Trump commented about the incident, then made a second comment, then held an unprecedented press conference that even members of his own party condemned.

As prominent CEOs's of the President's manufacturing council began to drop out, several tech companies began or intensified their crack down on hate speech and banning of alt-right and neo-Nazi websites. According to PBS News, here are just a few big names and their actions:

Cloudflare, a company that provides security services to internet companies to protect them from hackers, also joined the movement by also dropping The Daily Stormer from its network services. The move was a bit of a surprise, because Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, has long been an advocate of free speech saying that "a website is speech, it is not a bomb,"

Cloudfire took the action, however, because management determined that the The Daily Stormer was harassing individuals who were reporting their site as abusive. Prince was also clear that he and the company found the content on the site "abhorrent and vile" and in a company memo stated that "the tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology ... we could not remain neutral after these claims of secret support by Cloudflare."

While these actions by tech companies seen by most as the proper and moral thing to do, some have rightfully questioned the ability of businesses in general to have such a significant influence on the fundamental right of free speech online -- censoring or even removing it altogether.

Prince goes on to say that entrepreneurs -- and society at large -- need to ask ourselves who should be responsible for policing and regulating online content. "I sit in a very privileged position," said Prince, "I see about 10 percent of all online traffic, and I can make a decision whether they can be online anymore. And I'm not sure I am the one who should be making that kind of decision."

The the question for all of us is who should be?

We are all affording the freedom of speech and expression -- a very unique, precious and delicate gift. We have also been afforded, through the sacrifice of many generations, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

When these two rights intersect and conflict, we need a moral standard -- not the constitution -- to moderate.

Of course, the question then becomes who gets to decide the moral standard?

Luckily, we have a democratic system in place that allows the country's citizens to select representatives who serve as the law makers that mold this standard. Is our system flawed -- absolutely -- but as Winston Churchill astutely recognized, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

When it comes to tech companies -- or any company for that matter -- they have an obligation to follow the law -- and that is about it. As Prince contends, the right policy is for content providers to be "content neutral." The community can be policed by its users in the form reporting reprehensible content, and companies have the obligations to engage experts and authorities in law enforcement to determine what should be removed.

Of course, if some companies wish to write and maintain an internal set of codes and as long as those codes do not infringe upon or otherwise break a law, a company has every right to do so. Customers who disagree can exercise their freedom of speech to voice their opinion or simply "protest with their wallets."

This debate will surely not end anytime soon, and by all indications, it is just getting started.

What do you think? Should censorship be under the management of companies, or should content be continued to be given freedoms under the right to free speech? Please share your (constructive and civil) comments below.

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Tech Companies and Censorship: Where Should We Draw The Line? - Inc.com

Major internet companies rush to oust a white nationalist website last week could make it tougher for tech companies and open-net advocates to try to keep the government from censoring websites in the future, the CEO of one of the companies said.

GoDaddy, Google and Cloudflare a company that protects sites from being knocked off-line all booted Daily Stormer from their services after the white nationalist website cheered the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and mocked the 32-year-old woman killed in the aftermath.

Matthew Prince, CEO for Cloudflare, acknowledged the decision makes it harder for his company to fight against pressure by some governments to take down a website in the future.

I dont know the right answer, but I do know that as we work it out its critical we be clear, transparent, consistent and respectful of Due Process, Mr. Prince wrote in his statement.

At a time when open-internet advocates are pushing policies such as net neutrality, the quick moves to punish the online presence rally participants or sympathizers worried activists who said the companies appeared to be making up the rules as they went along.

We think that there is a better route to making decisions that impact fundamental rights like freedom of expression than what appeared to be pretty ad hoc decisions being made right now, said Peter Micek, general counsel for Access Now.

Daily Stormer took the brunt of the online blowback last week, getting kicked off hosting sites. Twitter also banned an account that shared links to stories from the controversial site, while Facebook expunged all efforts to share the offending article that mocked the woman killed in Charlottesville.

But Facebook allowed the article to remain posted as long as it was accompanied by criticism of Daily Stormer or its white nationalist views.

Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer, said he thinks its a good thing for the Facebooks of the world to ban certain types of racist speech, although he admits editorial editing from these sites is not without concern.

There is an inherent danger when so many people get so much of their information from, say, Facebook that when Facebook makes the decision not to carry something, the public is effectively deprived, said Mr. Abrams.

Meanwhile, OkCupid, an online dating site, banned one user who admitted to being a part of the white nationalist protests.

The kind of viewpoint refereeing the sites engaged in is likely legal because the sites are private, experts said.

I dont see that as adding any exposure to the service provider because they already have the ability as a private actor and as a commercial provider to determine who they are going to work with, to contract with or, if you will, even to discipline, said Brigadier Gen. Michael McDaniel, a professor at WMU-Cooley Law School.

But Mr. Abrams said tension is created when these sites engage in editing but are still protected from liability under the law.

Thats something that all these companies must be thinking about carefully, he said.

A spokesperson for Google said they ousted Daily Stormer because they feared Googles terms of use would be violated.

Twitter declined to comment, while GoDaddy and Facebook didnt respond to questions about their censorship decisions.

Mr. Prince at Cloudflare admitted to Gizmodo that he made an exception to their policy in canceling Daily Stormer but insisted he hadnt set a new precedent.

I think we have to have a conversation over what part of the infrastructure stack is right to police content, he said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said what hosting companies such as GoDaddy and Cloudflare did was more worrisome than the social media companies censorship.

With a content host that is like a social media site, they can just take down one post or eliminate one bit of content whereas Cloudflare and GoDaddy and so on, they cant, said Jeremy Malcolm, senior global policy analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation. They had to take down an entire website, and that gives a lot more risk of taking down legitimate speech along with the problematic speech.

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Daily Stormer ban opens door to government censorship, some say ... - Washington Times

Movies lovers in India and advocates of artistic freedom everywhere breathed a sigh of relief on August 18, when filmmaker Pahlaj Nihalani the censorious chairman of the countrys film certification body was fired from his post. He was quickly replaced by screenwriter and advertising icon Prasoon Joshi. Nihalanis firing signals a positive direction for the countrys relationship to censorship but the chain of events has opened up several thorny questions.

See MoreWhy India Continues to Censor New Movies

India is the worlds most prolific filmmaking country, but movie news coming out of the subcontinent is often fraught with tales of censorship, bans and the public outrage as a result. According to the Indian Constitution, no film is eligible for public distribution or screening unless certified by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). To complicate matters further, the relevant Act in the Constitution (which hails from 1952) allows the CBFC to prohibit films that threaten the sovereignty of the Indian nation, its national interest, decency or morality. Over the years, members of the board have utilized the vague language in the Constitutions text to get scissor-happy with countless films.

For example, India employs the controversial practice of adding on-screen disclaimers to any smoking scene that are intrusive at best, overwhelming at worst. This found no favor with Woody Allen, who back in 2013 decided not to release Blue Jasmine in India rather than cave in to such demands. This trend only worsened when Nihalani was appointed to the chairpersons post in 2015.

Blue Jasmine

Within a month of joining the body, Nihalani sent his colleagues a list of objectionable words that were to be censored in any film submitted for approval. The list included words such as masturbating and Bombay, the colonial name for Mumbai. It was a lost cause: Filmmakers across the country and some members of the CBFC itself lodged vehement protests that blocked Nihalanis efforts. However, ad hoc decisions were still made with various films; the word lesbian was muted in a romantic comedy and the durations of the kisses in the Bond film Spectre were ordered to be cut down by exactly 50%.

During his term, Nihalani never shied away from the limelight and often spoke at length about the rationale of his decisions. The colorful nature of his statements only added to his infamy. When asked in an interview why the kisses in Spectre were a problem at their intended length, he responded, This means you want to do sex in your house with your door open. And show to people the way you are doing sex.

Perhaps the most well-known decision of Nihalanis term as CBFC chairperson was the bodys refusal to grant approval to feminist sex comedy Lipstick Under My Burkha. In their letter to the films producer, they claimed that the story is lady-oriented, their fantasy above life and that there are contanious [sic] sexual scenes. (Whether they meant continuous or contagious has never been addressed.) The letter and CBFCs antics attracted worldwide attention, the criticism of artists and film festivals; in a beautiful example of the Streisand Effect, not only did Lipstick Under My Burkha eventually win certification but also punched above its weight at the box-office.

Joshi, the new chairperson, seems far more progressive and less trigger-happy in his public statements. As a lyricist, he has twice won the National Film Award, the highest such honor in India. In 2003, a campaign he orchestrated for Coca-Cola India won the Golden Lion at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. In past interviews, he has expressed a refreshing open-mindedness. (One example: I believe that ideally we should have a society where no censorship is required.) He is also generally admired in Indias film industry, where professionals respect his talent and experience.

Lipstick Under My Burkha

JIGNESH PANCHAL

However, Joshis proximity to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the biggest part of Indias ruling coalition ought to raise a few eyebrows. He has frequently worked on their political campaigns. For the BJPs campaign for the 2014 general elections, Joshi helped with the iconic Acche Din (Good times!) catchphrase, a message as integral to the BJPs positioning as Make America Great Again was to Donald Trumps Presidential campaign. Coincidentally, once the BJP formed the government at the center, Joshi was awarded with the Padma Shri, Indias fourth-highest civilian honor, for his contributions in the field of arts, literature and advertising.

Speaking with reporters in Mumbai after his appointment was made public, Joshi revealed that he did not know how [the CBFC] functions and that it takes time to understand the whole process. The credentials required to head a certification body are not amenable to bullet points, but Joshis statements make one wonder on what basis the government considers someone worthy of being appointed to the powerful post overlooking the distribution of every single film in the country. Among Joshis colleagues in the Board are several individuals with links to the BJP, some of whom have made inflammatory and partisan statements in the past.

In an ideal world, the CBFC would stick to its original mandate: certifying films in order to help them reach their audiences. There would be no need for filmmakers to fear cuts to their labor of love or for producers to be anxious about their release dates. Removing Nihalani is a step in the right direction, but a lot more remains to be done.

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Why India's Battle Against Film Censorship Isn't Over Yet | IndieWire - IndieWire