Kaushik Roy is elected president and Lynn de Souza is Vice President of IAA, Indian Chapter

Kaushik Roy, President - Brand Strategy & Marketing Communication, Reliance Industries Limited, has been unanimously elected as the new president of the India Chapter of the International Advertising Association (IC-IAA) for the year 2010-2011 at its annual general meeting held in Mumbai.

Roy had served as the Vice President of IAA's India Chapter for the last two years. Lynn de Souza, Chairman & CEO - Lintas Media Group, who was the Honorary Secretary of the India Chapter of IAA for the past two years is the new Vice President.

After assuming office of the President, Kaushik Roy said, "The IAA India Chapter has had a great run under the leadership of Raj Nayak. Thanks to him, today we have a strong contingent of reputed professionals from across creative, media houses & agencies and advertisers as our members. We are also strengthened by a large number of young members who have joined the IAA Young Professionals' group to become a part of this great international institution. Me and my Committee's top priority will be to deliver value to these members. We will work closely with other industry bodies like the AAAI, the Ad Clubs, ASCI, ISA, INS, IBF & other industry bodies to create programmes and events that will benefit the industry as a whole. Our focus will be on knowledge based initiatives and CSR. The other burning need is to make the fraternity embrace the digital wave and towards that the IAA India Chapter has a clear agenda. While undertaking these responsibilities we hope to bring to the table the best practices from the global IAA network from across 76 countries and over 4000 key decision makers".

Apart from this IAA recently held a seminar on "Channel, Client yah... Agency?", where over 55 Young Professionals of IAA's India Chapter and their guests -- all from the field of advertising, brand management, marketing, mass communication and media -' gathered at the at Sunville Banquets Rooms in Worli in Mumbai to keep their High Tea date with Lynn de Souza, Chairman & CEO - Lintas Media Group and the Honorary Secretary of the India Chapter of IAA.

Amidst a thunder of applause Lynn de Souza took over and breezed though a series of slides and audio visual clips to make the point that no matter where one worked, channel, client or the agency, the challenges that young professionals face today are manifold and quite apart from those she had faced when she first started her a career in an ad agency.

Lynn de Souza opened her presentation by describing the most challenging feature of today's advertising and communication industry being the steady erosion of value -- both financial and ethical, across all players. She attributed this to the emphasis made on tangible values which can only be stripped downwards, and urged the audience to look for and celebrate intangible values in any process or

The session ended with a Q&A round where the Young Professionals seized the opportunity to share their ideas and apprehensions with Lynn de Souza, with Kaushik Roy thanking Lynn de Souza for the really important ideas and insights she shared that our Young Professionals could absorb as early in life as they can.