Lynn de Souza appointed jury member for the prestigious Festival of Media, Montreux

In its fifth year, the global festival is being hosted in Montreux, Switzerland. Attended by leaders from international and pan-regional advertisers, media agencies and media owners, the festival has been firmly established as a coveted event on the international calendars for this fraternity. In 2009, The Festival of Media launched a global awards ceremony that is now one of the world's largest advertising ceremonies by number of entries, attracting work from more than 40 countries.

Speaking on being part of the Festival of Media Jury, Lynn de Souza said "I'm very excited to be a part of this prestigious festival. The Festival of Media, Montreux is a great platform for knowledge exchange especially with the constantly changing and evolving communication landscape. The event provides great opportunity to celebrate achievements in media innovations as well as discuss the future landscape of the industry. It is also a proud moment for me as much work from India has been shortlisted, with three entries being directly fast-tracked from the entries in the media award categories at the Goafest 2011."

In India advertising spend in main media - television, newspapers and magazines soared by 32% in the first quarter of 2010, marking the highest growth amongst the 12 major markets in the Asia Pacific region, where overall media spend grew by 18%. This is proof enough of the scope and the fact that India is one of the creative hot spots for the media industry!

While much celebrated work from the India has been submitted and shortlisted at the Festival of Media Montreux, two special entries have been shortlisted and fast-tracked from the India's premier advertising festival ' Goafest 2011. The entries have been selected from the work for "best communication strategy' and "best contribution to a campaign by a media owner'. The campaigns for Volkswagen Polo, Skoda Yeti right of way expedition' by Mediacom and Creativeland Asia's "Plan T-Tracking inventory through Twitter' for Hippo Baked Munchies have been shortlisted by Charlie Crowe, Founder Festival of Media himself; who was also a part of the panel of judges for the media awards at Goafest 2011.

MediaCom India is the leading agency from India with 5 campaigns being shortlisted for the awards followed by Mindshare with three of its campaigns getting shortlisted.

The participation and recognition of India's work at a global platform like the Festival of Media brings Indian advertising and media industry at par with the international standards and at the same time being relevant and path-breaking.