MUMBAI: The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) today announced that the renowned journalist Shekhar Gupta will speak on ‘Changing Role of Media in Today’s India’ at the AAAI-Subhas Ghosal Memorial Lecture 2015 on 9 October at ITC Grand Central, Parel, Mumbai.

This is the first of the newly created AAAI-Subhas Ghosal Memorial Lecture Series wherein notable personalities from the field of media and advertising will be invited to share their views on various topics of interest to the advertising, media and marketing fraternity.

In the past Subhas Ghosal Foundation had occasionally organized a Memorial Lecture on its own and past speakers included Dr. Prannoy Roy, Javed Akhtar, Dr Gurcharan Das, Shyam Benegal amongst others.

Recently, the Foundation partnered with AAAI to create the AAAI-Subhas Ghosal Memorial Lecture. On the tie up, President of AAAI Dr Ambi M G Parameswaran said ‘We at AAAI are constantly examining how the Association can play a more meaningful role in changing and shaping public opinion about advertising, media and marketing. The partnership with Subhas Ghosal Foundation gives us a great platform to invite thought leaders from various domains to share their perspectives on the changing discourse on media, advertising and society. Through this effort we will also remember one of the visionaries of Indian advertising. ’

Shekhar Gupta is chairperson of Mediascape. Mediascape is an exciting new start-up in Indian news media, and is currently under development. He is a prolific columnist, with his highly influential columns translated into Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati and Marathi. He is a senior prime-time anchor at NDTV. Over the past two decades, Shekhar’s weekly column, National Interest, has been regarded as the sharpest, most perceptive analysis of current events as they unfold. His columns were recently collected in the bestselling book, Anticipating India. Currently, National Interest appears in Business Standard every Saturday. He also writes a fortnightly column for India’s leading Hindi newspaper, Dainik Bhaskar. Shekhar hosts ‘Walk the Talk’ on NDTV 24x7 every week. A collection of his news-making interviews will be published soon. He has now started a second weekly show in Hindi, “Chalet Chalte”, telecast on NDTV India. During a 38-year career, Shekhar has reported on key Indian and international events, including the Nellie massacre in Assam, Operation Blue Star, the student uprising in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the first Gulf War from Baghdad, the first “jihad” in Afghanistan, and the many twists and turns in the troubled 1983-1993 decade in Sri Lanka’s Tamil North. In June 2014, Shekhar concluded a 19-year stint at the Indian Express and the Express Group of publications. As Editor-in-Chief, he led the country’s largest network of award-winning journalists.

The Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) is the official, national organization of advertising agencies, formed in 1945, to promote their interests. The Association promotes professionalism, through its founding principles, which uphold sound business practices between advertisers and advertising agencies and the various media. The AAAI today is truly representative, with a very large number of small, medium and large-sized agencies as its members, who together account for almost 80% of the advertising business placed in the country. It is thus recognized as the apex body of and the spokesperson for the advertising industry at all forums – advertisers and media owners and their associations and Government.

The Subhas Ghosal Foundation was set up by a group of communication professionals to promote the values that Subhas Ghosal stood for in his lifetime. The Foundation serves not just as a fitting memorial to one of the towering personalities in the history of advertising, but as an instrument for professionalising the industry. The Foundation aims to promote these ideals and values through training programmes, seminars, lectures, communication campaigns, publications and other appropriate channels.