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Lintas to give away the True Awards

Lintas Media Group will honour three persons/ institutions with the new awards it has created

Lintas Media Group, which doesn’t believe in participating in any awards event, whether Indian or international, will now give out its own awards.

It will confer three industry awards at a ceremony at the end of this month. The True Awards, as they are called, will be bestowed on persons/ bodies/ companies that LMG thinks deserves them. This is the first year of the True Awards and they will be conferred every year from now on.

With the awards, LMG hopes to felicitate and celebrate the spirit of collaboration in the media space, honour people in the industry who have made India proud and recognise significant successes attained by companies in reaching out to and touching audiences.

Lintas to give away the True Awards
Lynn de Souza
“This year, these are the three consideration factors on which the awards will be based. There will be different factors next year,” says Lynn de Souza, chairperson and chief executive officer, Lintas Media Group. The True Awards are all about respect for excellence and will not encourage judgementalism and competitiveness, she says.

The Outstanding Collaboration award will be given to the IBF (Indian Broadcasting Foundation) and the AAAI (Advertising Agencies Association of India) for demonstrating the triumph of the collaborative spirit. The award will recognise the months of negotiation by the two bodies to set aside their disagreements and work together as a team.

The India Ahead award will be conferred on Sam Balsara. De Souza says she perceives his takeover of Mediacom as a remarkable feat. “He demonstrated the power and potential of Indian entrepreneurship. At a time when multinational agencies were buying up Indian ones, he had the vision and strength to take a majority stake in a leading international player,” she says.

The Reach and Touch award will be given to Big FM for gaining an audience of 14 million listeners nationally within a year of its launch. It has become the media vehicle with the highest audience growth in a year in India. “It is no mean feat to set up stations in record time and then get in the listeners and keep them,” says de Souza.

De Souza says the Indian Premier League (IPL) was also a contender for the third award. “But the IPL built on an already existing viewership of cricket, while Big FM garnered 14 million listeners all by itself,” she explains.

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