Making place on the calendar, the Pitch Youth Marketing Summit and Awards is set to take stage today at The Metropolitan Hotel, New Delhi. As the only platform in India that showcases and recognises the best work done by brands in the youth marketing space, the Summit and Awards seek to appreciate and reward brands, which have redefined this space. The Summit begins at 1500 hours today with Michael Perschke, Head, Audi India delivering a special address on “The Next Destination: Driving Youth to Luxury” and is bound to accelerate the rest of the day. It only gets better. Starting 1530 hours onwards, Shashi Tharoor, Member of Parliament and someone who has long endorsed the young in India and actively engaged with them, in his keynote address is going to talk about the “Role of Digital & Social Media in Connecting with Young India”. Managing Editor, Headlines Today, Rahul Kanwal, is going to engage Shashi Tharoor in a Q & A to get valuable insights. In his session on “The Art of Engaging Youth: The Do’s, Don’ts and Don’t Bothers", Samar Singh Shekhawat, Vice President, Marketing, UB Group is going to hit the nail on the head with what works and what doesn’t work with a generation characterised as flexible, confident, adaptable and steadfast, all in one breath. The Pitch-TNS Youth Report, which stands strong on the premise that the youth has the potential to change the world we live in, will be released next at the Summit. Shravani Sen, Executive Editor & Qualitative Head, TNS India & Sri Lanka, will share key insights and underline the focus of the Report. Taking the podium next will be Satyaki Ghosh, Director, Consumer Products Division, L’Oreal talking about “Reaching Youth by Segmenting and targeting smaller niche in the personal care category”. Acknowledging the extensive foray of gadgets and gizmos in the lives of the young has been reflected in multiple initiatives by Lenovo. The next session by Ajay Kaul, Executive Director, Global Brand Communications and Marketing Services, Lenovo, is only fitting with him talking about “Screenagers: Making Gadgets A Way of Life”. They’re always on the move and the smartphone wave bringing all possible networking onto the Social Media. Ashwin Mushran, Actor, Stand Up Comedian and someone who knows how to do it right on Twitter, will be up on stage at the Summit discussing “Youth Marketing: Are Indian Marketers using Social Media Effectively?” The duo in Terry Mardi, Chairman and Founder of Terry Mardi Group and Vijay Nair, CEO, Only Much Louder will talk about what literally reverberates with the youth and makes them pluck a common string. Their session titled “The Cool Quotient: Using Music to Resonate with Youth” has a promise of “bringing the house down”. The Summit is also going to host three stimulating and opinionated panels. The first one, “Learnings for Youth Marketers from Film Makers” is going to be moderated by Arun Mehra, CEO of Talenthouse India. The panelists include CEO of Rampage Motion Pictures, Ram Mirchandani, Shikhar Mohan, Head-Brand at HCL Infosystems, Kuber Chopra, Founder, Rasta, Subi Chaturvedi, Filmmaker and Photographer and Siddhartha Jain, Producer, iRock. They watch them and they seldom leave them ignored. Reality shows work with the youth and how! Taking this thought, one step forward, is the next panel moderated by Bipin Chandran, Editorial Consultant, exchange4media Group. The session labeled “Reality Shows: How can channels and advertisers lure the youth- Challenges & Opportunities”, will have a whole swarm of views from Amin Lakhani, Principal Partner, Mindshare, Sanjay Modi, MD, monster.com, Debarpita Banerjee, Vice President, Marketing and Communication, National Geographic and Fox International Channels and PN Vasanti, Director, Centre for Media Studies. Big shout out for the next panel, which is going to have some of the youngest, successful and most enterprising minds on it. “Youth Unplugged : What can marketers learn from India’s 5th Best-Selling Author; Premier Live-Show Entrepreneur; No 1 Youth Newspaper and Music Entrepreneur” will see people who fit these tags perfectly. Sachin Garg, Author and Co-Founder of Grapevine India Publishers, Prerna Kapur, Executive Director of The Yellow Brick Project, Shiv Bhaskar Dravid, Founder & CEO of The Viewspaper and Ritnika Nayan, Founder & Promoter of Music Gets Me High, will be moderated in this discussion by Annurag Batra, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, exchange4media Group. We wish we had something more appropriate to say, but Be There or Be Square! For all the information you need on The Pitch Youth Marketing Summit and Awards, click here. And, stay tuned as we update you on all that happens today.