Six young Sri Lankans to participate at Spikes Asia Festival 2016

Advertising professionals from Media Factory, Neo@Ogilvy and Mullen Lowe to represent Sri Lanka at Asian finals

By Devin Jayasundera

Six young advertising professionals will represent Sri Lanka at the annual Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity which will be held in Singapore. This year a total of 108 candidates were vying for a place to represent the country at the prestigious congregation of the ad industry.  

The three young Spikes teams from Sri Lanka will compete under three categories; media, integrated and digital. 

In the media category competitors had to use strategic media platforms and strategies to encourage Sri Lankans to increase their consumption of eggs in order to help them meet their overall nutritional requirements. Bratheepa Puvirajasekaram and Himaya Judith Peiris from the Media Factory won the media competition. 

Head Jury member of the media category Murtaza Tajbhoy said: “What we saw in the winning team really excited all of us. They understood the challenge and the problem and showed how they would engage different stakeholders across multiple touch points. Extra marks were awarded for the well thought out presentation and even the chemistry between the two members.”

In the integrated category, competitors were asked to create a national conversation to help take children off the streets of Sri Lanka. Randula de Silva and Natasha Fernando from Neo@Ogilvy were able to emerge at the top in the highly contested race.

“The winning campaign was presented very clearly and concisely and had key performance indicators even this was real live brief the client would be easily able to measure internal investment when it comes to campaign,” said Integrated Jury Head Gian de Rose.

The digital category was won by Sagar Hiranand and Chevin Madawala from Mullen Lowe. In this particular category the competitors were required to showcase how they could build the brand image and awareness of a food product amongst SEC A and B audiences by using digital channels and tactics. 

One of the hall marks of this year’s competition is the selection of Vikasitha Anumevan from University of Moratuwa to participate at the Young Creative Academy, which is an in-depth training programme that is made available only to 15 students in the region. The three day programme provides students with the opportunity to attend exclusive seminars and tutorials, where they can learn from the top industry professionals and gain valuable international exposure.

Commenting on the completion Sri Lanka Representative for the Spikes Asia Festival Ranil de Silva said: “This year the young spikes competition had the highest participation. It is very fulfilling to know that young professionals from a diverse cross section of agencies came together to compete at the local competitions to be selected to represent the country at the Young Spikes 

competition.”