Burson duo wins again to represent Sri Lanka at Young Spikes PR contest

The young duo of creative IMC professionals from Strategic Alliance’s PR arm affiliated to Burson-Marsteller (now Burson Cohn & Wolfe) who were previously selected in June to compete for Sri Lanka at the Cannes Young Lions contest in France, have now succeeded in being selected yet again as the local industry winners to compete in the Young Spikes PR Category at the Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity in Singapore from 25-28 September.

Chanchala Gunewardena, Events and Digital Communications Specialist, and Maheshi Dunuwilage, PR Executive, will be among one of four teams in various categories selected this year to represent Sri Lanka at Spikes following their victory at the local level competition conducted by the International Advertising Association. 

The Young Spikes PR category was introduced to Sri Lanka only this year. Similar to their experience in the Cannes Competition, the young competitors had to once again tackle a surprise brief within eight hours, devising a creative and strategic PR solution and subsequent deployment plan. They then presented and defended their approach to a jury of veteran industry judges. The judges presented a high compliment to the duo’s concept – “We wish we had thought of that”, and deemed them worthy of representing Sri Lanka at Young Spikes.

Chanchala holds a Master’s Degree in Professional Communication and a Bachelors in English from Clark University, Massachusetts, USA, and also finds time to be a social entrepreneur with her ‘Kimbula Kithul’ brand and serves as country liaison for the Asian University for Women. Maheshi holds a BBA Special Degree in Marketing from the University of Colombo and a Diploma in Strategic Brand Management from the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing, and joined the agency following an internship at Unilever.

Strategic Alliance Chairman and CEO Nimal Gunewardena said: “We are delighted that Chanchala and Maheshi showed their mettle once again to now compete at Spikes representing us and Sri Lanka. This marks many moves we are making in this our 25th Anniversary year to ensure that our agency is playing our due role as the pioneering leader in IMC and PR.”

Strategic Alliance PR is a pioneer in public relations and its principal Burson-Marsteller network recently merged with Cohn & Wolfe to create an IMC agency that mirrors Strategic Alliance’s pioneering IMC approach of 25 years. The Agency has long been known as a training ground for the communications industry’s young talent and those coached by in-house Guru Nimal have joined the ranks of industry leaders and have credited their progress to their time at the agency. The Agency is on the lookout for more bright millennial talent to join their ranks and be trained in PR, Strategy, Advocacy and Digital.