Lankan marketers ready to compete at 62nd Cannes Lions Int’l Festival of Creativity

The winners who will represent Sri Lanka at the Cannes Young Lions competition

By Shehana Dain

Eleven young marketing communication professionals from Sri Lanka have been selected to represent the country at the prestigious Young Lions Competitions and Roger Hatchuel Academy in Cannes, France in June 2015.

Cannes Lions is the world’s biggest annual awards show and festival for professionals in the creative communications industry, essentially the Olympics for marketers where the best of work and greatest professionals are honoured. 

This year the event saw a record number of entries of 40,000 although there were fewer in the Press and Outdoor Category. More importantly, youth from 82 countries will compete for the Young Lions title.

The event highlighted the need for young professionals in the marketing fraternity and outlined the dependence the industry has on the youth, as the marketing industry has always been prone to paradigm shifts.

The awards were highlighted as an example to point out the opportunity youngsters have to pick their expertise and talents against likeminded colleagues from fellow agencies and subsequently go for a win.

Marketing personnel from Leo Burnett Solutions Inc, Digibrush Productions Ltd., Phoenix O&M, Triad Ltd. and Nestlé Lanka grabbed the opportunity to represent Sri Lanka at this global event. The participants will compete against the best teams from around the world at the Young Lions competitions in the categories of Film, Print, Design, Cyber and Young Marketer.

This year, a total of 100 young professionals from the marketing communications industry took part in the local competition. Infas Nias and Sarah Ramu of Digibrush Productions emerged as the winners of the film category whilst Rinesh Jayarathne and Hassan Samdin of Leo Burnett Solutions won the Print Category.

Dushan Pieris and Chanuka Wijasinghe of Phoenix O&M won the Design Category, while Shehan Samarasinghe and Dilan Ariyarathne of Triad emerged as winners of the Cyber Category. Tasneem Dawoodbhoy from Leo Burnett secured her place to attend Roger Hatchuel Academy and Nuwan Rathnayake and Aveen Sathishka Pathirage of Nestlé Lanka won the local Young Lions Marketers Competition which was conducted in partnership with SLIM.

The Sri Lankan Representative of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity Ranil de Silva noted: “From two delegates 12 years ago, we will have 15 delegates this year. Seven years ago we just had one Young Lion team competing; this year around we have five teams vying for the coveted title. Most significantly we have over 100 applicants vying for a Lion.”

“Digibrush is a relative newcomer to the industry, an organisation with a fresh output. They have a team competing in the Young Lions category. Similarly a well-established globally reputed and renowned multinational company, Nestlé will be having two young men competing for the Young Marketer title, which is great as franchises as well as newcomers get an opportunity to showcase their creativity,” Ranil added.

Ranil further highlighted that the young marketers were the respective companies’ investments “It is incumbent upon you to give back to the company which invested in you,” he said.

The event was organised by Metal Factor, the Sri Lankan representative of the global event, in partnership with the International Advertising Association (IAA), the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies (4As) and the Sri Lankan Institute of Marketing (SLIM).