Leo Burnett the only Sri Lankan agency to win metal at Epica Awards 2018

Leo Burnett Sri Lanka alongside Leo Burnett Toronto was bestowed with two coveted metals at the celebrated Epica Awards held recently. 

The agency won Silver for ‘Product Design’ and a Bronze for ‘Household Maintenance’ categories for its campaign for Petal Paint in close partnership with client JAT Holdings. 

The Epica Awards aim to reward outstanding creativity and help agencies, production companies, media consultancies, and photographers and design studios to develop their reputations beyond their national borders, attracting thousands of entries from more than 70 countries. 

Established in 1987, Epica is unique in the crowded awards sector as it is the only prize judged by journalists working for marketing and communications titles. More than 200 magazines and websites from around the world are on the Epica jury.

Petal Paint is a unique paint that has been created with the pigments from dried flower petals and transformed into liquid paint for restoration and maintenance of temple art. 

The Petal Paint campaign achieved several pioneering goals with its launch – it reuses thousands of flowers offered by devotees at temples; this has a beneficial impact on the environment as otherwise the dried flowers are discarded and sent to landfills; and the product is imbued with a spiritual quality since it contains temple flowers transformed into paint to restore murals in temples with traditional hues. Amidst the impermanence of floral offerings, this petal paint marks permanence as it adorns revered murals in temples.  

The award-winning creative campaign consisted of extracting the pigment contained in temple flower offerings to create a range of safe, long-lasting paints and use them for the creation and restoration of temple art. The flower offerings are collected from various temples across Colombo and taken through a drying process, after which their natural pigments are extracted to create Petal Paint. The former Managing Director of Leo Burnett Sri Lanka, Ranil de Silva, was instrumental in conceptualising the campaign and helping the team to execute it till its successful conclusion.  

Elaborating further, JAT Holdings Head of Marketing Richard Gunawardene said: “At JAT Holdings, we espouse a strong commitment to sustainable practices and protection of the environment through our products. Petal Paint was certainly a global first, which re-imagined temple flowers as petal paint to restore temple art. We are proud to combine ancient traditions and cutting-edge manufacturing technology to emerge with such a unique concept. Leo Burnett has been an exceptional partner in this journey and Petal Paint is a testimonial to the power of a great idea underscored by a strong sustainability element. We are thrilled to have the Petal Paint campaign recognized and rewarded on an international stage at Epica Awards.”

Leo Burnett Sri Lanka CEO Arosha Perera said, “The Petal Paint concept is capturing attention globally and this triumph at the revered Epica awards is yet another reflection of just how fresh and unique this campaign was. This product truly seals in tradition, culture, religion and spirituality in a can. We maintained the temple art theme in the packaging which depicts temple designs so that the product stands apart on the shelves. JAT Holdings is a company ahead of its time for implementing this novel product as a way to give back to society. Kudos to both teams from Leo Burnett and JAT Holdings for bringing petal paint to fruition. We expect this campaign will go down in history as an out-of-the-box and yet a simple translation of a sustainable creative concept.”

Leo Burnett has become a crucible for creativity and great thinking, producing to be executed in a fresh, relevant and insightful manner to add value to clients’ brands. The agency conveyed the sustainable and eco-friendly benefits of this unique paint through a touching campaign which evoked the culture and heritage of Sri Lanka in a beautiful manner. As Leo Burnett celebrates its 19th year of operations in Sri Lanka and looks ahead to the future, the agency will continue to focus on its Human Kind approach to help build powerful brands and meaningful partnerships with its clients, while delivering gratifying results and gaining peer recognition in the industry.