Ogilvy strikes Gold for Sri Lanka at Young Spikes Asia 2019

Wednesday, 2 October 2019 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Ogilvy raises the Sri Lankan flag high on stage at Spikes Asia 2019

Hansaka and Dinali with their Gold award certificates for

winning the ‘Media’ category

Hansaka and Dinali win ‘Media’ category, ahead of Japan and China

The Phoenix Ogilvy Group’s Hansaka Wickramasinghe and Dinali Rajapakse have brought glory to the Sri Lankan communications industry by winning Gold in the ‘Media’ category at the Young Spikes competition, which is an integral part of the Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity 2019, held in Singapore.

Hansaka and Dinali, beat out 11 competing teams in the local edition of Young Spikes, to receive the privilege of representing Sri Lanka at the Young Spikes Asia competition, where they finished atop a total of 13 teams in their category.

The competition draws the participation of the bright, young communication minds from across Asia Pacific to provide a creative and strategic communications solution a global problem. This year’s ‘Media’ category brief came from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), to create a campaign to encourage startups to collaborate with UNDP on its Sustainable Agriculture projects. Their idea: ‘The Golden Potato in Your Startup That You Didn’t See’, was designed to bring attention to the opportunities in Sustainable Agriculture available to startups which they haven’t unearthed yet. It was pitched as a Global Innovation Challenge to attract innovators and technologist around the world to in their own ways invest in Sustainable Agriculture.

The campaign would feature a giant golden potato, used to symbolise the potential opportunity at hand for startups, and as an idea, was devised to be adapted in 143 developing countries. This approach was judged the Gold-winner by a jury of eminent judges including Ally Young, Brand Partner – Media and Skinny at SPARK, Dennis Peres, Media Director at Unilever Philippines and Rajesh Mahtani, Head of Business Development, APAC at Publicis Media.

The prestigious Young Spikes competition is a part of the Spikes Asia Festival of Creativity, which brings together the Asia Pacific’s creative community for three days annually, to celebrate creativity in communications, in the region.