Sanoj Fernando and Pavithra Sandaruwani from Ogilvy Media, and Nonim Yasith Dayaratne and Tharushi Sarathchandra from Geometry Global, two companies under the Ogilvy Group Sri Lanka, emerged winners at this year’s Young Lions competition in Colombo and will proudly represent the country at the global Young Lions competition at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France from the 17th to the 21st June 2019.
This is the latest in a series of wins for the young talent in the Ogilvy Group, which saw wins in the Media category of the local Young Lions competition in 2018, and at the 2017 local Young Spikes Competition, winning all three categories of Media, Digital and Integrated.
The four winners of this year’s Young Lions competition are now set to face off against the best young creative talent from around the world at the biggest international awards festival for the creative and marketing communications, entertainment, design and tech industries.
“I am extremely proud of the young talent we develop at Ogilvy. We place a strong emphasis on professional development and invest in opportunities that cultivate creative thinking and build the overall effectiveness of our people. As a result, we have consistently had strong representation at international competitions,” said Irvin Weerackody, Chairman of Ogilvy Group of Companies in Sri Lanka.
The Media category brief was to motivate Sri Lankans to stop using plastic shopping bags for their groceries. Ogilvy Media’s wining campaign idea titled: “The Last Shopping Bag” leveraged on creating a positive long-term habit among Sri Lankans to combat the national problem.
Meanwhile, the brief for the Print category asked teams to identify a social issue in the aftermath of the Easter Sunday attacks and required them to effectively use the print medium to garner public attention for the issue. The winning idea titled: “Religious Extremism is an Addiction/Weapon” by the Geometry Global team, addressed the rise of religious extremism and their creative idea was commended by the judges for its boldness and originality.