Eight Young Sri Lankans to represent Sri Lanka at Spikes Asia 2014

Ranil de Silva with the Young Lions Digital, Integrated,
Media and Young Creative Academy winners with
Laila Gunesekere

Six young professionals and two young students from Sri Lanka’s advertising industry, have been selected to represent the country at the annual Young Spikes competition which will take place at the Spikes Asia Festival 2014  in Singapore from 23 to 26 September 2014. Following a local competition conducted by Metal Factor in partnership with the International Advertising Association (IAA), three teams were selected to participate in the Integrated, Media and Digital categories of the Young SpikesAsia competitions.  Two students from the Academy of Design were also selected to participate at the Young Creative Academy which will take place at the festival.

Laila Gunesekere, President IAA and Ranil de Silva, Metal Factor,
 Cannes Lions International Sri Lanka Representative

A total of 74 young professionals competed in the local competition. These teams were issued a brief to which they had to respond to by the end of the day. After which each team presented their response to the brief to a jury comprising of leading professionals from the industry. For the Integrated competition, the brief was to create a campaign for safe driving by adhering to road rules and to highlight the importance of road etiquette. The Media competition challenged the teams to awaken the social conscience of city dwellers to use water sparingly. The Digital teams had to use digital platforms to help a clothing brand called ‘Exclamation’ reach out to its audience and to engage with them more effectively. Imaad Majeed and Shyan Gershon from TBW/TAL were selected as the winners of the integrated category and Seninda Bandara and Supun Hettiarachchi from Mindshare were selected in the Media category.  Infas Iqbal and Gayathri Seneviratne from Phoenix O&M won in the Digital category. The Young Spikes Digital category is being introduced to the festival for the first time this year.

Commenting on this year’s Spikes Asia competition and winners, Ranil de Silva, the Sri Lankan representative for Spikes Asia said, “I am very happy to have eight young Sri Lankans representing our country at the Spikes Asia Festival this year. The Spikes Asia Festival and the Young Spikes competition provide young professionals in Sri Lanka with exposure to international standards of creativity. This I hope will enable them to help put Sri Lanka on the regional map. These teams will now compete against the best in the region. They will also have the opportunity to gain valuable experience which I hope will help them to grow as professionals. I strongly believe that opportunities such as this will help uplift the advertising industry in Sri Lanka.”

The local competition was facilitated by Metal Factor for the sixth consecutive year. Metal Factor is a non-profit partnership which was created to help Sri Lanka’s advertising industry realize its dream of achieving world-class standards to gain global recognition for its work. Metal Factor has been responsible for many programmes that benefit the industry, very specially the youth. Metal Factor organizes competitions to select promising young advertising professionals to represent the country at the world’s most prestigious advertising festivals (Spikes Asia and Cannes Lions). Similarly, Metal Factor also facilitates the process to select participants for the highly acclaimed Roger Hatchuel Academy which takes place at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

The Spikes Asia Festival is the region’s oldest and most prestigious event that recognizes the best in Film, Print, Outdoor, Radio, Digital, Direct, Promo and Activations, Media, Design, Poster Craft, Integrated, Mobile and PR. A collaboration between the organizers of the Cannes Lions Festival and Haymarket, the Spikes Asia Festival provides the region’s growing creative and advertising industry with a platform to network, exchange ideas and think creatively. Aside from bringing the region’s leading creative thinkers together, the festival also recognizes the best work from across the region.