Ogilvy Group’s young blood win big at the local Young Lions competition and gear up for the Cannes Lions International Festival for Creativity
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 17 th to the 21 st 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.
