Creative thinking: Lanka’s bright sparks at Spikes Asia 2015
Young members of the advertising industry spent an exciting few days in Singapore earlier this month representing Sri Lanka at the Spikes Asia 2015 competition.
Winning silver: Kumarini Rajakaruna and Achala Ramanayake of Grant McCann Erickson
The three teams competing under categories for Media, Integrated and Digital Communication won at national level to qualify as Sri Lanka’s team at Spikes. Three days surrounded by the best creative thinkers in Asia, has the delegation full of experiences they won’t forget soon.
Kumarini Rajakaruna and Achala Ramanayake of Grant McCann Erickson won a silver award at Spikes. With about four years of experience in the industry between them, the two 27-year-olds wiped out their local competition to qualify for a spot in the delegation to Singapore.
Tasked with raising funds to put-up an electric fence, the two animal lovers put forward the concept of a crowd-sourced fence which would go from a ghostly fade to solid form on digital media.
Facing the judges at Spikes, their brief was “Feminism in Singapore” – admittedly a little unnerving. Up against “Managers and Directors who had much more experience and exposure” , they picked on combining “fame and feminism”.
Oshadi Paranavitane
“We turned the concept around to reflect a country’s collective responsibility to promote gender equality.” Counting on every Singaporean’s instinct to pick-up litter, they came up with the action plan of strategically littering the hash-tag #FameinismSG and running poster campaigns by the dust bins.
Achala felt the judges responded well to their goal of getting feminism awareness to be a criterion countries have to achieve on the UN’s Gender Inequality Index.
The Integrated category saw another team from Grants McCann, Sahil Gunasekera, 23, and Tara Weerasinghe, 21, making their mark with their ‘Say Yes to Drugs’ campaign. “It’s reverse psychology almost,” Tara explains, “people won’t listen when they’re told to do something.”
They looked to target both non-users to remain off abusive substances and wean users off them, by showing the less glamorous side of addiction.
“We had posters with models sporting yellowed-out teeth with tag-lines like ‘white-teeth are so last year’.” The chance to meet internationally acclaimed seniors whom they only knew for their work was memorable for this team.
Sagar Hiranand
Representing Sri Lanka in the digital competition, were Oshadi Paranavitane, 24, and Sagar Hiranand, 20, of Lowe LDB. The contestants were briefed at 4 p.m. and given until 8 p.m. the next day to produce a presentation on promoting Singapore as a business hub. “It was a sleepless night,” says Sagar. “We made our presentation five minutes before the deadline!”
Their presentation was inspired by their experience of Spikes and how it was being run in Singapore, an insight that impressed the judges. Although they did not make the top three, both Sagar and Oshadi found the experience rewarding.
“There is so much you can learn because you get to meet so many people,” says Oshadi. Sagar adds, “A few people told us they were seeing more Sri Lankans at these international events, so we felt really proud carrying the Sri Lankan flag.”
20-year-old Umme Salama Shabar Hussain of Raffles Design Institute with Lahesh Kavinda Samarapperuma from the University of Moratuwa attended the Spikes Creative Academy, consisting of workshops and master-classes for students, all under 23.
Umme, inspired by industry experts and peers alike says, “What people are doing out there is crazy. I think here we have so much talent. We have the people and we have the capacity and capability to do it, but we kind of lack that risk taking factor sometimes.
One of the most important things they said was, ‘don’t wait for other people to do it. Don’t wait for the person that’s supposed to do it, maybe you’re that person.’
Tara Weerasinghe and Sahil Gunasekera of Grant McCann Erickson
Sarath Perera, 24, of Triad Advertising who attended the Accounts Executive Academy believes that festivals like Spikes are important, not purely for the knowledge but more for the contacts made globally. “It’s good to know what the world is doing. We’re always stuck here in our own world, in our own agency, but there is so much more to learn.”