Sunday Times 2
Daily Mirror journalist to attend Cannes Lions 2017 as special guest
View(s):The Cannes International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in the creative communications, advertising and similar fields.
A team of 13 young Sri Lankans from the marketing communications industry will represent the country at the festival this year in Cannes, France from June 17-24, taking part in programmes designed to develop the youth in this industry.
Making this year’s event even more special for Sri Lanka is Daily Mirror journalist Kamanthi Wickramasinghe. She is the proud recipient of the Michael Konig Young Journalist Bursary. This prestigious award was launched in memory of German journalist Michael Konig, who sadly passed away at Cannes Lions 2015.
Kamanthi (extreme right) with other members of the :ankan team for the Cannes Lion 2017 programme.
The competition is open to young journalists from around the world. Each year it offers a budding young journalist the ultimate Cannes Lions programme. Tailored to maximise opportunity and networking for them, while providing editorial content for Cannes Lions’ channels, the programme will offer a career kick-start across a diverse mix of media including print, digital and broadcast.
Applicants were required to write an essay about the state of the communications industry in their country and the winner attends Cannes Lions as a special guest of the Festival with travel, accommodation and a Festival pass provided.
This year marks the 10th year of Sri Lanka’s active partnership with the Cannes Lions under the auspices of Metal Factor in Sri Lanka.
Six teams emerged victorious at the local Young Lions competition, which had an excess of 74 participants, and was organised by Metal Factor in collaboration with the International Advertising Association (IAA), the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies (4As) and the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM).
The winning local teams will now prepare to compete against the best teams in the world at the Cannes Lions competition in their respective categories. Hailed as the ‘Olympics of the advertising industry’, the Cannes Lions competitions attract the industry’s top talent, who will come together to compete on a global stage.
The Sri Lankan teams will go on to compete in Cyber, Design, Media, Print, Film and Young Marketers categories of the Young Lions Competitions at Cannes.