Ad competition amongst universities generates lot of creative ideas
The Department of Marketing, Faculty of Management and Finance, University of Ruhuna, has launched for the first time ever in Sri Lanka – “AdCon” – an advertising-focused inter-university competition where undergraduates of all the universities were involved and 300 students among them were selected for the final round.
Finalists at the Inter University Advertising Competition.
The grand finale of the awarding ceremony was held last week under the auspicious of Prof. Sujeewa Amarasena, Vice Chancellor, Ruhuna University where the Sri Jayawardenapura University Team “Sankalan” lifted the Champions Trophy.
Undergraduate Diashika Dias, one of the members of the Organising Committee of the Competition, told Business Times that their department initially in 2018 began the competition as an inter-faculty one and a selected group was asked to prepare a 30 second advertising for the event sponsors – Commercial Credit under their tagline ‘Manudamperatu Mulya Samagama’.
Thus in 2019 the competition was turned into an inter-university one specially to provide a platform for the students to impress on their creative skills with the main sponsors being Unilever Sri Lanka. A technical workshop was provided for 300 selected undergraduate competitors.
The “Adcon” competition revolved around two powerful brands in Sri Lanka; Close-up which is a tooth gel brand of Unilever Sri Lanka and People’s Bank. Contestants were appraised as to how to be creative by the ‘Close-up’ Brand Manager, Madusha Rajarathna, Unilever and guest speaker, Nathasruban Sivapathan, Chief Creative Officer, TBWA Sri Lanka.
The contestants were supposed to come up with creative integrated communication plans to sell the product to the final consumer. The effectiveness of the communication plans of all competing universities were evaluated based on criteria such as creativity, research insight and the potential for implementation.
In the first round seven teams – University of Sri Jayewardenapura (Team “Sankalan”), University of Jaffna (Team “Dream Viewers”), Wayaba University (Team “X” and Team “Alter Ego”), Sabaragamuwa University (Team “Tycoons”), South Eastern University (Team “Marketroops”) and University of Moratuwa (Team “Wave”) were selected.
The teams implemented their plans in digital media platforms Facebook and YouTube for a period of eight weeks. The effectiveness of the implementation was assessed by a Panel of Judges headed by Dr. T. S. L. W. Gunawardhana, Ruhunu University’s Dean of the Faculty of Management and Finance. The finalists were given another sub task apart from the Digital Media Campaigns, where the contestants were asked to do a research of the People’s Wave App of People’s bank.