Run-up to The Chillies

The recognition and success of being adjudged the top advertising agency in the country at The Chillies 2006, has inspired Triad to continue servicing their clients with a high standard of creativity, originality and inventiveness that keep them ahead of their game.

Triad was honoured with agency of the year as well as the highest number of gold which included Best of Show for their print campaign titled Lotus Footsteps for Rainco, the largest umbrella manufacturer in Sri Lanka.

Brands Director Aneek Salih, Art Directors Sameera Kotelawala and Sunil Perera, Client Service Director Udeni Perera, Account Group Head Asha Greig and Director of Hammer BTL Madura Vithanage made up the Triad team, responsible for the victorious Lotus Footsteps ad campaign.

"Rainco is a mass brand and should touch the life of the consumers," said Salih, speaking to The Sunday Times FT. Traditionally, Triad uses religious or cultural symbols and mass events as inspiration and with Lotus Footsteps, which was launched during the Vesak festivities, the lanterns which closely resembled lotus flowers provided the idea for the advertisement.

The concept was simple. Place seven umbrellas upside down to symbolize the seven guiding principles in Buddhism. According to Buddhism, seven lotus flowers bloomed where the Buddha took his first seven steps after birth. Rainco which has been with Triad since its inception 14 years ago and is one of their most valued clients gives the team artistic and creative flexibility.

"The client is great because they give us flexibility in ideas and what we've done has worked for them," said Team Triad. "Most of our clients give us that responsibility. Wherever we did this campaign, people thought it was interesting and an interesting way of using an umbrella. It was so simple."

Team Triad says they were not expecting to win last year. "We thought it was a good idea but we thought the international judges wouldn't understand this concept in Sri Lanka." However, the judges felt otherwise and the publicity garnered from the win was enormous.

The success has spurred the company and the entire creative team to think along the same lines of a simple and uncomplicated concept. "We figured out that something so simple can win and it took away all the unnecessary frills," Salih said. "I think it all starts with understanding the audience and finding idiosyncrasies or something the audience can latch onto."

For Triad, the motivation to achieve greater heights is not about winning awards but how people react to the product they create. The work the company does is not geared towards simply winning awards but to put out the best product they possibly can. Triad takes great pride in the fact that they are a local company and their philosophy of "Sri Lanka Can" is to promote and support local brands such as Wild Elephant, Mihin Lanka, Laugfs, and People's Bank amongst a host of others that are competing with large multinational brands. They completed 22 campaigns in the last year and all get equal effort.

Triad maintains 'there isn't any competition' with the other agencies in Sri Lanka because the quality and excellence of their work does not compare with others. So being at the top of their game, Triad is now striving for international recognition. "We have the confidence and the realization that we can do something because of The Chillies." The team is also striving to take Triad to India, Singapore and the Maldives and make it a multinational force to contend with.

JWT: Pepsi Uncover
JWT CEO Thayalan Bartlett said that their success at The Chillies 2006 came as a pleasant surprise as they had not anticipated to win as much as they actually cleared that night. "We felt extremely good about it" he said in an interview with The Sunday Times FT. One of its entries Pepsi won in many categories that night. The campaign was developed for a school talent contest which attracted over1000 participants from schools across the island. The final event had a packed audience and JWT attributes this success to the campaign they created for their brand Pepsi.

"We didn't want to take the conventional approach," Bartlett said. The creative team behind the successful campaign believed this one in particular represented the Pepsi personality in a very fresh and exciting way and the client agreed with the idea. "I always believe that the glory behind award winning campaigns must be shared with clients who boldly approve them" and in this case the client was very much apart of our winning. Good and healthy client partnerships tend to produce great award winning ideas. It is very important that agencies understand consumers intimately and clients understand their agencies with equal intimacy to pave the way for great advertising ideas. When asked about JWT's expectations for this year, he said he was hopeful of winning awards at this years event but might not win as much as we did last year.

Bartlett described the competition between JWT and the other agencies as fantastic. "Competition is what is required to keep performing better. We are constantly trying to raise the bar," he said.

JWT has plans to compete on an international level and are always submitting entries to various awards show. "JWT has traditionally participated and dominated every major local award show such as the Ola's, SLIM awards and The Chillies and we have to constantly ensure that we maintain our winning streak.

Our objective is to win Sri Lanka's first major international award and I hope this will be a reality soon. I have no doubt that this is forthcoming very soon.” JWT is exploring new media and technology for brand communications in the future. In fact, they launched a new vacancy advertising product website called www.greatjobs.lk in conjunction with the Wijeya Group this week. This initiative will offer JWT's client's greater value for recruitment advertising.