 Canned heat at the Cannes
by Nilma Dole
At the mention of Cannes, one of
the dreamiest and gorgeous French Riviera cities in the world, you are
sure to go oû lã lã! Cannes is more than just a lovely tourist
destination and the host of the popular Cannes Film Festival but it also
holds the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival where the
crème de la crème of the advertising world flock in numbers. Imagine
rubbing shoulders with the best advertising gurus, talented creative
professionals and the wittiest of writers who add the fun pun in
worldwide ad campaigns.
Sam and Shyani might be your ordinary advertising professionals in
jeans, flip flops and t-shirts blaring slogans but they managed to
represent Sri Lanka at the prestigious awards festival that is seen as a
Mecca for advertising professionals.
Selected among the best creative
brains in the country, they proved that Sri Lanka did have the potential
to make it big in advertising.
 It is true that Leo Burnett, one of Sri Lanka’s best advertising
agencies, churns out good advertising types with high-quality training
and plenty of opportunities.
ANCL gave the sponsorship and the creative brief for these girls to
enter the Cannes Lions and so they put on their thinking caps to
brainstorm an advertising campaign for a children’s publication known as
the ‘Wisdom Series’. “The children had to read the newspaper to find
clues to fit in the missing spaces, something like a jigsaw puzzle.
This
would generate their interested and would create interaction. It was an
attempt to make the newspaper more appealing for the younger generation
but also knowledgeable where they will learn something useful,” said Shyani who is an art director at Leo Burnett.
Their campaign was known
as the ‘Hunt for knowledge challenge’ which was published in the ‘Wisdom
Series’ publication.
Sam, a creative copywriter by day and a radio DJ at night has been
working for Leo Burnett for some time and says that it was valuable
opportunity to meet various advertising professionals from all over the
world.
 “It was an enlightening experience where we made friends and
discovered how much advertising talent there is to harness in the
world,” she said.
The talent they were bombarded with was definitely
inspirational and they said that the memories were pretty sweet. “At the
end of the day, it was the simplicity and the subtlety of ideas that
made it big. They were simple campaigns that were conceptualised with
something small but powerful,” said Shyani.
The ad girls advise that it’s best to learn the foundation as much as
possible and never to give up. “Even though we didn’t win, we learnt
that the simplest of things can be creative enough to give a punch so we
plan to take our exposure to another level with the knowledge we
obtained,” said Sam.
With these Leo Burnetters as fine examples, we hope more young
advertising sparks will come out of hiding and give the world a dose of
their creative spunk!
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