Seven Lankans to attend Cannes Festival

Seven young marketing communication professionals from Sri Lanka's advertising and marketing industries will represent Sri Lanka at the annual Young Lions Competitions and the Roger Hatchuel Academy in Cannes, France this month.

The local competition to select the contenders was organised by Metal Factor, the Sri Lanka representative for the Cannes Lions International festival of Creativity, with the International Advertising Association (IAA), The Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies (4As) and the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing.

The Sri Lankan Young Lions will compete against teams from around the world at the Young Lions TV, print and Young Marketeer competitions. Twenty teams took part in the local competition.

The winning duo in the TV category was Phoenix Ogilvy's Ashan Bandaranaike and Dushan Peiris. In the print category, Shehan Samarasinghe and Suchintha de Silva of Triad took the title.

The jury for these two competitions comprised Thusari Palipane (LOWE) as Chairman, Eraj Weerasinghe (Leo Burnett), Ransley Burrows (Phoenix O and M), Dilshard Ahmed (Grant McCann) and Johan Lattif (JWT). In the TV competition the contestants had to create a TV commercial to promote the Galaxy Tab. They shot their commercials using Samsung phones. Unilever Sri Lanka under the Lipton Laojee brand sponsored the Young Lions print competition for the fourth consecutive year.

The ABC Radio Network supported the nomination of the student to the Roger Hatchuel Academy.

Leo Burnett's Induwarani Munasinghe won the placement for the Roger Hatchuel Academy at the Cannes Lions Festival from among five contestants. A jury comprising Selonica Nalawansa (Leo Burnett) as Chairman of the Panel, Madurim Gupta (Phoenix O and M), Rajeeve Wirasingha (Heensare) and Renuka Marshall (TBWA) selected Induwarani.