Nine Sri Lankan Marcom professionals to compete with the best at Cannes

Nine young marketing communications professionals from Sri Lanka have been selected to represent the country at the Young Lions Competitions and the Roger Hatchuel Academy, which are part of the prestigious Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. These young professionals were selected to represent Sri Lanka at a local competition which had in excess of 60 participants, the organisers said in a media release.

These programmes are organized by Metal Factor in partnership with the national industry bodies the International Advertising Association (IAA), the Association of Accredited Advertising Agencies (4As) and the Sri Lanka Institute of Marketing (SLIM). The local winners will now compete against the best teams in the world in their respective categories at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France later this month. The Young Lions competition is the equivalent of the Olympics in advertising.

The nine Sri Lankan Young Lions will compete in the Cyber, Media, Film and Young Marketer categories. Metal Factor which is headed by leading advertising personality Ranil de Silva serves as the Sri Lanka representative for the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. This year the competition was conducted for the ninth consecutive year and continues to attract the very best industry talent from the leading agencies in the country as well as the marketing fraternity and institutions specializing in marketing communications and corporates. Ryan Rebeira and Sameera Ratnayake of Shift Solutions emerged as the winners in the Cyber category, Wasim Akram of Arc Sri Lanka and Anfaz Amanulla from Leo Burnett Solutions Inc. won the top spot in the Media category and Hibshi Moulana and Kavinda Welegedera from Sarva secured first place in the Film category. Abitha Pathmanathan and Aaqib Reyal from Unilever went on to win the Young Marketers Competition whilst the Academy of Design’s student Malika Jinadasa secured his place to attend the renowned Roger Hatchuel Academy.

The local competition also brought together the Sri Lankan advertising fraternity’s top experts and leaders, who stepped forward to review and judge the work that was submitted by each of the competing teams. All teams had to respond to their respective briefs in just one- day.

Metal Factor represents some of the world’s most respected festivals in Sri Lanka. Metal Factor via these festivals provides young professionals the opportunity to gain immense experience by participating in the various competitions.