Saturday Nov 16, 2024
Saturday Nov 16, 2024
Wednesday, 19 March 2014 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The Leo Burnett Sri Lanka team saw itself shine and triumph at ADFEST 2014 amongst the 1,095 delegates from 53 cities that attended the event with 3,253 entries across 17 awards categories. The Leo Burnett network with a total of 70 finalists and 37 metals was named runner up for the Network of the Year in Asia Pacific at ADFEST. In addition to the Sri Lanka office, the network’s offices from Jakarta, Tokyo, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Beirut, Cairo, Bangkok, Dubai, Hong Kong, Manila and Istanbul contributed to this success. Commenting on the performance of the network at ADFEST 2014, Mark Tutssel, Chief Creative Officer, Leo Burnett Worldwide stated: “ADFEST embraces and celebrates the best creativity, local culture and heritage of this highly important and vast region. I am delighted with the performance and results achieved by our network. I would especially like to congratulate Leo Burnett Sri Lanka for winning a Lotus Root Award, which recognises and celebrates ideas born with local roots. As a ‘HumanKind’ agency that truly believes in connecting with people, this award reiterates Leo Burnett Sri Lanka’s immersion and connection with its local roots.”
Held annually in Pattaya, Thailand, the festival hosts delegates from Asia Pacific and the Middle East to celebrate creativity. In its 17th year, the theme for ADFEST 2014 was ‘Co-Create the Future’ which highlighted the importance of the consumer. A variety of innovative and powerful ideas that cut across language and cultural barriers emerged winners from the region at this year’s festival. Amongst these winning ideas was Leo Burnett Sri Lanka’s ‘Unity Paper’, the country’s first ever Sinhala and Tamil newspaper published with the Ada to commemorate the National New Year. This innovative idea was created by Leo Burnett in partnership with Starcom the media independent of the Publicis Groupe. Leo Burnett Sydney also saw its ‘Small World Machines’ campaign created for its client Coca-Cola winning the Grand Prix for Outdoor and several other metals. This success 
also contributed to Coca Cola being named the Advertiser of the Year at Adfest 2014.
Jarek Ziebinski, President, Leo Burnett Asia Pacific, added: “The results which we achieved at ADFEST 2014 has been truly remarkable and inspiring. Each office in the region proved once again that it is not a myth that great creativity brings great results for clients but it also brings great business and accolades for the agency. The work from Leo Burnett offices across the region saw itself win for seven different clients including major clients such as Coca-Cola, P&G, Diageo, McDonald’s and JAL.”
Ziebinski added: “Two offices who call for a special mention are Leo Burnett Sydney, named as the most awarded Australian agency and the second most awarded agency at ADFEST and Leo Burnett Sri Lanka who has yet again raised the bar higher not just for the agency, but also for Sri Lanka. Thank you to every office for their continuous passion, drive, teamwork and creative talent that places us as one of the best agencies in the world.”
The winning Unity Paper initiative by Leo Burnett Sri Lanka was created to remind every Sri Lankan of the importance of national unity and integration in a country which suffered many setbacks due to the 30 year civil war. The first dual language newspaper was printed in support of uniting the country’s multicultural ethnic groups under the uniting banner of being Sri Lankan. This was activated via a social media campaign with a joint alphabet where letters from the Sinhala and Tamil alphabets which represented the same phonetic sound were interlocked. This campaign engaged 15% of all Facebook users in Sri Lanka within the first five days of its launch.
Commenting on the successes of the Leo Burnett Colombo’s office at ADFEST, Ranil de Silva, Managing Director, Leo Burnett Solutions Inc. stated: “We are so proud to have achieved two firsts for us, enabling us to stand tall amongst our peers within the network and also amongst the other agencies in the region. Winning a Gold Award, a Lotus Root Award and two finalists for the Unity Paper is a very proud achievement for us. It is great that an idea which was conceptualised to celebrate a time for sharing by putting aside ethnic differences has been recognised by the region’s creative leaders. The hard work of the team brought us this glory. I am very grateful to everyone who was behind this initiative for making it a reality. A special word of thanks to the team at Wijeya Newspapers and very specially to the editorial team at Ada for being a great client and a valuable partner to this pursuit. Without their commitment and passion the Unity paper would not have happened.” The ‘Unity Paper’ by Leo Burnett Solutions Inc., the leading creative communications company in Sri Lanka, is yet another simple yet singular approach of the company capturing the purpose of the company – ‘HumanKind’ – which is putting a brand’s purpose at the centre of communications to truly connect with people.
