Title | UNITY PAPER |
Brand | WIJEYA NEWSPAPERS |
Product / Service | ADA NEWSPAPER |
Category | A10. Typography |
Entrant | LEO BURNETT SOLUTIONS Colombo, SRI LANKA |
Entrant Company | LEO BURNETT SOLUTIONS Colombo, SRI LANKA |
Advertising Agency | LEO BURNETT SOLUTIONS Colombo, SRI LANKA |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Seninda Bandara | Starcom Worldwide Sri Lanka | Media Manager |
Jehan Adahan | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Photographer |
Tasneem Siddeeque | Arc Worldwide Sri Lanka | Public Relations Executive |
Kishani Gunasekera | Arc Worldwide Sri Lanka | Director Public Relations |
Prasad Chaturanga | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Illustrator |
Jayantha Liyanage | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Digitial Artist |
Nilusha Wanasinghe | Starcom Worldwide Sri Lanka | Senior Media Manager |
Anuradha Cooray | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Senior Executive Production |
Ranjith Perera | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Senior Manager -Digital Art Production |
Mehnaz Ilhamdeen | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Production Manager |
Manoj Dharmawardhane | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Copy Writer |
Somasegeram Nadarajah | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Copy Writer |
Malaka Samit | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Copy Writer |
Ranjana Amaradeva | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Group Head/Copy Writer |
Farzad Mohideen | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Copy Writer |
Eraj Wirasinha | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Associate Creative Director/Copy Writer |
Michael Holsinger | Starcom Worldwide Sri Lanka | Chief Executive Officer |
Chaturangi De Silva | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Art Director |
Sithum Walter | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Art Director |
Subhash Pinnapola | Leo Burnett Solutions Inc | Executive Creative Director |
The key challenge was that both communities involved spoke completely different languages with different scripts. This meant promoting a bilingual newspaper required us to create a bilingual campaign but one that captured the spirit of bringing two communities together.
In 2009, Sri Lanka’s brutal 30-year civil war finally came to an end. Four years on, and though progress had been made, the process of reconciliation was still not complete. With the traditional New Year coming up, the one event celebrated by both the communities involved, Ada, a mass-market daily newspaper, wanted us to find a way for it to contribute to the reconciliation process and promote it.
For our promotional campaign, we wanted convey the idea of two communities coming together while at the same time educating each community on the other's language. To fulfill these criteria, we came up with a simple idea where we united the letters of each language based on sound. This way a member of one community would know the sound of a letter from the other community's alphabet.
On Facebook , the two letter symbols were used by people as profile pictures and the campaign got over 220,000 likes, shares and views, which adds up to 15% of all Sri Lankan Facebook users. The Ada Unity Paper, on the day of publication, saw a 20% increase in sales which resulted in the paper being sold out and led to the paper being the second most consistently read newspaper in the country.