University of Sri Jayewardenepura emerged as champions in “AdCon 2019” Inter University Advertising Competition.
The Department of Marketing, Faculty of Management and Finance, University of Ruhuna, holds the pride of organizing “AdCon”, the first ever advertising focused inter-university competition in Sri Lanka.
“AdCon” was in progress since September 2019 and was successfully completed as a multi-phase competition on the 6 th of February 2020. It enabled young undergraduates in the State University system to unveil their creative marketing skills while forming a strong platform for creating a sound relationship with the corporate sector of the country.
The “Adcon” competition revolved around two powerful brands in Sri Lanka; Closeup, a prominent youth brand of Unilever Sri Lanka and People’s Bank. Unilever Sri Lanka partnered as the platinum sponsor and the People’s Bank partnered as the gold sponsor of the event.
Over 300 skillful and energetic undergraduates with exceptional creative skills representing all State Universities in Sri Lanka participated in the initial round of the event which was held in the Unilever Sri Lanka main premises in colombo. At the technical workshop which denoted the commencement of the first round, the contestants were given a Client brief by the Close Up brand manager. They were also equipped with sound knowledge as to how to successfully roll out a marketing campaign by the specialist guest speaker Mr Nathasoruban Sivapatham who is the Chief Creative Officer of TBWA Sri Lanka, a Global Advertising Agency. The contestants were supposed to come up with creative integrated communication plans to sell the product to the final consumer. The effectiveness of the communication plans of all competing universities were evaluated based on criteria such as creativity, research insight and the potential for implementation. The integrated marketing communication plans were evaluated by several Panels of judges who have excelled in their professional and academic fields.
After a round of stringent evaluation, the judges managed to select the top 7 performing teams representing University of Sri Jayewardenepura (Team “Sankalan”), University of Jaffna (Team “Dream Viewers”), Wayaba University (Team “X” and Team “Alter Ego”), Sabaragamuwa University (Team “Tycoons”), South Eastern University (Team “Marketroops”) and University of Moratuwa (Team “Wave”) who competed for the Grand Prize in the final round. The finalists of “AdCon 2019” were supposed to implement the communication plan to enhance the visibility of the consumer product. Before the implementation of their plans, the teams were exposed to a face to face discussion with the Close Up Brand Manager Mr Madusha Rajarathna in order to discuss the important matters relating to the campaign they proposed. The Teams implemented their respective communications plans in digital media platforms; facebook and YouTube for a period of 8 weeks. The effectiveness of the implementation was assessed by a Panel of Judges headed by Dr T. S. L. W. Gunawardhana, the Dean of the Faculty of Management and Finance.