The One Show is widely considered the most prestigious worldwide advertising competition and is part of the One Club which exists to champion and promote excellence in advertising and design in all its forms. The One Club is the world's foremost non-profit organization devoted to elevating creative work in the industry.  The One Show held in New York City with the participation of  thirty-one advertising industry's most esteemed professionals from 11 countries as judges. This year a total of 21,297 submissions from 63 countries competed with only 1,229 finalists qualifying from 463 agencies.

Leo Burnett’s submission for The One Show, was The ‘Unity Paper’ which was created in response to the divide that existed between the multi-ethnic communities at the end of Sri Lanka’s 30 year conflict. Although Sri Lanka is home to people from many cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds, language is one of the biggest barriers to communication that people face. The ‘Unity Paper’ was produced to remind Sri Lankans of the importance of national unity and integration in a country which represents a multiracial population. The ‘Unity Paper’, created hype through a social media campaign which used letters of both alphabets to drive its message. Each letter of the alphabet was replicated in Sinhala and Tamil (the main languages spoken in Sri Lanka) and the letters mirrored each other as a symbol of unity. The ‘Unity Paper’ was created out of an understanding that despite people’s differences in language and religion; unity is a state of many acting as one.  This innovative breakthrough in the Sri Lankan media was created by the Leo Burnett team in collaboration with Starcom the media buying arm of the Publicis Groupe.

This prestigious recognition gained at The One Show marks a significant milestone for Leo Burnett and the Sri Lankan advertising industry at large. Leo Burnett has been creating iconic campaigns in Sri Lanka for 15 years and is well poised to continue making an impact in the country’s marketing communications industry.  This campaign created by Leo Burnett Sri Lanka reinforce the global company’s belief in HumanKind – a philosophy that places people, purpose and changing behavior through creativity at the heart of all its communications. (kh/ss)