Space to Pray

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Space to Pray

Background
AIA – a multinational insurer – had recently entered Sri Lanka and wanted to reach out and strengthen its connection to the local market. However, the average Sri Lankan considered AIA to be a foreign company that was not sensitive to the Sri Lankan way of life, which made this task all the more challenging. So, we set out to find an insightful way to show that the company truly prided itself as being ‘The Real Life Company’ and was deeply rooted in Sri Lanka and her people.

Solution
Buddhists constitute the majority of the population in Sri Lanka. And when they visit their temples for religious observances, we found that they take with them newspaper pages as floor cover as they sit/kneel on the temple grounds to listen to Buddhist scripture. However, the ink from the newsprint often stains their traditional White clothes.

Here, we found an opportunity to give people a clean space to pray. In this regard, AIA’s ‘Space to Pray’ ad was published a day before Vesak (the most important day on the Buddhist calendar). It was completely free of ink except for a Buddhist inspired border and a small, heartfelt message that encouraged Sri Lankans to take the ad to temple and honour the day.

Result
The power of AIA's newspaper mat generated direct appreciation of our honest effort and made ‘Lankadeepa’, the national daily that carried the ad with an average circulation of 260,000 sell out! In addition, temple grounds all over the country were covered with our paper mats. Immediately after the ad, AIA also achieved their immediate business target of increasing the number of general inquiries by up to three times from a daily average of 700 to 2100; which meant that our objective was exceedingly well achieved.

Client : AIA Insurance
Agency : TBWA/Sri Lanka
Chief Creative Officer : Subhash Pinnapola.
Art Directors : Mithila De Silva
Copywriter : Kasun Wanigasekara

Sohan Ratnaike
Illustrator : Sawan Pawithra

Srimal Chathuranga

Studio Manager : Saminda Rupasinghe

Graphic Designer : Mayura Sesath

Production House : 24 Frames (Pvt) Ltd

Producer : Nuwan Alwis

Editor : Saman Alvitigala

Dop : Striner Macklain Adams

Photographer : Saminda Rupasinghe - Skylight Photography