The solution had to be easy to allow anyone to participate. And this is how the newspaper was turned into a national flag allowing people to create their own flag to wave and show their national pride: The flag was printed on both sides of the back page of the newspaper, accompanied by some simple instructions (see video). Mawbima’s Sri Lanka flag begun to appear all over the country.

Saranga Wijeyarathne, Director of Marketing for the Ceylon Newspapers publishing company, says: “Our Sinhala language newspaper Mawbima carried out an innovative ‘Lion Flag Campaign’ (see video), which we timed for our National Day, and won the first ever Cannes award for Sri Lanka. It has also won awards at Adfest and GoaFest and is by far the most internationally acclaimed innovation ever in Sri Lanka. Recently Mawbima won Gold awards for the ‘Best New Entrant of the Year’ at Sri Lanka’s biggest and most recognized marketing and branding awards “SLIM Brand Excellence Awards 2013” and became the first and only newspaper to win an award at this prestigious awards in 12 year history. This award is a turning point for newspaper marketing in Sri Lanka which was not previously considered a serious area in marketing. These awards that we have won have made our efforts tangible and measurable.”

Wijeyarathne is one of the speakers at the WAN-IFRA Printing Summit 2014 (19 and 20 March) in Munich. His topic is newspaper branding.