Our idea was to convince people that even the smallest piece of paper can have an afterlife, because we found that Sri Lankans only recycle in large quantities. Hence, we created our series of print ads which depicted Sri Lankan devil masks that symbolize the afterlife out of Chads, the world’s smallest piece of papers. On our ads, we ran a common message which read; “even a tiny piece has an afterlife” – reminding people of the importance of recycling even the tiniest of papers. We went a step further, by punching every newspaper page the ad appeared on and recycling them, which also took readers by surprise and further reinstated our message in an exemplary manner in the minds of our readers.

We ran a series of 3 press ads, each, with a different Sri Lankan Devil Mask constructed solely out of Chads. Sri Lankan devil masks symbolize the afterlife. The ads carried the message that “even the tiniest piece has an afterlife”. The media execution also included us punching all the newspaper pages the ad appeared on, and recycling the entire cache of recycled newspaper pages.

We were able to achieve our desired behavioral change amongst Sri Lankans. Social media was abuzz with the story and so were local and international media outlets who appreciated our efforts. The ads were such a hit that even major local talk shows picked up on the story on the publication days of our ads and turned the entire nation’s attention towards our efforts. Major PR gains aside, Ceylon Today achieved its core objective of demonstrating how big an impact we can make on the world, with the tiniest of things.